HOW TIGHT SHOULD I GRIP THE GOLF CLUB?
PGA Professional Golf Coach Peter Knight shares a great lesson and drill on the role your hands should play in your golf swing. Your hands are your only connection point to the club you will use to hit the golf ball. It's fairly instinctive to believe that the hands should have a big role in guiding and adjusting the swing path. But somewhat surprisingly, we will usually have much better success if the hands play a very passive role in the golf swing.
Fingertip Drill
A great way to demonstrate just how passive the hands should be in the golf swing is by performing the fingertip drill. Hold your golf club with just the tips of your fingers and make a full swing. As Peter shares, the weight of the clubhead will quite naturally find its arc, with the fingertips acting as a fulcrum. The clubhead will slow at the top of the backswing and then begin to accelerate by gravity back down into the impact zone. This is precisely the feel that we should seek to create when properly gripping the club. We want to keep the hands quite relaxed and passive, allowing the wrists to stay loose and hinge and serve as a natural fulcrum. This is not to suggest that the hands do not play a role in steering the club face to square to the target line, but simply that for most golfers, this should be more passive.
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