Interlocking Grip

March 1, 2015 6:09 pm

By Jon Woodroffe

How you connect the hands on the grip of the golf club is nowhere near as important as the position that those hands are placed on the club. There are generally 3 accepted ways of connecting the hands, the interlocking, the overlap and the split handed or as it is also called the Baseball grip.

The most popular has always seemed to be the interlocking grip which, although I use that myself, as does Rory and Tiger (that is the only time I will be in the same sentence as Rory and Tiger) I have found from experience that it is the biggest single cause of a slice. When people starting out are shown the “golf grip” by their mates, they always show them to link those fingers.

TIP-interlocking-grip-1
 

The problem is that when people link their fingers, they link them to the joints as in picture 1. This inevitably means that the golf club ends up resting along the base of the fingers of the left hand, a weak grip, which does not allow the forearms to rotate sufficiently through impact, causing the club face to be aiming right at impact, thus the slice is born straight away. If the person can link their fingers and still hold the club more in the fingers of their left hand, thus meaning that the fingers are not linked to the joints, then I have no problem with that way of connecting the hands.

TIP-interlocking-grip-2
 

But if you do slice, and you do use the interlocking grip, my advice is try, when you are next at the World of Golf range nearest to you, the overlapping grip. It will feel strange, and it will feel as if you have not got a firm grip on the club, but after all, you are not supposed to have a firm grip on the club. It should be in your fingers allowing your hands and wrists to work freely to add power and control the direction.

So try and let the little finger of your right hand rest either on the index finger of your left hand or in the gap formed between the index and second finger and see if you get more power and lose that slice.

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