Grip questions?

[safetrip]

I have two questions about grip which happen to be on the position of thumbs. This is assuming right handed.

1) Where is your right thumb pointing. If you hold up the club in front of you, is right thumb running dead straight along the center of the shaft or run across to the left side of the shaft? I've seen two different instructions about this.

2) If you look at your left hand grip from the side, how long does the thumb extend down the shaft? Is it lower(closer to the club head) than the knuckle of the forefinger underneath it?

[kjb008]

You have to have your right thumb over the left side of the club. Having your thumb straight down the shaft makes it much easier for your hands to open up and causes you to hit the ball right. Take a club in your hand and try the two grips and twist your wrists, it will feel alot more difficult for your wrists to hinge open when your thumb is across the mid point of the grip.

[ControlJunkie]

The placement of the right thumb can vary, since it's supposed to be completely passive in your grip. What I mean by that is that you shouldnt be using it to apply any pressure. For your right hand grip, only the middle finger and ring finger should be used to actually hold the club. Personally, my right thumb is slightly left of center, and extends past my pointer finger, as opposed to my left thumb, which stays "shorter" than the pointer finger on my left hand. Does that make sense to you?

[golfbarefoot]

Here is a look at several touring pro grips...

http://www.golf.com/golf/gallery/art...9027-4,00.html

[safetrip]

Thanks for the Golf.com pictures. One picture's a lot better than thousand words. It's amazing how different it is between AK and KJ in terms of right thumb orientation. But than I saw that kind of divergence in different instruction books. The only consistent bullet point that I hear is that you want to have your right thumb and index finger passive.

I used to have my thumb run across the shaft like KJ but realized that it made my thumb much more active- it was obvious from the callus. So lately I changed it to look more like AK, thinking that it will fix that problem.

As for the left thumb, I realized while reading Hank Haney's book that I need to make my thumb running short of index finger since otherwise, the grip is too much in fingers not palm. So I was wondering how others (probably better players than me) were doing in that regard.