Grip Pressure!

[bspeck]

I was browsing around the net on this topic and came across this forum thread linked here below.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/54965/grip-pressure

I find it interesting how the thought of amateurs gripping the club to tightly is in fact not gripping the club tight enough while keeping their wrists free. Pretty good read if you got time.

This is exactly what John is teaching us in Module 5. Keeping a solid, firm, and constant grip pressure while keeping the wrists oily and supple! Its a must!

Here is a quote from a user on that forum that I have linked above:

Sam Snead famously quipped that to grip the club with the proper amount of pressure, one should feel as if they’re holding onto a baby bird: grip the club firmly enough that it can’t fly away, but not so firmly that you crush the thing.

Less famously, Ben Hogan said “what Sam Snead didn’t tell you is that the baby bird is a hawk.”

If you had to guess whether grip pressures among amateur golfers were too tight or too loose, I imagine most people would guess they’re too tight. It’s common advice to “grip the club loosely” or “lightly” or “decrease grip pressure.”

If you guessed that most amateurs grip the club too tight, you couldn’t be more wrong. Most amateurs grip the club far too loosely.

Studies have been conducted on PGA Tour players and average amateurs. What they found was that the average PGA Tour player has the capacity to grip a club more than two times as firmly as the average amateur. So let’s say a PGA Tour player says he grips the club at a “3 or a 4” on a scale of 1-10. The average amateur is only capable of gripping the club to a 4 or a 5, so that makes his grip pressure anywhere from a 6 to a 10 if you extrapolate the scale! Everyone’s “3 to 4” is not the same. (There’s another study I remember vividly, but I’ll add that in a second comment.)

One thing amateurs do tend to get a bit “firm” with is in their wrists and forearms. What skilled golfers have learned to do is have relatively soft wrists, forearms, elbows, and biceps/triceps, and shoulders with a firm grip. The grip is primarily in the fingers and part of the palm muscles. The “firmness” stops at your wrist.

It’s tough to practice the sensation - frankly, a PGA Tour player develops grip strength largely by hitting a few thousand balls per week. But if you’d like, go ahead and grip a club. Grip it FIRMLY. Now move your arms, wrists, etc. about - waving the clubhead around in the air - and try to feel as loose in your arms, shoulders, and wrists as possible while still maintaining firm pressure on the grip.

Grip the club firmly, people. If you’re white knuckling it you may be in the minority and you may need to back off, but odds are you aren’t.

[lagpressure]

One of the main reasons to grip the club firmly is to add support for slightly off centered strikes. We want to minimize clubface rotation or deflection through impact on miss hits. Golf is not a game that scores you only on super pure flush shots. Sometimes flush shots end up past the pin leaving a more difficult downhill putt than a ball that was struck slightly off center that ends up cozy down right and below the hole. I feel I have to be a bit extra careful when I am really striking it top notch. A loose grip might help a player slot the club better, but if that grip remains loose, that player better strike it dead center flush. The other problem with a loose grip is that sometimes players will then tighten the grip pressure in the fingers on the way down which adds a huge timing element to the swing, and can change the spacial awareness sensation of the golf club at a most critical moment just prior to impact.

Maintaining a constant grip pressure throughout the swing is what I strive to train students here to accomplish.

[bspeck]

The other study I mentioned and remember vividly was this: grip pressure was monitored from setup to the the backswing, downswing, and follow-through. What researchers found was that pros tended to maintain a very steady grip pressure throughout the golf swing. Amateurs - and the worse the golfer the more this was true - tended to grip the club lightly at setup, increase pressure on the backswing, spiking pressure in transition at the top of the backswing, decreasing slightly from there, and then spiking again coming into impact before releasing pressure in the follow-through.

The advice in the article, IIRC, was to maintain a looser grip pressure throughout the swing, but when you compared the amount of pressure you’d see amateurs were well below pros and only briefly surpassed them at impact (because they had too little pressure, then too much as they tightened their grip in a millisecond). That advice was wrong if you look at the amount of pressure. The better advice: grip the club more firmly at setup, then maintain that pressure.

[bspeck]

@lagpressure

Maintaining a constant grip pressure throughout the swing is what I strive to train students here to accomplish.

Two Thumbs up on this one!!

My issue is still wanting to tighten up on the downswing and prior to impact. It has helped alot, to train myself to start with that tightening up feeling at setup and keep that constant! You be surprised how far you can hit the ball if you keep that constant pressure throughout! When I tighten up my grip anywhere during my swing…my wrists locks up and forearms starts to tense up. This is a huge swing wrecker for me. Amazingly my swing now feels like a short fast back and thru swing.

I can attest that a firmer grip helps on your mishits. I unfortunately still hit my good fair share of toe shots. Distances lacks a lot, but they all go relatively straight. I feel no twisting in the club head on my mishits. At least i have that going for me! hahah

[daleheck]

Nice Bspek!!..
This is a great light bulb for me!
Until I got to ABS I was always trying relax my grip… death to most shots and the timing element became impossible to master…
nowadays by gripping EXTRA FIRM, I’ll hit an iron approach or tee on a par 3… my miss is usually closer to the toe and thin…
and I"ll think : “crap that didn’t feel too good…” When I get to the ball, I’ll be on line with intended line , usually …
and often on the green or just a few steps short… with good chances to save par…
Definitely not the out come I used to have…

[yonkmania]

Great topic guys! Just look at Nick Price…he couldn’t waggle the club the way he does with a loose grip…imo he is presetting grip pressure and all the other pressures in his body before he starts his swing…his would be a good waggle to study and copy.

[RangeRat]

A firmer grip is better for most encounters the game brings forth in my opinion provided the wrists stay usable, but I can see how players dumping angles while swinging might prefer a softer hand upon the club.

Just about everything I do these days outside of golf brings an awareness taking me back to the game. While recently washing what little hair remains on a rat’s head, I became aware when closing my eyes what little pressure is needed to keep soap and pressurized water from finding their mark. Not sure why that awareness happened but I don’t fight those sessions when they do.

Not quite like Snead’s baby bird example but maybe pretty close as another example of pressure without getting into a qualitative discussion about it. I think mating surfaces may come into play too as I think about it- both hand flesh and rubber composite are soft and compressible, similar to both eyelid surfaces closing.

That’s the way I see one portion of the discussion, for now of course.

[RangeRat]

Adding on. Starting with a firm hold at address that allows for an even firmer hold coming out of P6 and coinciding with the orbit pull’s change of direction through the strike is when I sense the firmest hold upon the club.

Like boxing, our level of initial fist firmness increases dramatically inches from the strike as the torso works away and against that effort.

[Blades4life]

I have to be careful with grip pressure if I go too strong my wrist lock up, I have to really focus on cohesive body tension over grip pressure for some odd reason. If I maintain cohesive body tension my grip pressure seems to fall in line. But if I focus on grip pressure then how I interact with the ground goes to hell. I would say my grip pressure is a 5.0 on a scale from 1-10 and it use to be about a 3 at address. What I have noticed a great improvement in is my grip pressure stays constant now versus going from a 3 to 7 like it use to do. Now it pretty much goes from 5-6 during the entire swing. Much less of a jump which has diminished additional shaft manipulation in the transition now.

I do have clients that I spoke to about more grip pressure and it changed their swings immediately much more face control through the strike zone.