It All Starts with the Grip

September 13, 2007
By:Butch Bundy

As golfers we all have a long checklist of things that we try to do in order to make that little ball go in the right direction. Your golfing buddies (or spouses, which aren’t always good golf buddies) tell you to keep your head down, to keep your left arm straight, to shift your weight or even to cock your wrists. While on some level all of these things need to happen, none of them are things that should be forced to happen. They are mainly results of a proper grip.
Not enough attention is placed on gripping the golf club properly. A poor grip can cause a large number of swing flaws. It can cause a poor weight shift, bad body alignment and more importantly it controls the clubface throughout the golf swing. The biggest fault I see is that players tend to grip the club too much in the palms of their hands. If you can’t make it to a teaching professional for a lesson, the best advice I can offer in writing is to keep the club more in the fingers, especially with the top hand or left hand for right handed players.
This ensures that the club will be in the proper position in the hand and it will also help keep your grip pressure a bit lighter which is another big problem for most players. Secondly, I have a saying that there are no gaps in a good grip. This mostly applies to those old baseball players that tend to have their hands split a bit as they hold the club. If you are a new golfer and just picking up the sport make sure that your hands are touching and that both thumbs are on top of the club as you look down at your grip. This will also help to keep the hands from fighting each other during the swing.