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.
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.
