u/AlexanderGolf

Wanted to share something because I see it literally every single week and most golfers have no idea they're doing it.

The fault: lifting the club with the hands and arms in the takeaway.

You can spot it when the hands move first, the right elbow folds early, and by the time the lead arm gets to parallel the club is already laid off or across the line. From there the entire downswing is a rescue mission. You either come over the top, flip through impact, or both.

The cause is usually that nobody's ever told them what should be moving in the first 30cm of the backswing.

The fix:

Until the hands pass the trail leg, the arms and hands do nothing independently. The takeaway is driven by the shoulders and lats. Same motion as a putting stroke, just bigger.

The cue I use most is "rock it like you're rocking a baby." Yeah I know it sounds soft but it gets people out of the lifting pattern almost immediately because it makes them connect the arms to the torso.

Two checkpoints to make you hit:

1. Past the trail leg. Club still outside the hands, not sucked behind
2. Lead arm parallel to the ground. Have the shaft at roughly 45 degrees, trail elbow folded, trail wrist with a slight cup

If you can get to those two positions, the rest of the swing tends to organise itself. The club is on plane, the body has stayed connected, and they actually have something to deliver from.

How I drill it:

1. 10 reps with pauses. Hands past leg, pause, check. Lead arm parallel, pause, check. Then fire
2. 10 reps hitting half shots from the parallel position only. No full swing. Just feel the strike from there
3. Then a few full swings trying to keep the same connected feel.

I know this sounds basic but the pause work is what makes it stick. Most amateurs swing so fast they never actually feel what their body is doing in the takeaway... they're just hoping it works out.

Happy to answer questions on this if anyone's working through the same thing. Also please don't roast me if I used too many bullet points here :D

This is the angle you actually see your hands from when you're stood over the ball. Realised every grip video I've ever watched was filmed from the opposite side, which probably explains why nobody's grip ever looks right when they try to copy it.

Three things the video lands on if you don't want to watch:

• Club in the palms = wrists rolling = clubface doing whatever it wants. Fingers fix this.
• Lead hand diagonal across the fingers. Trail hand pinches on top with the two middle fingers doing the work.
• Overlap over interlock. Interlock locks the hands together as one unit, which kills the opposing pressure that actually controls the face.

Feels weird for the first week. That's the point since the club is no longer free to wiggle around. Take a phone pic of the finished grip so you can rebuild it next session.

Curious if anyone else has tried POV recording their own swing through smart glasses. Game-changer for working out what you're actually doing vs. what you think you're doing.

It's not your swing. It's not your setup. It's not the £600 driver you panic-bought last Christmas.

It's the way your hands sit on the club.

The grip is the only thing connecting you to the tool you're using. The only thing. And 99% of golfers are holding it in the palms like they're trying to choke a baseball bat.

"But Mo Norman gripped it in the palms."

"But Bryson grips it in the palms."

Yeah. They're outliers. And it took them two million golf balls to make that grip work for them. You've hit maybe ten thousand in your life. You don't have the reps. You're not going to get the reps. Stop using two freaks of nature as the excuse for why your bad habit is fine.

So what's actually happening when you grip it in the palms?

The club face has nothing stopping it from rotating. So it does. It opens. It shuts. It does whatever it wants on the way down because your hands have given it permission to.

You're not controlling the club but desperately praying it cooperates.

The fix is the fingers. Both hands. Coming onto the grip from opposite sides. Working against each other.

Lead hand wants to close the face. Trail hand wants to open it.

Opposite forces locking the club face in place. The two hands fighting each other so the club can't rotate without serious effort. That's stabilization. That's control and what every player who actually hits straight shots is doing whether they realise it or not.

You also get a bonus... with the grip in the fingers, your wrists can actually hinge properly. That's where the whip comes from and where the speed lives.

You want straighter shots and more distance? Same grip change does both.

So why won't people do it?

Because it feels weird. Because you've held the club the same way for ten years. Because changing it means hitting it badly for a week while the hands learn something new.

Tough, but that's the price.

Spend one range session with one basket of balls, fifty or sixty shots, just half swings... and the only thing you focus on is getting the grip to feel normal. Don't care where the ball goes. Don't care how you strike it. Just hold the club correctly, over and over, until the new position stops feeling alien.

Then your strikes start improving. Then the ball starts going straighter. Then you can actually work on the rest of your swing without fighting the most basic thing in the bag.

Until you fix the grip, nothing else you do with your golf swing matters.

You can have the prettiest takeaway in your county. You can have a six-figure simulator setup at home. You can take a lesson every week for the rest of your life.

If your hands are wrong, the ball's going wrong.

Fix your grip!!!

Most amateur instruction is built for slicers.

But if you've played since you were a kid, chances are your miss is the other way.

Hook. Pull. Ball going left and you can't explain why.

So what's actually happening?

As a kid you had no speed. You could drive up off your right side, thrust forward, flip your hands through... and it didn't matter. The club face survived it.

Now you're faster. And every degree that club face is open or closed at impact gets amplified.

The harder you swing, the more spread you get on your shots.

Maybe you thought your hands were the culprit. It's probably your lower body sequence though.

The fix is simple but counterintuitive:

At the top of your backswing, push your right foot into the ground. Feel the knee come slightly forward over the toe. Then... STOP. Don't drive off it. Push back against the ground.

What that does is keep the hips from firing early and thrusting you forward. Your chest stays back. Your butt stays back. The club drops on plane.

Compression. Hands ahead. Square face through impact.

One drill. Three reps at a time. Build it until it's automatic.

If you're a better player tired of fighting a hook you can't explain, I think this is worth 10 minutes of your time at the range this week just to test stuff out :)