Great Tips To Improve Your Golf: 3. Hold It Tight

The next question is how tight to take this grip. Let it be known here and now that we do not go along with the knife-and-fork school of gripping—unless it should be a very dull knife operating on a tough piece of meat. In other words, we do not want a loose grip. Not even a firm grip. We want a tight grip.

We do not mean so tight that the muscles of the upper arms and shoulders are tied up with tension. By no means. But we do want those hands tight on the club. What, you will ask, about the wrists? If they are tight, won't the swing be stiff and wooden? And how will I get my wrist break?

Never mind about the wrists.

We have rarely seen anybody too stiff or too tight in swinging a golf club (except perhaps for frightened beginners), but we have seen thousands too loose.

The whole tendency in pupils is to take too light a grip. The loose grip leads into faults opening the hands at the top, collapsing the left wrist, over swinging, and so on.

The tight grip, though it may feel awkward for a while, acts as a brace against these various faults and makes the whole swinging action easier to perform correctly.

By a tight grip we also mean with practically all the fingers that are on the club. These would be the last three, principally, of the left hand and the first three of the right. Many players have a tendency to place the forefinger of the right hand, the one that hooks around the shaft just below the right thumb, very lightly on the club. Don't do it. Hook

this finger around the shaft firmly, so that the tip of it makes a definite contact with the tip of the thumb. If you don't, the club will be liable to drop, at the top of the swing, into the big V between the forefinger and thumb. This means a loss of control at the top, which must be regained as the club comes down.

So much for the grip a tight two knuckle overlap, to reduce it to capsule form.

Now, how do we stand up the ball? No great mystery is involved in this either, although certain points must be observed.

In the first place, we should take a position that enables us to swing the club back freely and to bring it down to the ball on an inside-out arc easily. For this the weight should be about equally divided between the feet. The knees must be slightly flexed, better too much than too little.

The body should be bent slightly from the waist but the shoulders should be rounded or hunched over. The head should be down, not to an exaggerated extent, but down rather than up. The right shoulder, of course, will be lower than the left, because the right hand is farther down on the, shaft than the left hand.