Fix Low Point Issues Caused by a Strong Grip

A strong grip can help you avoid the slice, which is why many mid-handicap players naturally settle into it. But that same grip can create a different problem: inconsistent low point. If you tend to hit some shots fat, catch others thin, or struggle with a chicken-wing follow-through, the issue may not be your hands alone. More often, it is the relationship between your grip, your release, and how open your body is at impact. When those pieces do not match, you can control the face just enough to keep the ball in play, but solid contact becomes unreliable.

Why a Strong Grip Can Create Low Point Problems

With a strong grip, your hands are turned more to the right on the club. That setup tends to place the clubface in a position where it wants to close more easily during the release. That can be useful if you fight an open face and a slice, but it changes what your body has to do through impact.

To move the low point forward and strike the ball cleanly, you generally need the lead arm and wrist conditions to work in a way that delivers the club downward before it reaches the bottom of the arc. One important part of that is supination of the lead arm through impact. In simple terms, that release pattern helps the club keep moving forward so the bottom of the swing happens ahead of the ball rather than behind it.

Here is the catch: if you have a strong grip and then add that release pattern out in front of a body that is not open enough, the face can shut down too quickly. The ball may come off solid, but it wants to start well left. Your brain quickly learns that this feels dangerous, so it creates a compensation.

That compensation is often the very move that ruins your contact.

The Common Compensation: Chicken Wing and Face Hold-Off

If your body does not keep rotating open enough, but your grip is strong enough that the clubface wants to close, you will often protect against the hook by doing two things:

• Chicken-winging the lead arm through impact
• Holding off the clubface so it does not rotate shut

This can produce a shot that looks playable. In fact, many golfers with this pattern hit a soft draw or a ball that stays on the course often enough to think the motion is acceptable. But the strike pattern tells the real story.

When you chicken wing and hold the face off, the club tends to work more upward into the ball instead of driving forward and down through it. That makes the bottom of the arc harder to place consistently. The result is familiar:

• Fat shots when the low point stays too far back
• Thin shots when you pull the club up too early
• Inconsistent compression even on shots that curve nicely
• Larger misses under pressure because timing has to be perfect

So even though the clubface may be managed well enough to keep the ball from going wildly right or left, the contact quality remains unstable.

How Supination Helps Move Low Point Forward

If you want better low point control, you need to understand what the release is supposed to do. Supination of the lead arm is one of the motions that helps move the swing’s bottom forward. In contrast, if the lead arm stays more passive and you add more extension or a held-off motion, the low point tends to stay back.

That is why golfers who struggle with fat and thin contact often improve immediately when they learn a better release. The club starts striking the ball before the bottom of the arc instead of bottoming out too early.

But with a strong grip, this improvement can feel uncomfortable at first. The first few shots may be struck more solidly, yet fly dramatically left. That is not because the release is wrong. It is because the release is now doing its job, while the body position still belongs to the old pattern.

In other words, you have improved the low point piece without yet fixing the clubface-management piece.

Why Better Players with Strong Grips Look More Open at Impact

Tour players or high-level players can play very well with a strong grip, but they usually match it with a different impact alignments than the average amateur. Specifically, they tend to be much more open with the body at impact.

That body openness changes where the release happens relative to the chest. Instead of the clubface rolling closed out in front of you, the release happens more behind you as the body keeps turning. That allows the player to:

• Use supination to move low point forward
• Keep the clubface from shutting too much
• Power the swing more with body rotation and less with hand manipulation
• Maintain softer arms instead of forcing a hold-off

This is a key concept. A strong grip is not automatically a problem. It becomes a problem when your body motion does not match it.

Think of it like matching gears on a bicycle. A strong grip is one gear choice. An open body at impact is the matching gear that lets the system work smoothly. If you choose one without the other, the motion feels awkward and inefficient.

The Mismatch That Causes Fat and Thin Shots

The most common pattern is this:

1. You set up with a strong grip.
2. Your body does not get open enough by impact.
3. Your brain senses that a normal release will close the face too much.
4. You compensate by chicken-winging and holding the face off.
5. The club rises too early and the low point becomes inconsistent.

That is why many golfers in this category feel stuck. If they keep their old release, they can keep the ball from going left, but contact suffers. If they improve the release, they hit it more solidly but see the ball start left. So they never fully commit to the change, because the face and body are still out of sync.

This is also why swing advice can seem contradictory. One instructor may tell you to release the club more. Another may tell you to rotate harder. Another may suggest weakening the grip. In reality, all three may be addressing the same underlying mismatch from different angles.

How to Recognize This Pattern in Your Swing

If this issue fits you, there are a few signs that often show up together.

You have a strong grip and rarely slice

You may hit draws, overdraws, or pulls more often than weak fades. The face usually is not your problem in the “too open” sense.

You struggle with strike consistency

Your bad shots are often fat or thin rather than huge blocks to the right. Even your decent shots may not feel compressed.

You show a chicken wing through impact

Your lead arm bends and separates through the strike instead of extending naturally as the body rotates.

Your body does not look very open from down the line

On video, if you look at impact and cannot see much of your chest or back opening toward the target, that is a clue. Your body may be too square for the grip and release conditions you are using.

Two Main Ways to Fix the Pattern

If you have this strong-grip low-point problem, you generally have two paths. Neither is universally right. The best choice depends on your tendencies, flexibility, and what feels most realistic for your swing.

Option 1: Weaken the grip slightly

If you reduce the strength of your grip, the clubface will not want to close as aggressively during the release. That means you can use a better low-point-moving release without needing as much body openness to keep the face under control.

This option can help if:

• You are very handsy through impact
• You struggle with hooks or pulls when you try to improve contact
• You have limited mobility and cannot comfortably get very open
• You want a simpler face-to-path match

The tradeoff is that you must commit to the new face pattern. If you weaken the grip but keep making the same old hold-off move, you may start leaving the face too open.

Option 2: Keep the strong grip and get the body more open

If you prefer the strong grip, then your body motion has to support it. That means getting more open by impact so the release can happen without the face shutting down too quickly.

This option can help if:

• You like the feel of a strong grip
• You already draw the ball comfortably
• You are capable of rotating well through impact
• You want to keep the face stable without holding it off

With this pattern, your arms can stay softer and the club can feel more “left behind” as your body turns through. That often improves both contact and speed because you are no longer trying to save the face with a last-second arm action.

Why This Matters Beyond Just Contact

Low point control is not just about avoiding fat and thin shots. It affects nearly every part of ball striking:

• Distance control improves when strike quality is predictable
• Trajectory becomes more stable because you are not adding random loft at impact
• Curvature is easier to manage because you are not making emergency face corrections
• Pressure performance improves because the swing relies less on timing

This is why some golfers feel like they are “close” for years. They may have enough hand-eye coordination to make a strong grip and a chicken wing function on good days. But because the pattern depends on compensation, it tends to break down under pressure or when timing is slightly off.

How to Apply This Understanding in Practice

The most important step is to stop treating the chicken wing, the grip, and the contact issue as separate problems. They are often linked.

When you practice, use this sequence:

1. Check your grip and be honest about how strong it is.
2. Film your impact from down the line and see how open your body really is.
3. Notice your miss pattern: fat, thin, pull, soft draw, or hook.
4. Test a better release that includes more lead-arm supination and watch what the ball does.
5. Decide which match to improve: slightly weaker grip or more open body.

If a better release immediately improves strike but sends the ball left, that is useful information. It means your low point is improving, but your face and body relationship still needs attention. Do not assume the release is wrong just because the start line changed.

A good practice approach is to hit short shots first, focusing on one of these two feels:

• Weaker grip, same release
• Same strong grip, more open body through impact

Then watch for two things at once: the quality of contact and the starting direction of the ball. Your goal is not just to hit it solid, and not just to hit it straight. Your goal is to make those two outcomes happen together.

Once you understand that a strong grip requires a matching impact pattern, the whole issue becomes much clearer. The fat shots, thin strikes, and chicken wing are often not random flaws. They are connected responses to a clubface that your body is not organizing correctly. Fix the match, and your low point usually gets much easier to control.