In this video, I give you the appropriate foundation for transitioning from the backswing to the downswing correctly. Hope this helps!
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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!
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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
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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?
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stephenf
Dec 4, 2018 at 6:11 pm
Hate to nitpick, but this isn’t nitpicking: It really isn’t a matter of “torso then arms,” or “torso then arms then club.” In a good swing the arms are swinging across the front of the body as the upper body turns back toward the ball. This is seen in the swing of _every_ great player in how the arms are swinging down at a rate actually outpacing the turn of the body on the downswing — increasing distance between hands and trailing shoulder, etc. I’m not sure anybody’s improved much on John Jacobs’ ideas of how this happens, and how it’s typically the single most critical thing in the development of any player — learning to feel the timing of the arm-and-club swing and how it relates to the turn of the upper body, how the arms swing by the body as it turns, etc.
But the “think target” advice — as in, swing to the target, and only _through_ the space the ball happens to occupy (not _to_ it) — is critically important and will improve many swings just on the strength of that thought alone.
So yeah, the torso has to move. It’s dynamic. Torso and shoulders have to move. But it’s not torso-then-arms. In fact, if the torso and shoulders drag the arms around, it’s completely destructive to a swinging motion.
Put another way, all the insanity about “rotation rotation ROTATION” these days is way too much emphasis. The truth is that the turn (or rotation) adds some degree of power, but not nearly as much as people think it does, and increasing “rotation” for somebody who’s already dominating the swing too much with the upper body and shoulders, and who’s likely already getting steep and outside, is just going to kill the swing.
Not saying that’s what Alastair is advocating here. I’m talking about if people misunderstand the “sequence” (it’s not 100% of one thing followed by 100% of another) and overemphasize rotation in general. For anybody who hasn’t seen it already, the club-throwing exercise described by Fred Shoemaker in Extraordinary Golf is essentially the same as you see here, but with high-handicap amateurs who, when put to the throw-the-club-to-the-target task, pretty much instantly lose many of their flaws and take on a real swinging motion. It’s something to see in photos, and it’s good to see the same principle addressed here.
geohogan
Nov 5, 2018 at 11:08 pm
If we understand the kinematic sequence, then we will know that it is the deceleration of the arms
that is the CAUSE of the acceleration of the golf club. It is not a conscious throwing of the trail arm or straightening of the right arm or a flick of the trail hand.
The power from body rotation is transferred from proximal to distal(deceleration of proximal causing acceleration of distal) until the clubhead is whipped by radial acceleration, through the wrists acting as free hinges. What is commonly called release is actually the acceleration of club lever as a reaction to, a result of, deceleration of the arms.
geohogan
Nov 4, 2018 at 8:44 pm
Begin the DS with a throw and the club will be buried in the ground behind the ball. That has been a fact since time immemorial. Its basis is in our genes. Scoff at genetics at your peril.
Genetics control the hands, unless we make the conscious effort to interfere with that genetic
predisposition to OTT. Palm facing the sky at start of DS, worked for Ben Hogan and it will work for everyone in the same way, for the same reasons.
geohogan
Nov 4, 2018 at 1:40 pm
The Throw starts at P6(club parallel to the ground), not from the start of the DS.
From top of DS (aka transition), intent has to be to keep the palm of dominant, trail hand facing the sky.
The balance of the DS happens too quickly(less than 1/4 second)for conscious control.
With dominant, trail hand palm facing the sky as intent at top of DS, the arms will fall(gravity move) positining club, arms and hands for the throwing position at P6. The throw, like skipping a stone and the side arm throw from short to second base happens whenever the dominant palm is facing the sky.
Ref. The Hogan Manual of Human Performance: GOLF, 1992
Tiger Noods
Nov 4, 2018 at 2:24 pm
Ben Hogan was a good golfer, and the first person really able to describe things in a publishable manner. That doesn’t mean things don’t get honed and improved. There were people good at golf that would have scoffed at that newcomer Hogan, too.
geohogan
Nov 5, 2018 at 1:05 pm
Arguably Ben Hogan was the best ball striker we have seen. This is not my opinion, but judgement of many of the best golfers in history.
“People good at golf” are a dime a dozen and their opinions mean nothing, unless backed by facts. False equivalency is a weapon of the articulate these days.
Tartan Golf Travel
Nov 5, 2018 at 6:16 pm
I will have to save you lost all credibility when you said “Ben Hogan was good at golf”. I guess that’s a step up from so so but that has to be the biggest understatement in history.