The Golf Grips – Best Ways To Hold Your Golf Club

By far one of the most underrated components to executing a good golf swing is how we grip our golf club. Sadly, most amateur golfers settle with a 10-finger/ baseball grip because it’s the most comfortable choice for starters. However, this blog post will show you why this grip is probably the worst grip you can go with out of all the golf grips out there.

Below, you’ll learn everything about the golf grips: how to grip the golf club, how to choose your grip style, the grip strength best for you, the proper amount of grip pressure, how to grip the putter, how to pick the right grip size, and so on. 

We’re going to dissect your golf grip and show you the best grip for you by the end of this post. 

Just a heads up, don’t worry if the grip feels uncomfortable. It takes a few range sessions to get used to any of the golf grips mentioned here, but rest assured, your golf club will not fly out of your hands! With that said, let’s start!

How to Grip the Golf Club

Before we start with the grip, we want to make sure your clubface is square. If we don’t do this, you’ll have an un-squared clubface even with the correct grip. To grip it correctly with a squared clubface, all you need is a wall and your golf club:

1. Stand perpendicular to a wall, your left ear is facing and parallel to the wall (if you’re right-handed).
2. Spread your feet apart to create a golf stance, and let the edge of your left foot touch the wall.
3. Take your golf club and place it flush with the ground: bottom edge parallel and resting on the ground.
4. Orient your clubface so that the leading edge of your club is parallel to the wall on your left.
5. Translating this to the golf course, if the flag is your target, make your leading edge perpendicular to the target line while keeping your golf stance, knees, hips, and shoulder parallel with your target line.

Awesome, you’ve aligned your club face! Now you’re ready to start your grip.

Starting With Your Left-Hand

Following off of the alignment drill, we’ll continue with your left-hand:

1. Open up your left-hand and place the golf club so that the butt of the golf grip runs either (check image below):
   1. From the base of your little finger all the way through to the base of your index finger.
   2. From the first point being the padded portion of your palm below your little finger all the way to the second point, which is the middle joint of your index finger.
2. Close your left-hand while leaving roughly an inch of space at the butt of the grip.
3. With your left thumb, rest it on the grip while pointing down at the clubhead.

Checkpoints for the correct left-hand placement:

• As you look down on your left-hand, there should be 2 knuckles visible from your index and middle finger. This makes a neutral left-hand grip.
• More than 2 knuckles, then your left-hand grip is too strong, less and your left-hand grip is too weak (we explain the different grip strengths below).

Now With Your Right-Hand

With the left-hand grip in check, time for your right-hand:

1. Take the fleshy part of your palm below your right thumb and rest it directly above your left thumb.
2. Your right thumb should be almost aligned with your left thumb. The only difference is to rest just the right half of your right thumb on the grip.
3. Close your right hand and decide if you’d go with the overlaping, interlocking, or 10-finger grip (covered in the next section).

Checkpoints for the correct right-hand placement:

• The tip of the ‘V’ shape made with your right thumb and index finger should point somewhere around your right ear, this will create a neutral position for your right-hand grip.
• If the tip of the ‘V’ is pointing more left of your chin, your right-hand is too strong. Pointing more left and it’s too weak.

The Golf Grips:

There are 3 types of golf grips for your golf clubs: the overlap, interlock, and the 10-finger (or baseball) grip. 

Before we lay out what these grips are, we advise all golfers to go with either the overlapping or interlocking grip.

1. Overlapping or ‘Vardon’ Grip: Your right pinky rests on top of the notch of the index finger and middle finger of your left hand.
   1. Pros: most common grips.
   2. Cons: none.

2. Interlocking Grip: Your right pinky rests in-between the index finger and middle finger of your left-hand while your left index finger rests in-between the pinky and ring finger of your right-hand, creating an interlock and bringing your hand’s closer together.
   1. Pros: ‘locks’ your fingers together to let both your hands work together, which may add some more power to your golf swing.
   2. Cons: none, just make sure not to interlock your fingers too deep.

3. 10-Finger or Baseball Grip: There is no overlap or interlocking here. All 10-fingers will be in contact with the golf grip.
   1. Pros: most comfortable for amateurs, easy to grip.
   2. Cons: no professional use this grip, harder to close the clubface at impact, may lead to dominant hand working over the other.

The 3 Types of Grip Strengths

There are 3 variants to grip strength: neutral, strong, and weak. Unlike grip types, your grip strength is simply the way your fingers and hands are aligned in respect to the center alignment of your grip while your clubface is squared to your target.

The neutral grip is the default grip strength and is also the grip strength we recommend all amateur golfers to start with. The neutral grip sounds exactly like what it is and is the in-between of the strong and weak grip where it is a combination of:

• A Neutral Left-Handed Grip: left-hand showing only 2 knuckles when you look down at your left-hand.
• A Neutral Right-Handed Grip: the tip of the ‘V’ shape made from the creases of your right thumb and right index finger points towards your right ear.
• Your right thumb is resting more or less on top of your left thumb, both aligned at the middle of the golf grip.

Golfers looking to cure a slice or favor a draw with their golf shots often go with a stronger grip. The strong grip is a combination of:

• A Strong Left-Hand Grip: left-hand showing less than 2 knuckles when you look down at your left-hand.
• A Strong Right-Hand Grip: the tip of the ‘V’ shape from your right thumb and right index finger points left of your right ear.

Golfers looking to cure a hook or favor a fade with their golf shots often go with a weaker grip (though golfers who go with a weak grip are rather rare). The weak grip is a combination of:

• A Weak Left-Hand Grip: left-hand showing more than 2 knuckles when you look down at your left-hand.
• A Weak Right-Hand Grip: the tip of the ‘V’ shape from your right thumb and right index finger points past your right ear.

Strong or Weak Grip Drill

Here’s a handy guide to get a stronger grip than neutral:

1. Once again, set up your club flush to the ground.
2. Rotate the club head roughly 45 degrees counterclockwise.
3. Without adjusting for the rotated club head, grip your golf grip how you normally would if the club head was in its neutral position.
4. Finally rotate clockwise until the club head is back to its neutral position.

To get a weaker grip from neutral, simply do the same drill but rotate the club head 45 degrees clockwise instead.

Not sure which grip strength is best for you? We went in detail to compare the strong vs. weak golf grip so make sure to check that post out!

The Perfect Grip Pressure

First off, you never want to be 100% firm with your grip pressure. Too much pressure on your grip leads to tension in your upper body ruining the smoothness of your golf swing.

A good feel for the right amount of grip pressure is with a wet towel. Imagine you’re about to twist a wet towel just to the point when the water is about to drip, that’s the pressure you want on your grips. 

How Grip Sizes May Effect Your Golf Swing

Not many golfers are aware that there are different grip sizes but there are actually five sizes: Junior, Undersize, Standard, Midsize, and Jumbo.

Depending on the size of your hand and the thickness of your glove, you may prefer a grip size that is different from Standard so that you’re able to reach the grip positions we mentioned above.

To get the best grip size for you, visit a local PGA golf store to have them measure your hand size so that they can recommend the right grip and sized glove for you.

Women and seniors often settle for an Undersized grip whereas most men will be surprised that a grip larger than Standard may improve the way they release their golf club!

How to Grip the Putter

For beginners, we’d recommend the reverse overlap grip which so happens to be the most common grip played in the PGA. 

Here’s a great video from Odyssey Golf breaking down the reverse overlap grip featuring David Leadbetter, a well-known PGA golf instructor.

How you grip your putter is very personal and will be different from how you grip your irons and woods. For instance, there are roughly 7 very different gripping styles for the putter on Tour. 

Left Handed vs Right Handed Golfer 

Everything we showed you so far is steps for a right-handed golfer. If you’re left-handed, simply follow the same steps mentioned above but swap hands for each step.

For example, the section about ‘how to grip with your ‘left-hand’ should be for your right-hand instead.

Final Thoughts and What’s Next

By now, you should’ve realized the significance your golf grip has on the quality of your golf swing. If you’re a complete newby to the sport, chances are, you’ve been holding your golf club with a baseball/ 10-finger grip this whole time. We hope that after reading this blog post, you’ll try swapping over to an overlap or interlock grip even if it feels somewhat awkward to hold at first. 

Finally, remember to only change to a stronger or weaker grip once you’ve noticed that you’re struggling to square the clubface through impact with a neutral grip. Feel free to try out the different grip strengths and see which feels best for you during your practice sessions!

If you’re looking for more articles like this one, check out our guide to playing golf and golf club distances posts now! On that note, if you’ve got any questions regarding this post, feel free to ask us!