Swing Basics: Left Hand Grip

Video Transcript

Benchmarking the basics, placing your hands on the club, a critical component because how you place your hands on the club means how the clubface comes back to the ball on a repetitive nature. Let's take a look at your left hand and how your hands go on there. First you will start with hinging over from your hip joints just a little bit. What you will notice is that both of your hands curve slightly inwards. Everyone’s hands do that to some degree, some a little more some a little bit less. Now how my arm curves inwards is a direct reflection of how my arm is in my socket. If I tug on my arm from my hand it stays in the same potion. What I want to do now is place the golf club in my hand in this neutral position. I am going to keep my hand in the same position, lower my club so that it goes down into my fingers and place my thumb to the right side of center in that neutral position. When I put the club back in front of the ball for some of you it might feel a little bit different because you are not used to doing that. But here is the big deal about this, because my hands are on the golf club in a neutral fashion for me, when I swing the golf club and I bring it right down to impact my left arm is going to return back to its neutral position, allowing the golf club to be delivered squarely to the ball. Everybody knows the grip is important and how you place your hands on the golf club, here is what most folks do. They know it is important so what they do before the club goes in the hand they will look, and what they will actually do when they are placing their hand on the club they will turn their hand inward like this. Now the hand is on the golf club in a completely different position. From here, as I swing my golf club and come back into neutral or impact how is my clubface, it is completely open and the ball is going to go way to the right. Now I have to do something funny in my swing with my right hand to compensate for that. I am definitely going to get a lack of distance on this shot because it is more of a glancing type strike. Let's review that. I am going to place my hands in a neutral position, my arm is just hanging. I am going to hold the club in my right hand and just gently place the club down into my fingers on my left hand making sure that the hand stays in this neutral position. Closing my hand on the club my hand should be just slightly to the right side of center. That is neutral for me. I will then put it right back here in front of the ball, that is your neutral position for you. It may be on top or a little bit more to the right, but that for you is going to be neutral. Doing this will help ensure that your quality of contact and your repetitiveness in that contact will be greatly enhanced. Good luck with this.

Laird Small
Pebble Beach Golf Academy
1700 17-Mile Drive
Pebble Beach, CA 93953
Tel: 831-622-8650

Laird Small is Director of The Pebble Beach Golf Academy and is listed as one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 Teachers and Golf Digest's #23 instructor in the world.

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