A simple grip check

The grip is one of the fundamentals that will cause the most issues with your swing.

It’s the only contact you have with the golf club. The way you grip it at address is going to have a major effect on how the club is released through the ball.

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What we’re talking about here is simply having an awareness of what a neutral, strong, or weak grip will do to the clubface and how that will affect ball flight.

Neutral (above)

You can see the way the ‘V’ you have created between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand matches the ‘V’ on the left hand. They will be pointing somewhere between the right ear and the right shoulder.

That’s a good checkpoint to have, and it’s a quick and easy way of knowing you’ve got a neutral grip. What it’s going to do is allow your hands to be relatively passive through the ball. There are obviously other influences that can affect that but, generally speaking, this will allow the hands to be passive.

A weak grip is where both hands are too far round to the left. What will happen as a result of this is that your hands will try to adjust at impact and return to a neutral position.

As they do that, the tendency is for the clubface to open and you’ll more than likely get a shot that will go out to the right of your intended target.

Strong

The opposite of weak, of course, is strong. Both hands are too far round to the right. This encourages your hands to become too active through the shot, causing them to release the club and encourage the ball to spin to the left.

How to change

There’s no doubt the grip is the most difficult thing to change in your game. You just have to power through it. The easiest way to change your grip is to do it away from the golf course.

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Even if you leave a club by the chair you sit in at night, pick it up and go through your checkpoints, get comfortable with it in your hands, and try and do that as often as possible. That’ll get you more comfortable before you get on the golf course.