What do you think of this golf grip for curing the "Hole in the glove"

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by kurisu

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Recreational Golfer

The bottom of the swing arc is a construction of the swing. It is not the swing itself. If you duff it/top it, changing your grip could well have everything to do with the correction, since when your grip is off, the swing becomes an exercise in compensating for that fact. Compensations are hard to groove.

Or to put it another way, consistent clean ball striking starts with a good grip.

I'm sorry but with the way you phrase it, I do not agree. If ALL good players on tour had the same grip, I would concur; but as you said above, some people have a very strong grip, some people have a weak grip, some people use a Vardon grip, others use interlocking and hit the ball great. Grip is not universal. Grip is not what "defines" fundamental parts of the swing. The major problem with high handicappers is not their grip. It's their swing path. Unless you grip the club in an uncomfortable way that doesn't allow your arms and wrists to move properly and unhindered, then, yeah, ok. But that clearly is so not the vast majority of the cases.

Put in another way: if there is no absolute "norm", what can you call good/bad? and if there is no norm, can you really say that clean ball striking starts with a good grip?

Nobody's body is wired the same. What my arms will do when I grip a certain way will not always apply to someone else. I have seen many people with the weirdest grip hit it cleaner and better than someone else gripping the club like in books from Mr. X or Mr Y. Why? because the bottom of their swing was further in front of the ball, and they came down from the inside.

If whatever grip you use allows you to come back square to the target path and face, the fundamental is: are you catching the ball or ground first? Are you really saying that I cannot have an inside-out path and slide forward enough to catch the ball clean/flush if I have what you consider an unorthodox or "bad" grip?

"If whatever grip you use . . . ".

That's a pretty important "if" right there.

[The Recreational Golfer]

Once again, it is true that the grip can be Vardon, interlock, or ten-finger; or turned right (strong) turned left (weak) or centered (neutral). But the first set of variations are how the particular player feels best in molding his or her hands into one unit. The second set of variations marry the grip to the swing.

There remain, though, core principles beyond those variations that all good grips feature, and in this important sense ALL professional golfers grip the club the same way.

- This from Cary Middlecoff's book, The Golf Swing :

"It is quite easy to vary the grip slightly without being aware of it, and just a slight variance can make a vast difference in how the shot comes off." p. 170

"So many players do not relate their bad shots to a basically bad grip, or to the slight but relevant changes in their grip from one shot to the next." p. 228

- Sam Snead, in an interview with Jim McLean:

"The grip is everything. Without a good grip, you can't play."

- Every golf instruction book you read starts out with the grip, and the instructions are all the same, and it's not, "Just do what feels comfortable, because this really isn't important."

- I took my 11-year-old grandson to get some lessons after two summers of knocking the ball around, and the first thing the pro did was correct his grip. He (the pro) told me that until he (my grandson) gets the grip right, going on to other things won't make much difference.

Now you asked me if "I cannot have an inside-out path and slide forward enough to catch the ball clean/flush if I have what you consider an unorthodox or "bad" grip." I say, and so will many others, that this could be the case. Your grip is a major factor in determining how you swing the club. Try taking a strong grip and swinging the club outside-in. Try taking a weak grip and swing the club inside out. It can be done, but it's an effort, and consistent clean/flush contact would be matter of luck.

Then there's the strong influence the grip has on clubface alignment. That "comfortable grip" if mismatched with the mechanics of your swing can force the clubface open or closed, and until you correct your grip, there's little you can do about it.

The grip is the starting point of good golf and its principles are non-negotiable if you want to become a good golfer. Remember, catching the ball clean/flush is not a fundamental. It is the goal of the golf swing, the result of performing swing fundamentals correctly, the grip of which is the first principle.

That said, I won't say categorically that you absolutely can't play well with any old grip, because anything is possible. But a bad grip makes it that much harder to hit the ball well, that much harder to get consistent, and causes you to make alterations to your swing in compensation that introduce problems of their own. A good grip leads to the path of least resistance.

Golf is hard enough already. Best to learn what a good grip is and practice with it until it's comfortable. Just sayin'.

[kurisu]

I said that I couldn't agree with the way you were phrasing it. I never said that the grip was not important.

I didn't mean it as "you can swing great with whatever grip you use" (if you grip the club like a broom, this is obviously limiting your range of motion), I'm saying that grip is not a fundamental of the golf swing, because there is a great variance between individuals who still play great. A "correct grip" gravitates towards certain positions, there is no denying it, but those positions are not precise enough to make them an absolute. Basic anatomical knowledge and common sense would be a better definition of a good golf grip. The human body is amazingly adaptive, and the "grip" is a living thing: it will "evolve" and what you think you feel as correct one day will slip either weak(er) or strong(er) if you do not consciously make sure that your positions are visually exactly the same each time.

Your question initially was "Which aspects of the swing are more important than the grip?". I replied "bottom of the arc". Yes, a very incorrect grip will most likely make things more difficult to square up. But I am sorry, I've never heard that a good grip would make you slide your hips forward at transition. You can have a "good grip" and duff it for all eternity. You can have a "good grip" and come over the top (I was a good example of this until I finally managed to transition properly). If there is nothing more important than the grip, then why am I still consciously sliding my hips forward on the downswing? All I am trying to say is, the grip is a very important (after all, it is your point of contact) but not _fundamental_ part of the golf swing, otherwise everybody would use the exact same grip. Perhaps we just disagree on semantics?

[The Recreational Golfer]

It's not semantics by any measure.

Should Ben Hogan's book have been titled, "Four Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf?"

[kurisu]

I read the book, it's a great read and a source of a lot of info. But just because someone says "this is it because this is how it works for me" doesn't mean the guy's absolutely right. **

I could point to "Swing like a Pro" by Ralph Mann, or the Stack and Tilt book.

Ralph Mann studied a wide range of pros and established an "average" of those pros on posture, grip, etc. -average is the key word here-

Plummer and Bennett did the same kind of study (including Hogan's, Snead's, Palmer's, etc. swings) and to them the grip varies too much to be a true fundamental.

Again, I never said that a good grip is not important… I am saying it is not something that you find as exactly the same in everyone, and thus cannot be said to be absolutely fundamental.

** p.s.: Nick Faldo thinks the ball flight starts on the path and curves on the face , and this "image" helps him produce the shots he wants. But is it really what happens? No. But just because he was #1 and a great player, does that make him right?

[iacas]

Originally Posted by The Recreational Golfer

It's not semantics by any measure.

Should Ben Hogan's book have been titled, "Four Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf?"

So if a golfer doesn't grip the club like Hogan taught them, they won't have success?

Kurisu is simply saying that all great players strike the ball first and the ground second, and they have a wide variety of grips. All poor players strike the ball poorly, and some have what you would consider a "great" grip.

When it comes down to it, the single biggest differentiator between a great golfer and a poor one is their ballstriking. That's it. And while the grip is a part of that, it's clearly not a universal truth.

P.S. We'll change the grip of maybe 10% of our students, and even then it's a minor change that takes about a minute, tops. 90% of the golfers we see have grips that are just fine - if they're bad, they're way, way, way down on the list of priorities because they're not that bad at all.

[The Recreational Golfer]

The original statements were (1) that if your grip is comfortable, it's fine, and (2) (the real howler) the grip isn't that important anyway. Then, on top of that, (3) the grip isn't a fundamental.

Like I say, Wow.

Does anyone think that everyone does something identically or it's not a fundamental? If so, there are no fundamentals.

Remember, where the club strikes the ground is an effect, not a cause, and the fundamentals are causes.

The point of bringing up Hogan's book is not to say that everyone has to grip the club like Hogan, but that the grip is a fundamental. I said it's the first fundamental, but I never said it's the only one.

[ND Fan]

I finally went to larger grips.  When I switch to from standard to mid size my gloves last 5 fold what they used to.  It's not always about the player but it usually is.

[colin007]

Originally Posted by The Recreational Golfer

The original statements were (1) that if your grip is comfortable, it's fine, and (2) (the real howler) the grip isn't that important anyway. Then, on top of that, (3) the grip isn't a fundamental.

Like I say, Wow.

Does anyone think that everyone does something identically or it's not a fundamental? If so, there are no fundamentals.

Remember, where the club strikes the ground is an effect, not a cause, and the fundamentals are causes.

The point of bringing up Hogan's book is not to say that everyone has to grip the club like Hogan, but that the grip is a fundamental. I said it's the first fundamental, but I never said it's the only one.

sure, if you want to call it a fundamental, go ahead.  but if you ranked the importance of grip in what determines where you strike the ground, then it would be towards the bottom.

[iacas]

TRC,

Originally Posted by The Recreational Golfer

The original statements were (1) that if your grip is comfortable, it's fine, and (2) (the real howler) the grip isn't that important anyway. Then, on top of that, (3) the grip isn't a fundamental.

Like I say, Wow.

Does anyone think that everyone does something identically or it's not a fundamental? If so, there are no fundamentals.

Remember, where the club strikes the ground is an effect, not a cause, and the fundamentals are causes.

The point of bringing up Hogan's book is not to say that everyone has to grip the club like Hogan, but that the grip is a fundamental. I said it's the first fundamental, but I never said it's the only one.

I'm going to disagree one more time.

The grip is not a "cause" of where you strike the ground. The single biggest determinant of where your low point is in the golf swing is where your handle is.

I can grip the club twenty different ways - and PGA Tour players have won major championships gripping the club 20 different ways - and strike the ball first, and then the ground. I can literally grip the club with only my left hand, or with two fingers on each hand, and strike the ground in front of the golf ball.

The grip is NOT what's holding the 24-handicapper back from breaking par. Unless he's grabbing the club halfway down the shaft for every shot, it's rarely in the top 10 and virtually never in the top 5. The grip is not "that important."

Apparently you've not seen the golfers I have, because I've seen "Tour-quality" grips on guys who hit the ground eight inches behind the golf ball. The things which are most important are striking the ground in front of the ball, hitting the ball with power, and controlling the curve on the golf ball.

Heck, it happened this weekend, and I promise, this guy's grip was not changed to get the picture on the left to turn into the picture on the right:

Is the grip "important"? Sure. Everyone has to hold onto the club somehow. Is it anywhere near as important as you seem to think? Not a chance.

Where do you think the grip fits in your list of things to fix to become a scratch golfer?

[The Recreational Golfer]

If I'm just starting out and want to be scratch, the grip would be the first on the list -- or hopefully my pro would make it first on the list, since I wouldn't know.

If I'm thinking scratch because I'm a 2 or something like that, then I already have the grip figured out and it's working with my swing, so it's other things that will get me down to 0.

But you should see the guy I play golf with every week, who has a grip so weak it would make Hogan blanch, and you can guess how badly he hits the ball, and I can see how much his swing is thrown out of whack by it. A few years ago he was a reasonably good once-a-week player, could threaten 80 on a good day, but his grip drifted left and now he's high 80s at best. Does he have other swing flaws? Yes, but they're the same ones he had when his grip was more neutral and he was hitting the ball better.

The guy in the photos looks like he had a decent grip already. I can guarantee that if some of the players I get matched up with came to see you for lessons, iacas, you would pounce on their grip first thing.

The grip is not the thing keeping the 24-handicap from breaking par, no, but it's one of the reasons why he's a 24.

As for touring pros being able to play with 20 grips, I'm not sure if you mean 20 pros each with a different grip or any pro can use one of twenty grips. But I'll bet you whichever it is, they don't screw around with their grip when they're competing. Any grip change is a considered decision to achieve a desired effect, and not just to show off that they can do it. Correct me if that's wrong.

I have no doubt that you can do what you say one-handed or four-fingered, but would you compete with grips like those? Do you go around Oakmont from the tips swinging with your left hand only?

So. Byron Nelson says in his book, Shape Your Swing the Modern Way , "While there are many factors that go into a good golf swing, the first thing you must learn is to place your hands on the club correctly. It is very difficult to be a good player if you don't have a good grip, yet I see few amateurs who hold the club properly." I'll take his word for it, since he has a certain amount of credibility with me.

My only point is that getting the grip right makes hitting good shots easier, and having a bad grip makes hitting good shots harder. It's not THE fundamental, but if you have a sloppy grip, everything else is just that much harder to get right.

BTW, I tried the grip that wears holes in gloves (the original point of this thread), the one that is in the palm of the left hand, and I couldn't keep the club from swishing around in my hand during the swing. If I had that grip, I hope someone would correct me.

Different thought, but it's on this "hitting the ground" business that keeps coming up. As I see it, striking the ground in the right spot is not the goal of the golf swing. The goal is to put the ball in the fairway off the tee, and put the ball on the green from the fairway. Now the way you do that is to make good contact, which not only means hitting the ground in the right spot (when the ball is on the ground), but also hitting the ball with the proper clubface angle, club path, and club trajectory. And the way you get all of contact points right is to have a good setup ( grip , stance, posture, and alignment), a backswing that puts the club in the right spot at the top, and a downswing that returns the club to the ball correctly.

Fire away. :)

[iacas]

TRC, you're continually missing the point, and since it's not really the topic here, I don't want to keep harping on it.

I'm saying only a couple of things:

• In diagnosing the average golfer's flaws and listing them in order of importance, the grip is well down on the list.
• The biggest differentiator between great golfers and poor golfers is the location of low point. The grip has almost nothing to do with that.

The grip is "important," but given the many other things involved in swinging a golf club and striking a golf ball, it's relatively unimportant.

[The Recreational Golfer]

Actually, I do get the points you're making. They're clear, easy to understand.

This is getting off the topic of this thread, but even though I do agree that the low point of the swing is critical, so is something like clubface angle, which the grip plays a large role in determining. What good does it do to get the low point right when the clubface is continually closed coming into the ball? etc.

I'll quit now.