Different grip for driver vs irons/wedges

[RPryor]

I've always had a strong grip. Lately I've been working hard to have a weaker grip. After many hours of practice, the grip on my irons/wedges seems to be in the right place and feels good (felt horrible at first). But no matter how hard I try and how many balls I hit, I can't get the grip on my driver to be as weak as my irons. It just feels so weird.

 

Anyone else have a different grip or even stroke for their driver?

[TeddytheGolfer]

Interlock with irons and wedges. Overlap with woods and driver. Interlock gives me control when I need it, and overlap for more of a distance type swing. Nothing wrong with it. Results have been great for me. Good Luck OP.

[gretch]

Different stance, different setup, different ball position and follow through.....same grip.

[jdl]

For full swings, no. Same grip. I will use a weaker grip on the wedges for shots around the green though.

[bluedot]

I can't imagine that playing full shots with different grips could be a good thing, with the only exception maybe being a recovery shot. I've read stuff by Tour pros where they talk about the amount of time and trouble that they go to with their grip because it wanders around a bit if you aren't careful.

 

I think the universal moment of truth in a golf swing is releasing the club, and to do that consistently with different grips would seem to require extraordinary athletic ability and timing. Under pressure, that is asking a lot of yourself.

 

You made the comment that the neutral grip feels "weird" with the driver. I'd expect that to be the club where the grip change seemed to have the most impact; it's the longest club with the highest swing speed; it's bound to feel different than the others. But it reminded me of my days as a high school basketball coach when I'd work with a player on a change in their shooting technique. No matter how bad it had been, and no matter how slight the change, their first reaction was almost always, "That feels weird!" By weird, of course, they really meant different (and correct!), but there was a LOT of muscle memory to overcome.

 

If you're like most players, you hit more drivers on the range than any other club in your bag (btw, there's nothing wrong with this!), at least with full swings, and you almost certainly hit more drivers in a normal round than any other club in the bag except the putter. It's no surprise that the driver feels the strangest and takes the longest to "convert".

[The Grifter]

I use a strong grip for driver and neutral for everything else.

[rangersgoalie]

Fred Funk won at least one regular tour event using a different grip (interlock/overlap) on his irons and woods

[bluedot]

Fred Funk won at least one regular tour event using a different grip (interlock/overlap) on his irons and woods

 

Reminds me of the story in The Little Red Book where Penick is trying to get a student to grip the club more lightly. The student tells Penick that Arnold Palmer grips the club really tightly, and Penick replies, "Yes, but you, sir, are NOT Arnold Palmer!" What a guy like Fred Funk can do may or may not mean anything to what a guy like me can do successfully. (I think Penick saying that if he ever had a student that he never wanted to teach again, that he would just change the student's grip might be instructive too.)

 

Also, as unusual as going back and forth from interlock to overlap would be, even for a Tour pro, it isn't the same thing as going from weaker to stronger. And in either case, if changing grips during a round was a great idea, a lot more of the pros would do it regularly, given that they have both the talent to do stuff like this AND the appropriate practice time. And yet they don't...

[Atrayn]

Pitching and chipping = putting grip

Irons = 3 knuckle strong

Driver = 1 knuckle neutral

[Jbarretta]

I have been weakening the lead hand with the driver  I've found that too strong a lead hand with driver lowers the launch as at impact when the face is shut to the target the top edge of the driver is ahead of the bottom edge   when you set the club on the ground the bottom edge is ahead of the top edge and that's the impact condition I'm going for.   I find it easier to accomplish with a weaker 1 knuckle lead hand 

[Ghostwedge]

My son (scratch player) uses the interlock grip on all full shots. For pitch and chip shots he uses a ten finger grip. His up and down pct. is really good.

[Justsomeguy]

Proof is in the pudding. If it works it's fine. If it doesn't it isn't.

I prefer to set up with a really closed face with my driver and woods, but off the deck my woods come out too low. It's fine with the driver bc the tee makes up for it. So what I've got to do with the fairways is set up a bit more open.

My irons have enough loft I can go either way, and have to guard against the hook with the closed setup.

Wedges my miss is a pull, so I'm often setting up right sided. I kinda have to warm up and find my middle for the day based on my release.

Super vague, I know, but..