Weak Grip vs Strong Grip in the Golf Swing

Stephen Aumock: Hi, my name's Stephen Aumock, and I'm here at Gleneagles Country Club.

I just wanted to share a little bit about some of the things that I observe all the time when I'm traveling on the PGA tour or the European tour as far as the grip is concerned.

One thing I noticed is that if your grip gets a little too strong, the face tends to get too closed.

By strong I mean, let's assume this is a fairly neutral grip.

A strong grip would be one where the hands creep a little bit too much over on the right side of the club, and the V that's formed by my thumb and index finger shoot too much out to the side here.

What that does is it tends to make the club face too closed in the back swing, and then the down swing.

That makes the ball hook to the left, and you lose a lot of the trajectory of the shot, the ball doesn't go as far, and obviously you don't want to be hooking the ball all day. If the ball is hooking, you want to check to make sure that you don't have your hands in that condition that they're too strong.

If they are, you simply want to leave the club face pretty square.

Twist your hands back to a more neutral position where they're more on top of the club, and your left thumb is just slightly on the right side of the shaft instead of twisted way over on this side of the shaft this way.

Another way to check to see if your grip is too strong is if you're hooking the ball and you noticed a lot of your knuckles are appearing here as you look down.

That's a sure fire way of knowing that the club face is going to be too closed at impact, making the ball hook to the left.

Check your knuckles, check the V's of your right and left hand, and make sure that they're a little more neutral.

As you look down at your knuckles you should see about two on your left hand, and your right hand should be covering your left thumb.

It's a simple way to check to see that it's not too strong.

Now conversely, if it's too weak, the club face is going to be quite open coming down.

That makes the ball veer off to the right and get those toe hits that go nowhere, and doesn't feel any good.

The ball just poofs in the air.

You want to make sure that your grip's not too weak.

By too weak, I mean that the V's are pointed too closely to your left shoulder at address, and you really can't see any of your knuckles on your left hand.

You want to strengthen your grip just a little bit if you have too weak of a grip so that you're exposing at least two knuckles at address, and that you get your right hand on top of your left thumb so that the thumb and the forefinger are pointed about at your right shoulder.

This is a good neutral position that you should be able to hit the ball a lot straighter and farther.