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In this Golf Smart Insight, we're going to look at gripping the club based on

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how your

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arms hang.

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So I can remember growing up and reading in lots of different articles in Golf

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Magazine,

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Golf Digest, that to figure out what grip you should have, you should stand and

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look

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in the mirror and see how much of your hand, or the back of your hand you can

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see, and

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then try to recreate that same amount on the club.

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Well, it seems a little bit more like witchcraft than actual golf science.

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So for a place like Golf Smart Academy, we're not going to buy into that.

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Here's how this arm hang thing actually works within your body and why I don't

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think it's

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a great indicator for how you're going to grip the club.

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The more that you work on standing up straight or the more that your shoulders

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open up, you'll

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tend to have more of this anatomical neutral position, which would basically be

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my arm is

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hanging vertically down, my forearms are slightly in front of my body and my

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hands are

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slightly turned in, my fingers have a slight curl to them, they're not

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perfectly straight

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and they're not in the fist, kind of like so.

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Well the more that I round my body and kind of roll my shoulders forward, this

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is kind

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of a slouched posture, you'll tend to see that my arms hang in front.

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So if we went back to that, how much can you see, that pretty much means the

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better athletes

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who've got better posture should have a weaker grip even though because they're

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better athletes

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they can probably rotate their body harder.

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There are a number of these things that just don't quite make sense.

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So here's what I like to do with determining grip strength.

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First of all, I have a whole video on how I measure grip strength and how you

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can decide

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what to do with that, but I want to pose this thought that there's an intimate

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relationship

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between where your chest is pointed at impact and what your hands should be

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like on the club.

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The more that your body is going to be turned, side bent or facing the target,

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in general,

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that's going to get your hands further ahead of the golf ball which is going to

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cause the

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club face to open up compared to the path or rather delayed, it's closing.

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So the more that your hands are further out in front of your body and the more

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your body's

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facing the general direction of the target, you probably need a stronger grip

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otherwise

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you'd have to do that motor cycle move that I teach, just a ton, which is an

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option but

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it's something to consider.

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Whereas the more that my chest is facing the golf ball, the more that I'm going

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to have

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my hands kind of in front of my body and facing the golf ball.

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So the more that this right arm is going to be straight, well with that

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criteria, kind

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of the weaker grip I have is going to get that pointed in the general direction

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of the

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target.

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Unless I have a tremendous amount of lead shoulder kind of pull, it tends to

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work out

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better that way.

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So your grip is something that is probably going to evolve as you work on your

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golf game

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and the more that you get into this kind of 30 degree open body position, the

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more that

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you'll gravitate towards a neutral grip or a slightly strong grip in order to

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have the

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club face in the proper position.

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So anytime you hear something that's been around for a long time in golf, there

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's the

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chance that it has some some science behind it because a lot of them have

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worked out but

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always be critical that perhaps it was just, you know, some fleeting thought

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that a golf

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instructor had and it got passed on as fact and when we now put kind of

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measurement

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to it or technique to it, it just doesn't hold up.

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So for other smart approaches, check out the rest of our blogs as well as our

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videos

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inside the membership site here at GolfSmart Academy.