How to Grip The Golf Club – Level I – Basic Fundamentals of Golf

How to grip the golf club.

Okay as we dive into all of the important things to know even before we take a golf swing I want to talk about the golf grip this is something that is very unique to the individual I have a certain way that I prefer you to hold

The golf club but once again I’m here to help you investigate what’s the best grip for you and how do we do that the grip itself we’re going to kind of focus on the left hand position um there’s a couple of things that I notice obviously for a right-handed golfer that lead hand

For any golfer your lead hand is going to be the high hand on the golf club your right hand or your back hand for those lefties is going to be the lower hand on the golf club and if you reference someone standing straight up and you think about this hand having to

Grab the club in a lower position it naturally gives you a little bit of what we call tilt to our golf swing where this shoulder is lower than this one okay something to reference with our grip but lead hand is above the back hand is typically behind now I see

People that grip the club like a baseball bat there’s some people that connect their hands in certain ways and we’re going to go through the ins and outs of all of those once again referencing what I think giving you a template to examine what may work best

For you okay so one of the things that I notic with a lot of my students and this is one example of a grip here with both hands I call it the long thumbs okay you see I have my fingers they are not connected I have these four

And then these four they’re separate and then I have these real long thumbs and some of you might play golf like that with either the right hand left hand or both looking like that if we focus on that left hand we can really see that when that thumb is long that that club

Is really sitting more in the palm of my hand think about what we type with what do we use our cell phones with what do we feel with we feel with the fingertips so whenever I see someone with that long thumb and the hands are wrapped underneath I know that that grip is

Probably more in a weak position and that the club they don’t have a lot of feel or control over that Golf Club okay if you’re a person that does have the long fingers or your hand sits more if this is the middle of the club sits more

On the outside portion of it facing the target with your lead hand you probably have a weak grip and I want you to swing that club back and forth and kind of give me an idea of if you feel like you can do that with one hand or is it very

Wobbly I’m going to assume that it’s probably quite wobbly okay from that position just talking about the left hand one thing that I like to reference here to get closer to how I feel you should be is to think about that thumb being shorter keeping your thumb straight down the middle but

Moving more of your thumb muscle to the inner part of the club okay now as you can see there the difference was from weak grip with thumb straight down clubing the Palm to Shorter thumb and more of the hand on top of the club all right we made a certain crease there

When we did that and that crease is kind of aiming at my you know the right side of my chest or my armpit there and we’re going to reference that in a second to me when we make that adjustment it gives us more control over the golf club I can probably see two

Maybe two and a half Knuckles at my address position but I think this gives me more control over the golf club all right and a lot of times I like you to then once again take this club and swing it back and forth with just your left

Hand and sometimes people H that feels a lot better okay so the position of that lead hand is crucial for controlling the golf club all right and once again we reference our hand being more like this with the palm of our hand facing our Target line and not being necessarily

More prevalent or from your view more easy to see there okay take your club and put it down on the ground and I do this a lot in golf lessons I have you take your hand and I have you just shake them and let them be loose right in front of your

Thighs and when you do that you notice that your palms the back of your palms naturally face out so if you’re holding it with the long thumb and your hand facing that way a lot of times if our hand wants to get back to where it naturally wants to

Be that leaves us with what an open Club face that’s to the right of my target okay and we’re now we’re not approaching it the same way that we started okay so that’s where I don’t like having a weak weaker left hand I prefer for that to be

Neutral to strong and my two favorite grips to sort of um you know copy or emulate Tom Watson same with golf swing Tom Watson and Tiger Woods one was more of an athlete one was more skill-based both were great players and there’s a lot of similarities between the two of

Them and the grip is the is one of those similarities where when they’re gripping the club that V is pointing more to their back chest right and not you know not having a v or having that Gap be out that way in relation to our our setup

There okay so I really feel like that is something that’s crucial and that pinch that we make there is way better for control than having a gap between our BAS knuckle and our bass knuckle and our index okay and there’s a little little drill we’ll do here in a second to kind

Of reference that but shorter thumb hand turned in the crease that we’re making is now pointing more in this region and we should have more control over the golf club okay from there we can put our right hand on the golf club now this is my textbook

Grip and I’ll freeze it for you guys to kind of take a look at that okay but if you notice both of my V’s are pointing to that back armpit back chest region okay and um both are neutral to what I would say slightly strong okay and for

Me and how I like to play golf I don’t like to have to manipulate the club or use a lot of hand action to hit the golf ball so it’s something personal for me but I favor having more control than less control I think of those football players American football players the

Quarterbacks and how they have a lot of feel in those fingertips and they all tend to hold the ball on its laces when they throw all except for Brett Favre that’s the only guy I can think of that was a little bit different once again in golf we’re allowed to be different as

Long as we examine what is is atypical or what is normal okay so fingertips fingertips for f that’s sort of my textbook idea and with all those people that have the long thumb you don’t really have that club is more in the Palm in that instance okay but we have

Some options here I see students that have the what I call the tin finger grip where there’s no connection between the hands there’s some people that will have the overlap grip where there’s a pinky that sort of overlaps the groove of that index on that lead hand there and

There’s other people that do an inlock and I once again interlock this is something that we’ll see with tiger and also with uh Tom Watson as well um and you know basketball I copied Michael Jordan golf I I copied Tiger Woods and and other great great one so that’s

Where it stem from um we’ll talk a little bit more about the variations there but the biggest thing to recognize between these two hands is as they work as one on the golf club we don’t want them to be separate we want them to almost behave as one hand on the golf

Club that’s why we have people that overlap or interlock to create that connection and that that really helps us to be kind of consistent in the golf swing Okay so thinking of the grip left hand not being weak with the long thumb shorter thumb turned in same with our right hand tin

Finger grip interlock whatever we do we want the hands to be close and this back hand right hand for me should sit more over top of that thumb okay so we take our setup we don’t want to have that thumb exposed we don’t want our thumb to to be around the club

And we want that right hand to sit right on top of that club okay and if you see my fingers there you no again you notice the crease I’m making with my thumb and my base um knuckle of my index finger they’re both pointing there very similar

To my left hand so that’s what I’m looking for there we do not want that crease to be over this way cuz now that hand is weak and now we don’t have control over it um with our right hand and inconsistency all over the place with that okay so we

Don’t want that hand to be rolled in we don’t want our left hand to be super weak that would be considered a weak grip left hand and right hand okay strong grip would be more on top of the club where this crease even gets outside of your

Shoulder and your hand is on top almost can see all the knuckles there some people do this I think of our US Open winner uh Fitzpatrick um who has a stronger grip with his lead hand there and the right hand would be more underneath this would be super super

Strong with those creases we’re making pointing even around my body I prefer them to be neutral to slightly strong more in a position like this okay so I’m going to pause this and we’re going to get back into this