The Golf Grip – Pay Me Now, or Fuhggeddabouddit

You’ve heard the old maxim, ‘pay me now, or pay me later’.  It means if you choose to wait and pay later, you’re probably going to pay a lot more.  Well, that idea applies to your golf grip as well.  If you don’t learn the proper grip right at the beginning of your golfing life, you’re going to pay a very stiff price later on.  Not only are you going to hit thousands of bad shots like all beginners do, but, if you ever want to get better, you’ll have to correct your grip, and you’re going to find that incredibly difficult to do.

Almost all of the other ‘grips’ that one learns growing up playing various sports rely on a strong right or strong left hand.  Think baseball, tennis, hockey, lacrosse, ping pong.  They all use a ‘strong’ hand on the stick or racquet (with the exception of the two-handed tennis backhand).  Even in basketball, the shooter will use one hand to propel the ball and one hand to guide it.  And at first, this feels good.  It feels natural.

And it is natural.  You’re used to controlling objects with your strong hand: forks, pens, paintbrushes, swords, balls, paddles, etc.  And it’s only natural to bring this memory into the golf swing: your brain has been wired that way through trial and error.  And when you pick up the golf club, your brain says, ‘control it with your strong hand’.  Your muscles remember how the bat, stick or racquet felt when you swung it.  So, you grip it like that and swing it.

But therein lies the pitfall.  The golf grip is unlike any other.  It’s not natural.  It’s learned.  In golf there is no strong hand.  The hands work together, as equals.  Neither hand predominates.  They grip the club with equal strength and pressure.  They control the club face with equal strength and pressure.  And, they accelerate the swing with equal strength and pressure.  At no moment in the swing does one hand exert more effect on the club than the other.  The strong hand never takes over and guides or powers the club.  If one hand does take over, you’re dead.

Let’s learn it from this classic March 11th, 1957 edition of Sports Illustrated (click “show thumbnails” and go to the fourteenth page or eighth box of pages):

Read.  Practice.

 (If you’re having trouble viewing the document above please click here to visit the full page on SportsIllustrated.com)

About the author: 

Mailon Kent, author, is a former College Football All-American, Buffalo Bill, College Professor, and two time Emmy Award winning television director.  He currently resides in Montclair, NJ and plays most of his golf in Essex County, though recent travels have produced some interesting scorecards from Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Hawaii and Alabama.  Mr. Kent’s current objective is to play Winged Foot, a not very likely occurrence.

(Photo Credit)