Golf Grip's Effect on Lag
Sorry, you need to be a member to access this video.
You Are Just Seconds Away - Become a member here!
Already a member? Log in now
As you've no doubt seen, my golf students have been picking up some serious distance through my unique driver fittings that combine instruction and technology to help golfers gain 30+ yards in one session. One of the things that gets attention during these sessions is the grip and how it affectes that amount of lag the student has in the downswing as well as the tension level during the transition. In this video, I discuss some of the key points about the left hand grip and how it affects lag and tension. It is critical to understand the biomechanics of the wrist joint and the bone structure allows you to create leverage for maximum power with minimal effort.
- In a weak grip, the V of left thumb & forefinger points off to the left
- A strong grip, with the thumb over the center line of the club, helps preserve lag
- Hold a club 90° to the ground to feel the difference - it is easy to hold the angle with a strong grip - the meaty part of your hand sits on top of the club
- Allow your hands to go very soft at the top of the swing to allow for downcock, which creates lag
- It may take a few weeks to become comfortable with a new grip, but downcock plus a proper grip will increase your driver distance
One of the things that we don't talk a lot about in the rotary swing is the use of the arms and hands.
Obviously, we're teaching to use the bigger muscles in the golf swing.
Let the arms and hands follow, but that doesn't mean the arms and hands do nothing.
In fact the opposite is true.
It should feel like they're doing nothing, Especially if you're accustomed to using your arms and hands a lot to generate power in the golf swing.
But in truth, they have a very important role to do.
What the ball in your driver series of how the hands and arms can be used properly to generate speed and power.
And that's what we're really looking for.
With the ball in your driver series, you're trying to hit the ball as far as absolutely possible with the driver.
It's the only club in the bag that doesn't have a speed limit.
So we're looking to hit this.
Anytime we pull this out, it's for strategy reason to hit the ball as far as we can.
So what we're going to talk about today is the grip and the hands at the top of the swing.
These are two critical components that dramatically impact your potential for speed.
The first thing we're going to do is just simply talk about the grip.
Now we've.
Obviously there's a video with the grip on the website, but a lot of people don't understand certain pieces of it or why.
It's important to work on the grip, and that's one of the things in my instruction.
That's one of the last things I want to change in a one-hour lesson, because it does take time to get comfortable with the grip.
It doesn't feel good right away for anyone.
So in most cases, changing the grip is a two or three week long process before you get comfortable with it.
But today I'm going to explain why it's worth it for, particularly for hitting the drive far.
So when we talk about the grip, one of the most common problems I see for the higher handicapped golfers is a grip that's too weak.
So, in other words, what we mean by that is if you look at the the left thumb on the grip, a lot of times it sits to the left of the the center line or the left of the logo, and that puts it in a weak position.
So we have the the V formed between the thumb and the finger, kind of pointing towards the left side of the head.
In actuality, what we want to do is get that thumb so that it sits on the right side of the center of the club.
What this allows us to do is get the meat of this hand this left hand this palm in a position where we can use the bones and muscles in the arm for leverage and why that's important is primarily in the downswing so that when we get to the point where the clubs about parallel to the ground and for many golfers that's way out here because they release the club too early but we're in this position if we have a stronger grip where this part of the hand sits on top of the club more it allows us to keep this 90 degree angle much longer into the downswing without any effort and that's the key here because if I weaken my grip to get my thumb over just on top of the center line or just to the left of it now I feel like I have to put some muscular effort into holding this club at a 90 degree angle and you can see it's actually kind of difficult unless I cut my wrist which is going to put the club face in a wide open position here so that's no good there so unless I cut my wrist the club's going to sit open or I'm not or I'm going to lose lag so for those of you who come down into impact and you complain that you're losing a lot of lag and so you're sitting and coming to the ball like this with no lag check your grip is your left hand in a position to where if you get it turned properly you can have a natural slight arch at this point in the swing club face is square and this makes it where I can hold this club here with very little muscular effort and that's what you're looking for because unless you want to slow your swing down and try and time getting these hands and forearms tight and trying to time the release here you want to do it with your hands being very soft so by doing this by just standing here with the club in a with my grip in the right position I can easily hold this 90 degree angle which is going to allow me to maintain lag coming down into the downswing much later than it would if my hand was in a weak position because in order for me to square the club coming down with that weaker grip I have to start to roll this left wrist bone under in order to square the face you can see that as I rotate my hand but arch my wrist this way it shuts the club face coming down what that's going to do is cause you to lose lag in order to square the club face because your wrist bone can't bend in that direction very much so if my wrist is in a position where it's very flat here I can only have so much lag now if I cut my wrist you can see that I can get a lot of wrist bend here and I can have a great deal of lag here simply by putting my wrist in that position but when you start to arch your wrist forward you start to lose the ability to cock that wrist up and down when you do that you're throwing away lag that's again a reason why the grip is so important so what you want to feel is that this meaty part of the hand sits on top of it so just grab a club while you're sitting here watching this video and experiment with it and see how little effort it takes to get your hand in that position to get this lag this 90 degree angle late into the downswing position versus having your hand in a very weak position you'll feel right away that it's much easier for you to maintain that lag and that's what we're looking for to get maximum speed with the driver now the second piece of this is once we have this proper grip is getting to the top of the swing and this is one of the things where I've literally had guys in one swing pick up seven or eight miles an hour club head speed so pay close attention to this because it's something that's super super important and very very simple when you get to the top of the swing what you want to feel is that your hands kind of go soft kind of relax now as they're going back they're going to do some work to set the club up on plane to swing back to a proper position they have to do some work but at the top what I see more often than not is guys who have their hands in such a rigid tight fashion that the club's the first thing to start the downswing instead of the lower body and core so when that happens they don't get a little bit of drop to increase the lag or we call this down cocking they actually start to throw the club from the top because their hands are tight and then they're starting to release early so they get into this position where we're flipping it we're getting into a chicken wing position etc so what you want to feel go out to the range and experiment because it's the range is the perfect place to miss golf shots it doesn't matter there's no consequences so go to the top of your swing and just focus on trying to feel that your hands just go almost completely limp just for the first split second of the downswing when your hands soften up you'll find that they'll whip their impact with a lot more speed so couple this with a proper grip when you get your hand in this position just let the club kind of relax let it fall let your hands be soft and then release it through and you should pick up a lot of club head speed so couple these two things together you should be hitting the driver further
Jesse
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jesse
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
M. (Certified RST Instructor)
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
M. (Certified RST Instructor)
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ron
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Timo
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
wolfgang
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Alan
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Konstantin
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Antonio
Chuck
GC
GC
GC
GC
GC
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
GC
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
GC
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Matt
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
GC
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hector
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Yuefeng
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Yuefeng
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Krishna
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Krishna
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
John
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Richard
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mary
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Mary
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Greg
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jay
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jay
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jay
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jay
Scott
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Loran
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
William
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Ronald
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Michael
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Loran
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Tony
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dane
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
robert
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
robert
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Norman
Jared (Certified RST Instructor)
Christian
Matthew
james (Certified RST Instructor)
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Mark
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Dennis
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Christopher
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
chris
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
James
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Bunsun
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Jim
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
ALPHAS
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
patrick14
Chris (Certified RST Instructor)
Tom