Making up for a strong right hand grip

coozapalooza · April 13, 2008

Hello everyone. I've always been battling having a bad habit of a strong right hand grip on my clubs, with my right hand basically under the shaft. This is what originally felt comfortable to me and it stuck.

I recently got a set of three lessons, none of which went so well because I was having trouble keeping my right hand in a more correct position and the instructor started to get aggravated which kind of also pissed me off, because you'd think he'd be used to something like that and could help me through it instead of getting rude. He says, correctly, that when I have such a grip, it closes the clubface at impact and ends up resulting in some bad shots, often which happen in a row and then cause me to lose my composure and blow up on the round.

Point is, I highly doubt I can fix it any time soon. It's going to take some hard work and it won't happen over night, and I'll likely have to get worse before I can get any better, really. But right now is just the beginning of high school golf season and I can't afford to get worse now, I'd prefer to wait to fix it until the end of May, when the season ends.

What I'm asking you all is, is there a way for me to compensate for the strong right hand grip in the swing, and perhaps get the clubface square at impact? Right now it's really a gamble, I'll be swinging some days and it must just get square because I'm hitting good shots, but there are other days when it's all bad, and some where it's 50/50. But I don't know what I'm doing when I'm going well and hitting good shots, so it's kind of a crap shoot.

Thanks for any help guys.

Zach Heusser · April 13, 2008

You can try to play a shut face fade like Duval used to by rotating.

beachgrovejunior · April 13, 2008

can either change your grip, or keep it strong, have forearm rotation and rotate through it hard ala duval, johnson etc

HoganAfficianado · April 13, 2008

You have to feel like Zach Johnson and keep your body rotating all the way through.

coozapalooza · April 13, 2008

Thanks for the help guys. Can anyone be a little more specific in instruction on how to do all this?

Thanks.

coozapalooza · April 14, 2008

Any other tips for this please?

PM me if it's too expansive.

caligolfer · April 15, 2008

Try the shut face drill that Slicefixer has talked about extensively in some of his posts. Basically you take your normal address position and shut the face 15 or so yards, then grip the club and try to hit a fade with it. what will happen is that your body will recognize that your face is shut and try to compensate by opening up both your body and clubface through impact, which will be in essence a hold on fade. Your shoulder should work more under the ball, and your hands will be very quiet in the shot, not excessively turning over. Paul Azinger does this to perfection in his normal swing, and he is a fantastic iron player. I personally have a fairly strong left hand grip ("V" of left hand pointing to right shoulder), but have the right hand a little more weak on the club ("V" of right hand pointing toward my chin or right ear). Perhaps if your left hand is strong then your right hand will not feel so weak on the club. Try that and see if it works.

P.S.- sorry about the Champions League last week...it wouldve been nice to see the two best English clubs playing together for the European Cup