so i stabbed myself in the thumb...

and then played golf with a very sensitive right hand.  my grip was very light and every shot i hit was drawing...something i've never been able to do properly.

i played yesterday and today, sporting the draw pretty intensely.  luckily i can hit a fade easily anyway, so now i can really do both shots quite nicely.  the hardest thing for me so far has been hitting it straight!!

anyway, i thought it was very weird that stabbing myself is what was required to realize i was gripping too hard to accommodate a draw!  btw if you're wondering, i stabbed myself because i was cleaning my cooking knives by hand, and when i slid the sponge off of the knife and came back down my thumb landed exactly on the tip of the knife.  it punctured me quite deeply, but luckily not across.  had the wound gone across i probably wouldn't have been playing golf this weekend, and even worse, not had this epiphany

Oh, man...  I would really like to be able to hit a draw on demand, and I've got a nice set of Henkels knives down in the kitchen...  How deep?  Did it have to go to the bone?  Can you post pics?

Okay, just kidding.  But interesting result.  Was it Hogan that said you should hold the club like you were holding a bird?  I'm pretty sure it was someone of that era, and some wisdom doesn't change with age.

I believe it was Sam Snead who said to grip the club lightly and to treat it like a bird, then Hogan said something along the lines of it being a hawk. Don't quote me on it though. Really just all personal opinion, right now I'm actually working on increasing my grip pressure because my hands have a tendency to actually come off the club during the swing. Glad that you're seeing results with the change Tuff

I think it's to easy to grip it too lightly off advice like that. Lightly but firmly is something I've read that jack nicklaus does... hold it firmly so that it can't slip around, but loosely so that you aren't tensed up

Too loose or too tight is relative.  I've read you want to hold it tight enough that someone can't pull it out of your hand but not so tight you create tension throughout the rest of your arms.  You also want to feel the majority of the pressure in your pinky, ring finger and middle finger of your top hand