July 24th, 2009 | 
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Golf Grip: Strong, Neutral or Weak?
The Vardon grip? The interlock grip? The ten-finger or baseball grip? What is a strong grip? Does that mean I must hold the club tighter? There seems to be so much confusion about what constitutes a good, functional grip that I thought I would address a few issues pertaining to our one and only connection with the club.
I must first state that the grip is part of the “fundamentals’ of golf. Well, not really! While the grip and aim and set-up are important to your ability to hit a golf ball, the manner in which you grip the club is by no means fundamental - the grip is not integral. I have seen far too many golfers with great grips hit poor golf shots and vice versa….
The club should be held primarily in the fingers with the hands kept close together. I have no preference for the overlap, interlock or baseball type grips. Success has been had with all of them!
A strong grip is one where both hands are rotated away from the target; a weak grip is one where both hands are rotated toward the target and a neutral grip falls somewhere in between.
A Strong Grip
I am a big fan of a strong grip. It encourages the ball to go further and the hands to lead the club head in to impact. When that happens there is less of a tendency to flip the club face closed. If you are a hooker of the ball, believe it or not, but a stronger grip might just help you alleviate those dreaded left shots. It is imperative for a golfer with a strong grip to have quiet hands through impact. Quiet hands are ultimately more consistent than active hands. The vast majority of the greatest golfers of all time employed a strong grip including Patty Berg, the greatest woman golfer of all time, who had an exceedingly strong grip.
A Weak Grip
The grip pictured above is non functional grip. In this example the golfer is forced to flip their hands through impact in an effort to square the face – everything is based on timing. This grip essentially promotes active hands through impact – just what we should be trying not to do. There was only one truly great golfer who used a weak grip (and certainly not to the extent illustrated in this photo) – Ben Hogan. It is important to remember that Hogan struggled in the early part of his career with hooking the ball and a weak grip was one of the factors he implemented to overcome that tendency.
Try to get your grip to fit into a range of acceptability; a range within which it can function. And in my experience a strong grip is far more functional than a weak one.
Great advice on the grip here. If you are a hooker…. of the golf ball that is, a great drill to cure yourself of the dreaded disease is to practice hitting cuts (fades) with a really strong grip. In doing so, you will learn to use your body pivot correctly to release the club rather than relying on your hands and forearms to square the face through impact. Beleive it or not, to stop the ball from going left you must really rotate agressively to the left with both your body pivot and your arm swing, with a sense of holding the face off from flipping over through impact. When you can hit a slight power fade with a strong grip while really turning left you can swing hard without any fear of the ball going left!!!
Andrew,
Great explanation on why a stronger grip produces better golf shots. Recently, I have felt an active right hand on some shots…when this happens the shot goes left of my target. To fix this, I should go stronger with the left hand and weaker with the right?
Fired a 65 on Saturday…career low round…7 birdies, and hit 16 greens! Thanks for all your help!
Hi Jenn,
Thanks for commenting. As the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!” In this case I believe the ’strong’ grip to be strong and you believe it to be neutral. No problem there! We simply have a difference of opinion.
If this were the grip used by the majority of golfers and came to be regarded as “normal” then we both know, I think, that the golfing population would be substantially better.
I appreciate your input.
Andrew
The article was well written and informative.
The only area that may prove to be confusing to some is in regard to the position of the hands shown in the grip being described as strong. If the two hands were to be opened up completely I believe you would find both hands hands facing each other with the back of the left hand facing square and parallel to the target line. This would be an indication of more of a neutral grip then that of a strong one.
Jonathan,
Good round! When the right hand feels active, there is invariably something that is causing it to fire. In your case I think the right hand might be a little weak, too far toward the target. Try to rotate it away from the target a little more at address and that should serve to quiet it down a little.
Let me know.
Andrew