Skill Drills With Meredith: Smoother Rhythm With Proper Grip Pressure

Today I’m going to give you a tip on grip pressure. Now oftentimes when I’m instructing students, when I find a student is really swinging with their hands and arms, I usually tell them, “Hey, lighten up with your grip pressure.” I’m going to give you a simple drill to help you test the waters of different types of grip pressure for your clubs. Our goal is to have a grip pressure around six. But what I want you to do is I want you to experiment a little bit with grip pressure so you understand the differences between 10, a really strong grip pressure where you’re almost white-knuckling it, and a grip pressure that’s at a two where you feel as if, when you’re swinging, the club’s going to fly out of your hand.

What I want you to do is grab a club. I want you to go ahead and grip the club, and I want you to squeeze really hard. I want you to white-knuckle it. As you’re white-knuckling it, I want you to squeeze, nice and strong grip pressure, and swing. What you’re going to find is, when you are white-knuckling it and you’re gripping really, really strong, you’re going to swing really fast and you will be swinging more with your arms and hands.

Let’s take it down a notch. Now I want you to go to an eight, not quite as strong but strong. Give it a swing. You’ll probably still find that you had that urge and that tendency to use your hands and your arms. Now what I want you to do is I want you to go down to a two, just barely connected to that handle. I want you to hold it very light. Then I want you to try to swing with it, maintaining that throughout the swing. Now you notice I had swing slower because my grip pressure is lighter. By doing this drill you’re going to feel, by gripping it really tight, on a scale of one to 10 at a 10, you’re going to swing faster. By gripping it at two you’re going to swing slower. We need to find that happy medium. Let’s shoot for a six.

Now what I want you to do is go ahead and tee up a ball. I want you to go in between those two grip pressures. Right now I feel like I’m at about a six. The club’s not going to fly out of my hand but I’m definitely not white-knuckling it. By doing this drill you’re going to find really good tempo for your swing. Because the goal is, with a golf swing, biomechanically, you don’t want to lose your kinetic link. The golf swing, at the top of the swing, starts from ground up because your feet are connected to the ground. The power is running up. On the down swing, it starts with your hips, the kinetic link, and then it goes to your shoulders and then to your arms. Then the last thing is what? That club head at impact. That creates a good rhythm.

The next time you’re out practicing, try experimenting with grip pressure. Because the stronger you grip that club, the more you’re going to try to generate speed with your shoulders and arms. We don’t want to do that. Let’s let the club do the work for us. Take it down to about a six with your grip pressure and you’ll find that you’ll create a better rhythm and tempo for your golf swing.