by John Furgurson
My 15-year old son is the 12th man on his 11-man high school golf team. Every week he has to qualify to play in his upcoming JV tournament. It’s like his own personal Q-school, and he hasn’t made it yet.
Mostly because of his grip.
See, like most teenage golfers he blatantly ignored the sage advice of dear-old-dad and adopted a grip that’s too strong for his own good. On a good day he hits a low hook. On a bad day, he can’t get it airborne. His swinging motion is not bad, but the way he holds the club is severely limiting his ability to make good contact. Or hit it stiff.
So last week I decided we had to have “The Talk.”
The first challenge was choosing the appropriate time and place for “The Talk.” So on the way to practice, when I had a captive, un-plugged audience, I gently jumped in.
“Can I make one suggestion? I asked innocently.
“Dad, don’t even talk to me about my grip,” he blurted. ”There’s no way I can do that! No way! I’ll learn a new grip when you learn to speak three other languages.”
What’s spanish for “give me a break?” The prospect of learning a new grip was so overwhelming to him, I had no chance. The conversation was going nowhere.
If this is what your grip looks like, you'll have a hard time too.
Unfortunately, that’s how a lot of golfers are: Stubborn as a mule when it comes to changing the grip.
The grip is the most sacred element of the golf swing. Most guys will change everything BUT that… they’ll change the swing plane, the position at the top, the position of the right knee at impact, the first move back and the first move down and on and on.
They’ll do whatever they have to do to avoid changing the grip. Because somewhere deep inside, even if they’ve never tried it, they know the proper grip doesn’t feel right. It feels whimpy and weird and just plain wrong. It’s contrary to everything my son has ever known or learned.
After practice that day I gingerly tiptoed around the subject, just in case he’d had an ah-ha moment on the driving range.
“So Evan, tell me what your ball flight looked like today?” You still hitting ‘em low and left?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“So what do you think the club’s doing that would cause that?” (How’s that for subtle parenting skills?)
“It’s like this,” he said. He then showed me exactly what was happening by using a flattened hand to demonstrate a shut clubface.
“Exactly! The club’s shut way down, pointing left, so it’s really hard to get the ball up in the air, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“How do you think people compensate for that? I asked… “They lean back on the right foot and try to help it up in the air. That throws the balance is off, and it feels like you’re going to fall backwards.
He thinks about it for a minute, and says “Yeah.”
So there it was. My teenage son’s golfing angst in a nutshell. Intellectually, he understands the cause and effect of his bad shots. The only question left… what’s he going to do do about it?
Harvey Penick, once said, “if you have a bad grip, you don’t want a good swing. With a bad grip you have to make unattractive adjustments to hit the ball squarely.”
Evan can keep playing with a fundamentally flawed grip and a dozen different compensational moves, or he can just move his right hand a little to the left. He can do it the easy way, or the hard way.
Most kids choose the hard way. Andy Heinly, who coaches a very successful high school team, says at least half his players could use a slight shifting of the hands on the club.
“Kids play by feel, which is a good thing,” Heinly said. “But “feel” players have the hardest time when it comes to changing the grip. It takes longer to establish a comfortable new feel. “
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a weak grip for every kid. In fact, Evan is one of those kids who can benefit from a slightly strong grip. But not radically strong. Not what he has going now.
Recentlly, he’s managed to make a couple other adjustments that have helped him get the ball up. Not surprisingly, these small adjustments involve his set-up and ball position, both crucial fundamentals.
But for teenagers — who live off instant gratification – adjusting the ball position is easier and more immediately rewarding than changing the grip. A grip change takes patience and Hogan-like practice. A lot of kids just don’t want to go there.
“As a coach, if you keep telling them and telling them and telling them, a lot of kids will come to it themselves,” Heinly said. “But that strategy doesn’t work for parents. Forget-About-It!”
I’m not going to give up on the idea of changing Evan’s grip, but I’m not going to force the issue either. I’ll let him watch some of our videos and I’ll leave articles around for him. Hopefully, by the time he has kids of his own playing golf, he’ll realize that maybe, just maybe, his dad actually did know a thing or two. And his grip will be pleasingly neutral.
