Using The Claw Putting Grip In Your Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Using The Claw Putting Grip In Your Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

For as long as people have been playing golf, people have been putting. And for as long as people have been putting, they have been messing around with the way they hold on to the golf club, the putter. Now I'm a real advocate for this because I actually grip the club back to front in my own style of putting. So whenever somebody comes to me and suggests a new way of trying to hold the club that's going to help them I'm fully behind endorsing that and embracing that and trying to encourage them to explore different ways they can hold the club.

And this is one of the ways is now catching a little bit of momentum at the moment due to a lot of good players changing to this method, this style and actually producing some good results. And that is actually the claw or what’s sometimes called the penholder method of holding the club. And people are changing to this method of holding the club for exactly the same reason why I actually putt cross handed. And it's to actually to eliminate the feeling of the right hand for the right-handed golfer having too much influence. So I grip it back to front, so my right hand doesn't have too much influence. The standard grip with the right hand low tends to find the right hand does a bit too much work. That’s because a lot of golfers are right handed and in a full swing they are utilizing the right hand to release over. So actually we need a method that tells the right hand it needs to do a different job and to stop it working. And for a lot of golfers, the claw method or the penholder method is the reason why they're making that change. So as I set up to the putt here in lineup, instead of having my normal grip I take my right hand off and twist it slightly. Now in this position it's not going to release as much as it would do in this position. It’s far harder to release. So by bringing that hand now fingers on top and thumb underneath there, I grip the club there and my right hand doesn't want to have anywhere near as much influence. It's much more left hand dominant and the putter should rock nicely backwards and through. Some golfers don't feel they have quite enough of a hold on the club. So they actually just change that, maybe popping a couple of fingers under and a couple of fingers over more of the penholder method or even just the main finger, the middle finger slightly down the back, the index finger on top of the other fingers underneath. So some version of that that has a way of stopping the right hand hitting the putt. And then in that position, we should be able to stroke the putter backwards and forwards a little bit more smoothly. And you should feel that the right hand isn't hitting the putt quite so much with that method. So go ahead and experiment with that. Now there's no saying I'm going to make every putt from here because like I say it's not my preferred method of holding it. But I'd probably set myself upon the putting green with about an hour's worth of practice and try and hit putts for round about an hour with this new technique. And just see that if I can get a nice smooth roll on the ball and see whether I can get good distance control. Admittedly that putt didn't go in, but I was quite happy with the way I struck it. The distance control was good. I just needed to work on my line. But I think that with about an hour of practicing this kind of method you would get a feel for whether it's going to be suitable for you. Now if you feel like you're setting up to the putt and then you give it a hit and it goes way too fast, you'd look at that and think, yeah I don’t want to see too many of those on the golf course, so that's not the method for me. But generally speaking when you're practicing your long game, short game and your putting, you probably want to be doing 50% of your entire practice needs to be on your short game and 25% of that should be putting. And then as you are making a change and changing the way you're going to grip the club you need to do more practice on that short game and more practice particularly with your putter. 2016-07-15

For as long as people have been playing golf, people have been putting. And for as long as people have been putting, they have been messing around with the way they hold on to the golf club, the putter. Now I'm a real advocate for this because I actually grip the club back to front in my own style of putting. So whenever somebody comes to me and suggests a new way of trying to hold the club that's going to help them I'm fully behind endorsing that and embracing that and trying to encourage them to explore different ways they can hold the club.

And this is one of the ways is now catching a little bit of momentum at the moment due to a lot of good players changing to this method, this style and actually producing some good results. And that is actually the claw or what’s sometimes called the penholder method of holding the club. And people are changing to this method of holding the club for exactly the same reason why I actually putt cross handed. And it's to actually to eliminate the feeling of the right hand for the right-handed golfer having too much influence.

So I grip it back to front, so my right hand doesn't have too much influence. The standard grip with the right hand low tends to find the right hand does a bit too much work. That’s because a lot of golfers are right handed and in a full swing they are utilizing the right hand to release over. So actually we need a method that tells the right hand it needs to do a different job and to stop it working. And for a lot of golfers, the claw method or the penholder method is the reason why they're making that change.

So as I set up to the putt here in lineup, instead of having my normal grip I take my right hand off and twist it slightly. Now in this position it's not going to release as much as it would do in this position. It’s far harder to release. So by bringing that hand now fingers on top and thumb underneath there, I grip the club there and my right hand doesn't want to have anywhere near as much influence. It's much more left hand dominant and the putter should rock nicely backwards and through. Some golfers don't feel they have quite enough of a hold on the club.

So they actually just change that, maybe popping a couple of fingers under and a couple of fingers over more of the penholder method or even just the main finger, the middle finger slightly down the back, the index finger on top of the other fingers underneath. So some version of that that has a way of stopping the right hand hitting the putt. And then in that position, we should be able to stroke the putter backwards and forwards a little bit more smoothly. And you should feel that the right hand isn't hitting the putt quite so much with that method.

So go ahead and experiment with that. Now there's no saying I'm going to make every putt from here because like I say it's not my preferred method of holding it. But I'd probably set myself upon the putting green with about an hour's worth of practice and try and hit putts for round about an hour with this new technique. And just see that if I can get a nice smooth roll on the ball and see whether I can get good distance control. Admittedly that putt didn't go in, but I was quite happy with the way I struck it. The distance control was good. I just needed to work on my line.

But I think that with about an hour of practicing this kind of method you would get a feel for whether it's going to be suitable for you. Now if you feel like you're setting up to the putt and then you give it a hit and it goes way too fast, you'd look at that and think, yeah I don’t want to see too many of those on the golf course, so that's not the method for me. But generally speaking when you're practicing your long game, short game and your putting, you probably want to be doing 50% of your entire practice needs to be on your short game and 25% of that should be putting.

And then as you are making a change and changing the way you're going to grip the club you need to do more practice on that short game and more practice particularly with your putter.