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This concept video is answering the member question, can't I just strengthen my grip?

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So many golfers who come into the ball with an overly open club face like this and

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they scoop patterned to close it, kind of like this, will invariably ask, can't I just

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strengthen my grip?

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I don't like feeling the motorcycle or the shaft rotation.

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I'm going to talk through a little bit of yes, you can just close the face with shaft

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rotation by changing your grip.

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But the problem is if you also struggle with low point control, the motorcycle does

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two helpful things for you.

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It closes the face and moves the low point forward.

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If you just change the grip, all you do is change the face, you don't really change the

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low point.

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So what can happen is if you strengthen your grip, but you don't have a pattern of shaft

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rotation coming into the ball, then what will tend to happen is with this strut

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stronger grip, you will tend to over close it because you'll also have the shaft fairly

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vertical and you'll start to hit some left shots.

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And so then you've got a few different options for holding off the left shot.

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The best option, which is where I say yes, you can if you do these other things, the best

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option is if I have a stronger grip, then all I have to do is keep my body rotating

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and leave the club more behind.

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The body rotation will change the low point, move it forward so I can hit the ball

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solidly and I don't necessarily have to do a whole lot of the motorcycle feeling because

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I'm going from extension to less extension, not getting all the way into a flexion.

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But unfortunately that's not what most golfers do.

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What most golfers do is one of two things.

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When they get the grip overly strong, they'll do one of two things.

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They'll either hold the face open by swinging the path a little bit more into out with

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the arms, more low to high kind of like this and now they start picking the ball.

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That swinging the arms in out helps prevent closing the club face too much but it moves

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the low point backward.

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I start hitting picky shots and what'll happen is if I start swinging hard, then the

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club will tend to pass and now I hit really kind of sweeping pull draws.

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It's a hard pattern to play.

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The other options, that's more of the arms swinging it or holding off the face.

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The other option is more what the body will do.

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In order to delay the closing of the club face or to prevent the club face closing,

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they'll tend to go into more early extension kind of like this.

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That can cause shanks off the hazele or it can cause best case scenario is some of the

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same low point control issues of trying to hold off the wrist.

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Basically both of them, I've rotated the face closed and then both of them are trying to hold

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the face open by pushing the shaft vertical like this as opposed to delaying the club face

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closing or holding it open by getting more body rotation.

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So if you just want to strengthen your grip and focus on getting body rotation while monitoring

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that the path doesn't get too far outside in, that can be a fine solution.

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But the reason I'm an advocate of the shaffer rotation and more the motorcycle and the good

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arm release mechanics is it does two things. It helps square the club face and it

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gets the low point forward with really good arm extension or really good arc width on the way through.

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And that combination seems to be what I see as one of the most common traits among elite ball

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strikers is that the club is moving away from their chest as they're going through impact.

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And in order to do that you need to have you need to be preventing the club from reaching

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its widest point and if the wrist is going more towards extension or this elbow is starting

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to bend sooner or the club is passing your sternum. That typically means that you've already

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reached your maximum and you're going to tend to struggle a little bit more with low point control.

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So you can just strengthen your grip if you also add body rotation but if you want the best

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long term solution working on better arm mechanics has a great combo effect that will have a bigger

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impact on your game than just strengthening your grip. So this would be with more of a neutral grip

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and good arm mechanics. Kind of like that.

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And then this would be my version of a stronger grip with more of a hold off or less motorcycle movement

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but more body rotation.