For More Speed and Power… Forget About “Using the Ground”
Everybody’s talking about ground reaction forces and using the ground properly to gain speed and power in the golf swing, but it’s far more important to understand the key core movements of the great players. Focus on those and forget about “pushing off the ground” or “using the ground” to generate power. You’ll love the results.
- LIKE65
- LEGIT6
- WOW0
- LOL8
- IDHT6
- FLOP13
- OB11
- SHANK57
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
- LIKE0
- LEGIT0
- WOW0
- LOL0
- IDHT0
- FLOP0
- OB0
- SHANK0
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
- LIKE86
- LEGIT13
- WOW6
- LOL1
- IDHT0
- FLOP4
- OB1
- SHANK8
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
- LIKE0
- LEGIT2
- WOW2
- LOL0
- IDHT0
- FLOP0
- OB0
- SHANK2
-
19th Hole2 weeks agoDave Portnoy places monstrous outright bet for the 2024 Masters
-
19th Hole3 days agoJustin Thomas on the equipment choice of Scottie Scheffler that he thinks is ‘weird’
-
19th Hole2 weeks agoTiger Woods arrives at 2024 Masters equipped with a putter that may surprise you
-
19th Hole3 days ago‘Absolutely crazy’ – Major champ lays into Patrick Cantlay over his decision on final hole of RBC Heritage
-
19th Hole3 weeks agoReport: Tiger Woods has ‘eliminated sex’ in preparation for the 2024 Masters
-
19th Hole1 week agoTwo star names reportedly blanked Jon Rahm all week at the Masters
-
19th Hole1 week agoReport: LIV Golf identifies latest star name they hope to sign to breakaway tour
-
19th Hole1 week agoNeal Shipley presser ends in awkward fashion after reporter claims Tiger handed him note on 8th fairway
RBImGuy
Mar 20, 2018 at 4:51 am
Dead wrong
Ed
Jan 30, 2018 at 6:58 pm
Ground Reaction Forces, GRFs, are exactly that; the reaction forces that are applied in the ground from the forces and torques that the golfer generates in their golf swing.
If you understand and are able to measure the forces that are applied to the ground through the feet you will better understand what is happening within your golf swing.
If your golf swing is good then you should forget about “Using the Ground” because the ground forces are reaction forces. You can’t get extra power from GRFs because they ARE the forces that you generate in your golfswing, nothing more.
Tumba
Jan 30, 2018 at 4:44 pm
Activate the glutes
Ed
Jan 31, 2018 at 12:54 pm
To activate the glutes requires a neuro-muscular signal from your brainlet. It’s all programmed in the brainlet.
The golfswing involves big muscles. There is no ‘muscle memory’ because big muscles have an IQ of about 4. Big muscles are stupid muscles and inherently clumsy.
Joe
Feb 1, 2018 at 8:48 am
you guys have come up with a bunch of BS like band-aid fixes in the golf magazines. You do leverage the ground for more power. Just like the bad instruction that teachers say “be in a athletic stance” be ready to move. Hog wash!! You use you glutes when you load into your left side and then back to the right side.
OB
Feb 1, 2018 at 11:24 am
But you also use your leg quads to stabilize your legs, perhaps moreso than the glutes. Many golfers have big glutes but their legs are weak and useless because they can’t lunge laterally from the left to the right side (for RH golfers).
Tour pros have solid muscular legs in addition to strong glutes while most rec golfers are leg deficient because of their sedentary lifestyle. Office workers do not make good golfers.
Andrew Cooper
Jan 30, 2018 at 3:46 pm
Good stuff Lucas. “Using the ground” confuses what happens in a good swing with what you should be thinking of doing.
tony
Jan 31, 2018 at 2:15 am
… and what should you be thinking of doing…. answer that… 😛
Marc
Jan 30, 2018 at 2:15 pm
He’s not wrong that the golf instruction world tries to find some buzz word (i.e. ground forces) to latch on and run with. For a time it’s “stack & tilt” and then it’s “one-plane”, then it’s “X-Factor”. But he shouldn’t discount the presence of it either. For me, the proper use of the ground is a result of an effective sequence and motion. So, it happens anyways. You don’t need to do it on purpose.
tony
Jan 31, 2018 at 2:18 am
IOW, GRFs only happen if you generate GF&Ts in your body… 😎
Andrew Cooper
Jan 31, 2018 at 2:57 am
Think of whatever works for you. But you should never have to think of “using the ground”-anyone with any athletic sense will do that naturally, as they would do in any throwing or hitting athletic motion. The kinetic chain is hard-wired into us.
Ed
Jan 31, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Suggest you do a Wiki search on “open” and “closed” kinetic chains …. and then apply it to the golf swing and GRFs. Wald should also learn about the kinetic chains and GRFs to better understand the science because his interpretations are erroneous.
Andrew Cooper
Jan 31, 2018 at 3:32 pm
Ed, understanding the kinetic sequence is a starting point, but the bigger question is what should a golfer be thinking of doing to make that good sequence show up? “Using the ground” obviously and measurably happens, but it’s questionable whether a golfer could or should consciously try to do it, keeping in mind the fraction of a second that it takes to move the club from the top of the backswing to impact.
Ed
Jan 31, 2018 at 7:09 pm
Of course golfers shouldn’t try to consciously sense the forces their feet/shoes apply to the ground when playing. However, it should be part of their practice routine and quantified on force plates to ensure their force patterns are consistent and appropriate. Force plate GRFs reveal how and when you generate forces within your body; forces that are ALL resolved into the ground as GRFs. Force diagrams and numbers reveal everything. “Feel” only reveals “feeelings” and feeelings are emotions. Are you an emoticon golfer? 😉
Regis
Feb 1, 2018 at 5:39 am
But realistically probably less than 1% of avid golfers have access to force plate training and probably less than 10% even know what’s involved. The problem (which I think is the authors point) is that when modern teaching sets focus on using the ground it results in a practise range of golfers jumping around like mexican jumping beans. Thats true of overemphasis of any one swing ckmpknent
OB
Feb 1, 2018 at 11:19 am
But if avid golfers don’t synchronize their golf swing to their GRFs that means they have a faulty swing. Instead of seeking more distance and control from their clubs they should seek out a teacher using force plates to optimize their swing dynamics. Knowledge is power.
4right
Jan 30, 2018 at 11:23 am
Exactly HL… If you didn’t use ground force, it would feel like being suspended under water, or floating in air, slow and less energetic. I’m sure Mr. Ward’s points are valid, but the sequence is more important. The vast majority of us regular golfers get tossed in with the world’s best and that is not a far comparison… Top players have far more talent and god given abilities to play at that level.
HeineyLite
Jan 30, 2018 at 11:12 am
Question? Where do they get the energy to rotate then? The ground!!!
tony
Jan 31, 2018 at 2:20 am
No… you get the energy to rotate from your brand new club head which is loaded with power… according to the advertising. I mean just look how powerful the clubs are in the hands of the tour pros. You can buy that power and feel what the pros feeel.
4right
Jan 31, 2018 at 9:48 am
LOL
Nac
Jan 31, 2018 at 12:42 pm
So true! When you hand someone an ax to chop a tree down you do not need to tell them how to use the ground to swing the ax harder. It’s a natural move.
Ed
Jan 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm
Yes it’s natural for chopping wood but you had better synchronize your golfswing mechanics so your GRFs are proper. Somebody with a reverse pivot has faulty GRF results.
Golf instructors are learning about GRFs from force plate technology because everything that happens dynamically in your body appears as GRFs. GRF or GTH.