Strong left hand grip- Can it be this easy?

[granitegolf]

Hi-

I have been taking lessons to try and improve my swing- One of the key things I have been working on is reducing my spin rates on my driver- I had a hard time keeping them under 3000 rpm and most often they were in the high threes.
I have also been trying to increase my lag and get the hands through the ball quicker to increase speed and impact conditions-

Today after some experimentation with my instructor we tried a strong left hand grip- Turning my left wrist closewise slightly and tucking my left thumb to the right of the shaft rather then on top(12 oclock) This seemed to improve my top position and also help with my lag-

After my lesson I went into the launch monitor and found my spin rates were way down- Wow! could it really be this easy- My launch angle had gone down a fair bit(8-10 degrees)which I'll have to work on but better yet my spin rates were 2300-2800 almost every swing- my swing speeds were still around 98-103 but my ball speed came up to around 150.

Well- thoughts?

Anybody else every had instant results like this- And who uses a fairly strong left hand grip- I know some good tour players like Freddy uses a strong left hand grip-

Cheers,

Dale

[Righty to Lefty]

Hi-

Basically you were manipulated the ball flight by changing how much the clubface the clubface can close through impact. Similar to opening or closing the clubface with wedges. Open it up and the ballflight is sky high because you added loft to the club, close or hood the club slightly and you can it will arrive with a mid to low ball flight because you are taking loft off. A stronger grip also will deloft the clubface a bit and that is why your launch dropped but for the spin rate, the only thing I can come up with is that you are catching the ball higher on the clubface while it is being delofted and thus the lower spin. I won't comment on the "working on my lag" statement but it is good that you got the results that you were looking for.

[TommyD69]

That IS all there is to it!

Just be careful. Making your left hand "a little" stronger is a good "one aspirin" fix... So DON'T take the whole bottle!

I have found that the strong left hand helped my swing path back to the ball immediately!!!! You will now be coming from the inside, and you will be hitting the ball FLUSH... with POWER!

Just don't over do it, or you will be fighting the HOOK just like Hogan did!

Besides Freddy, take a look at Zinger (Paul is a BIT extreme!)

ENJOY!!!!

[PiKapp23]

For many players the strong left-hand grip can definitely help with a few problems, but it can also create it's own problems. You have to be careful not to let your grip continue to get stronger (both left hand and right). I play with a strong left and neutral/slightly weak right hand grip. The problems I have usually come about when I've either not played in a while (which seldom happens) or I've played a lot. My hands want to slowly shift one way or the other and I don't notice it at first then I make it worse by trying to fix it. I had this happen at the beginning of this year (2008) and went from being a straight/slight draw driver to a player with a horrible hook/pull with driver. The more I tried fixing it the worse it got. When I took the time to go to the range and fix it that way I was finally able to figure out that I had shifted both hands a little too strong. I think that had happened the previous fall/winter when I was trying to hit strong draws on this course I played a lot during that time.

Maybe the most important factor in consistent golf (at least for me) is to make sure my grip is always the same (at least at beginning of day - sometimes an adjustment might be needed to accomodate a swing flaw that day).