In this Golf Swing Weekly Fix, PGA Professional Mark Crossfield gives a student a lesson on grip and club delivery. Watch the video, and learn how measured facts can help a student understand their swing and develop better feels.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
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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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
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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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
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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peter collins
Jun 6, 2016 at 3:08 pm
All sounds good to me Mark, good lesson.
Peter Borrowman
Jun 1, 2016 at 5:37 pm
Had the same issue with my grip on a lesson this morning (right hand). Crazy how something so simple is so important.
Scott Shields
Jun 1, 2016 at 2:26 pm
I like when you’re serious like this Mark. You did a great job in my mind of explaining the cause and effects of mechanic changes, and how / why changes don’t typically occur in a vacuum. The bits on ball position, lie angle, and path, all map back to a grip.
That said – my only comment is this, you had your student experimentally find zero, by just ‘swinging’ left. That is not a bad idea, when you have a trackman or flightscope handy, and can verify the results. My fear for Simon, would be how’s he to check when he’s not with you, aside from diagnosing his own ball flight, and divots, which again (because gear effect) might not tell the whole story …. He seemed like a decent enough striker, but if he starts getting heel and toe strikes, then he can’t necessarily trust his starting line and ball curvature.
All that said —- My point / solution would have been, for the finding zero portion, I would have him do the exercise where you have an alignment stick being held in your grip, essentially pointing upwards towards your head, and alignment sticks on your target line… from there I’d have him ‘trace’ that plane line (target line), slowly on the backswing by imagining an extension of the alignment cane pointing at the target line, and when he cocks his wrists, ensure that the butt end stick now points at the target line. The exercise is essentially what this video shows, except that you’re just using alignment canes rather than paying for an expensive piece of golf training equipment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2YEy91gHlw
What that does, its a great way to see if you’re in-to-out, out-to-in, or square to square, and its an positive way to monitor his progress, and engrain feelings while doing so.
This way, if he starts to slowly, rotate that lower hand back under the grip, he can go back to his ‘poor man’s laser’ aka alignment sticks, and re-correct his path.
Anyways, been a fan since 2010, and love all the content. Take care!
Wg
Jun 2, 2016 at 2:36 am
You obviously don’t pay attention. Plane is a myth that Mark himself explained just earlier!
http://www.golfwrx.com/378924/crossfield-top-3-golf-swing-myths/
Scott Shields
Jun 2, 2016 at 3:07 pm
Plane is a myth? Nope.
Mark’s issue is with planes and how they are associated with path (per his video). The two are not one and the same, but can be related. I suspect its complicated as an instructor to breakdown some of these relationships, and maybe he’s found it more useful to toss the notion out — that doesn’t mean there aren’t planes in the golf swing. Lol.
I know its complicated, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Do some research, and check it out.
For your reference:
http://www.thegolfingmachine.com/golf-professionals/benefits/index.html
http://www.lynnblakegolf.com/
Cr
Jun 2, 2016 at 6:29 pm
Not complicated at all. Mark explained it already. We don’t need you
Dan
May 31, 2016 at 6:08 pm
Elbows
Shawn
May 31, 2016 at 5:09 pm
At the 3:50-3:55 mark, when you reference “you don’t want to see them so much”, what are you referencing exactly?
Chris
May 31, 2016 at 10:54 pm
Fingers on the right hand?
Mark Crossfield
Jun 1, 2016 at 1:00 am
Correct fingers of right hand.