Golf Grip
The hand is a very delicate part of your body, made up of many muscles, bones, and nerves. The muscles that control and support the grip are located in the hands and forearms. Just like climbing sport, the grip for golf swing is not only hands, but also arms and shoulder girdle involved:
Performing a progressive warm-up that gradually builds from easy full-body activity from fingers to toes to specific moves.
Maintain a slight turning outward ( supination) in your elbows and let the arms hang on the shoulders.
Hold the club grip properly cooperating with arms and shoulders; as your fingers wrap up on the club grip, your arms and shoulders are also active: not only to adjust positions but also feel and fit the club weight into the body.
There are many ways to hold the club because everybody’s hands are different. If we check the grips of the golf pros, we will find that everyone is identified even though most of them are the Overlapping Grip or the Interlocking Grip.
For instance, a special grip that never really took off —- the Sarazen Grip which Gene Sarazen used to win 7 majors. He is one of the great five golfers to win the four majors at least once, now known as the Grand Slam. Sarazen’s interlocking grip with the left thumb wrapping the club. Or Jim Furyk, his swing is very unorthodox in its own right with his double overlap grip even more unorthodox.
I’m not recommending these kinds of grips, I just let you know you can have your own grip if you can let it fit your arms and body’s action to swing the club well. Never let somebody else put your fingers on the club by their ways, because they don’t know your feelings of holding the club, and the function of gripping is for holding the club well to fit body actions of golf swing, not for show. Of course you can listen to their advice of how and why, and figure out your own way.
Here no need to underline the importance of the golf grip because you can read books about it everywhere. I just want to describe how you can get your own way to hold the club comfortably and firmly, and fit your own grip to your wrists’ moving freely during the golf swing. So before gripping the club, setup well for golf swing and let the arms fall down naturally, and then make your elbows point to your hips or belt. Here is the key parts of the grip according to golf swing concepts of SGM:
The last three fingers wrap the grip first from the palm facing front, and then the base of the thumb (leading the forearm and index finger) wraps the grip along the opposite direction — left hand grip first and right hand follow. Don’t worry about the positions of the fingers, just hold the grip naturally like an umbrella.
Hands hold the grip mainly by their own muscles even though the forearm muscles are involved: more surface of hands on the club with proper pressure on it; by this way, the forearms should not be too tense. Whether you’re continuously wearing out your golf gloves or not is a good way to check if you are gripping the club too tight.
Hold the club comfortably and don’t let the grip move or slide in hands; the grip will acquire natural strength, allowing your hands and fingers to grasp the grip without feeling the need to struggle with the club handle.
A good grip will let the wrists be relaxed and have a max range of turning or bending around arms.
Left hand grip: hold grip with the last 3 fingers and the base of thumb, the index finger and the thumb just touch the grip comfortably; right hand grip: hold grip with middle two fingers and the base of thumb, the thumb just put the grip on the base of index finger softly.
Bear in mind: the index finger is with the thumb base to wrap the grip, not with the other three fingers; so let the index finger be away from the middle finger, for both hands.
As your last three fingers wrap up the grip, the elbow should be supinated a little to cooperate with the hands to grip; and you should keep this elbow’s position when the thumb base surrounds up in the opposite direction. The result is the elbows will point to the hips at the address or like Ben Hogan stated that “the elbows should be very close together with the ‘pits’ facing upward”.
If you can grip the club well before starting the golf swing, your hands will be easy during the swing, just like Ben Hogan said: “ The action of the arms is motivated by the movements of the body, and the hands consciously do nothing but maintain a firm grip on the club.”
Duplicating the model of fingers position ( or other shapes like Vs) can not make your grip correct or can work well, because your hands and fingers are different from others. Besides, the arm-wrist-hand mechanics dynamic structure must fit the body actions for good shot, and this dynamic structure will create a pretty grip shape:
Just like everybody’s swing is identified, the grip can not be the same with others; in other words, the grip should comply with the whole body’s swing action.
Feeling your grip can connect your arms with the club and fit into your body’s actions is more important.
Feeling you hold the weight of the club with hands, arms, shoulders and back muscles, not just hands. You will feel holding the club weight lighter and swinging the longer club easier.
