Does Strong Grip = Pull?

[bdcrowe]

Let's review. He is pulling the ball. That is a combination of an out-in path and a closed club face.

A stronger grip tends to promote a closed clubface, so if he made the same swing with a weaker grip, what would he have? A slice\fade.

That was my point. To be more explicit, my point is that yes and no, a strong grip does/does not = a pull. It contributes in this case.

Changing alignment will not fix the out-in path. He may weaken his grip and get a Hoganesque fade. I don't know without seeing his swing. But the grip is one part of his pull.

Hairs successfully split.

 

[Eracer]

turn a slice into a pull? Not necessarily. Why? Because there is more than one type of slice. Also we have not mentioned how much stronger the new grip was made.

Types of slice: Pulled slice, pushed slice, ball that starts out down the middle and then slices. This latter one was neither pulled nor pushed.

If we begin to rotate the grip to the right (making it "stronger"), slice curvature will begin to diminish, provided everything else remains constant (a big "if"). If the grip gets strong enough, we will have a closed club face at impact. So if we are talking of a pulled slice, we will get to a straight pull, and then to a pulled hook.

Sincerely, Cypressperch

Don't forget the Ezra "pull fade draw punch knockdown 180-yard 9-iron":laugh:

 

[Pa Jayhawk]

turn a slice into a pull? Not necessarily. Why? Because there is more than one type of slice. Also we have not mentioned how much stronger the new grip was made.

Types of slice: Pulled slice, pushed slice, ball that starts out down the middle and then slices. This latter one was neither pulled nor pushed.

If we begin to rotate the grip to the right (making it "stronger"), slice curvature will begin to diminish, provided everything else remains constant (a big "if"). If the grip gets strong enough, we will have a closed club face at impact. So if we are talking of a pulled slice, we will get to a straight pull, and then to a pulled hook.

Sincerely, Cypressperch

Very good point, and in strong relation to what I mentioned earlier. If the ball is starting left, it almost certainly could turn a slice into a pull. But the ball is starting left because of the swing path and not the grip. When I started, my slice started straight then sliced. Although there are usually more than one way to skin a cat. Since I knew much less about the physics of the game, for me taking a stronger grip was the first choice and could have likely made my ball go straight, although taking a stronger grip only led to frustration. I had a good grip already. My problem was not releasing through impact. When I fixed that problem it did go straight. In my case, taking a stronger and stronger grip and manipulating the clubface that way would occasionally lead to a straight ball, just as much as it would lead to a duck hook when the face was too closed. Much harder to diagnose when your simple grip change now gives you 3 equally different shots to diagnose.

I guess it goes back to the key of being able to diagnose the cause. Although the OP did not seem to be doing this to fix a problem, but instead because it was more comfortable. Important to note that it is not also as simple as grip and swing plane. More notably swing plane and relation of the club face to that plane. Having a good grip could lead to just about any shot because of other flaws in your swing. Another reason I refer back to Hogans book every year. While I do not do it word for word, it certainly gives me a foundation to refer back too so that I can eliminate my grip as one of the many causes when my shots begin to have a mind of their own.

 

[cypressperch]

Man, this one can go on forever! The obvious

reason is that we are discussing the subject of golf ball flight and what determines it. We started with a pulled shot, and it was a straight pull. That ball flight can only be produced with an outside to in clubhead path. The straightness of this pulled shot can only be achieved if the club face is square to the line the clubhead is traveling at impact. Does the grip have to be strong to achieve that squareness at contact? No, because as was just said, there are other factors at work in a golf swing that could produce squareness at impact other than grip. One obvious one is the length of the back-swing. If you had a pulled slice and lengthened your back-swing, the club face would have more time to close so that it could be square at impact, and this could happen with no change of grip.

It is interesting that Dave suggested working on the pulled shot by working on getting all the lines correct at the set up. That is about as Hoganesque as you can get. Hogan talked a lot about grip, but he advised against using grip modification as a way of changing shot shape, especially for those new to golf. That keeps grip as being one thing that will be kept constant as your swing is developed which is important because if you are constantly changing your fundamentals, you will not develop.

It has been said that the ball knows only clubhead path and club face position. Well, it certainly knows those two, but there are two others: Clubhead speed and angle of attack. Changing either of these two ingredients will certainly have an impact on ball flight.

It has been said that changing alinement will not correct a wrong clubhead path. Generally speaking, it is actually how you position your body that does determine clubhead path. At the very least, it is a major, and perhaps the major contributing factor that determines clubhead path. True, you can create an incorrect clubhead path (lets assume we are trying to hit the ball straight in this case) with an ideal alinement, but certainly that ideal alinement gives us the best chance of creating a good clubhead path.

If ball flight is determined by clubhead path, club face position at impact, angle of attack, and clubhead speed, do posture, ball position, tempo, muscle flexibility, size of grip, type of shaft, ball used, visualization, swing concept, and a godzillian other factors have any influence? Yes, they do. We play a difficult game when we decide that we want to play it as well as we can. All of these things interact. Physical and other differences between golfers make it to where, at times, one method may work for one person but not the next. We seek answers, but good answers for one person may not work for the next.

So how do we solve this problem? You can start by simplifying this complex game as best you can. You can be as systematic as you can because you will be spinning your wheels with a haphazzard approach. You have to study. You have to "dig your game out of the dirt" with focused, purposeful practice and play. It is great if you have a golfing partner to practice with because another set of eyes can be very helpful at spotting things. If that other person is a good teaching pro, you will attain optimum results. If that teaching pro is not truly concerned about your development, you will not receive a fair return for your investment. There are so many things involved, so you try to learn things one at a time starting with the fundamentals: grip, alinement, posture, tempo, etc. You keep a record of what you have studied and how well you have done. You have to find time to review stuff you have learned as you go about learning new stuff. You do have to pay close attention to detail. You have to have a sense of humor and truly love this game. We do not know how many days of life we will be granted so when we choose to spend a lot of those days with golf, we better love the game or we are being complete fools. Actually, that may be one of the main requirements.:laugh:

Sincerely, Cypressperch

 

[dave.]

"Lets review. He is pulling the ball. That is a combination of an out-in path and a closed club face"

This is incorrect. The face is closed to the TARGET line, but not necessarily the swing path. If it was, and the strong grip could cause it, he would decribe a double cross, ie a pull hook.

The strong grip is NOT contributing to the pull. The reasons for a pull are several, and its a pro he needs to see because its difficult to analyse on the web. For mere mortals like us golf is a game of straight lines and if its a pull with everything square then he is coming over the top and the strong grip is stopping the ball from slicing, at a guess.

 

[bdcrowe]

Er... Closed to the target line was my point. What else are we worried about? And open to the target line with the same swing path is a fade/slice.

That was all I was trying to say.

And, I agree that he needs someone to look at his swing moreso than any of us diagnosing him.

 

[cypressperch]

Several people seem to be reading this thread

perhaps seeing some of their own problems in the discussion. We have a person who hits straight pulls because of an outside-to-in clubhead path. That is the same path that produces a pulled slice, an even more common shot ailment than a straight pull.

Dave says we have to have a pro check this out, but he then gives us an educated guess about the situation which is probably accurate. I have never said that we should not see a good teaching pro when we have problems, but I will say that it is satisfying to solve problems without such help all the time. John Jacobs after talking about "geometry of golf" in THE GOLF SWING SIMPLIFIED says that he can give a person a golf lesson over the phone once that person has given him the ball flight involved. Dave just came close to doing that. I can do it. I am sure several on this forum can do it. You play golf fifty years spending countless hours hitting and studying shots, you are going to develop that ability.

Out-side-to-in clubhead paths almost invariably involve coming over the top. One of the most common causes of that is incorrect alinement. The most common problem of alinement is aiming to the right of the intended target. This happens automatically when a person puts the club face square to the target and then lines the feet up on that target too. This is not the correct "parallel left" alinement that we need. It is not the railroad track alinement in which the top rail is the target line and the bottom rail is the line our feet line up on (hopefully we also have hips, shoulders, eyes lined up parallel left as well as the feet.). Parallel lines do not intersect, but our target line and toe line will intersect when they are lined up at the same target. As I said earlier, body alinement is a major determining factor for clubhead path. Lining up the feet and the club face at the same target will automatically produce a clubhead path that will be outside the target line and force you to come from the outside back in to make contact with the ball. (Assuming we are trying to hit the ball straight at the target.)

Our left side (for the right hander) is sort of in the way, and this will make it difficult to release the club through the ball (PA Jay?). When most people fight through this blockage, they cannot close the club face and they slice. Some get the club face square and get a pull. Some will straighten out the right leg and pivot around it as a way to get back to the ball, and they will usually pull or slice too. When they manage to hit a straight shot the power comes almost solely from the arm-swing alone.

Some will swing the club right on out to the right and get pushes, pushed slices, and perhaps a pushed hook or draw. The last of these shots is often seized upon because it is a pretty useable shot that can involve good distance.

So a good lesson for someone with any problem from a pull to a push would be to work on your alinement using the railroad track image as your guide. When you can get the ball going straight at the target immediately after impact, your alinement is getting to where it should be. If there is curvature to the right or left after an initially straight beginning of ball flight, fine tune your grip. Slice? Rotate grip to the right a bit (stronger FOR YOU). Hook? Rotate grip to the left a bit (weaker FOR YOU). Here I am writing FOR YOU because there will be some out there insisting that the V's point directly at the right shoulder or some such point, and because of all sorts of differences, that much exactitude just does not exist. If a person goes out and tries these two things for a few practice sessions, there is a very good chance that progress will be made. Sometimes, very much progress.

Cypressperch







A number of things can go wrong from this

 

[dave.]

I agree I'm also doing my sons homework, so didn't have time to post in depth

I agree re John Jacobs. I only advised to see a pro because of the lack of any sort of detail that the poster has given us. He seemingly hasn't worked through his pull on the range, because if he had he could and would have posted what he has done and what happened to the ball. When someone does that I feel I can contribute, in this case there isn't any info to work on. He just wants to know if his strong grip is the cause, and it isn't, imho. We need more info to give a lesson.

Aftre 27 years I still put a piece of decking down, the type with straight lines, and then work for a few minutes squaring up. So does Tiger

 

[clint]

Aftre 27 years I still put a piece of decking down, the type with straight lines, and then work for a few minutes squaring up. So does Tiger

Could you go into greater detail on this?

Clint

 

[dave.]

Not a lot more detail to say. Tiger is on record as saying he spends a lot of his practice time working on basics, such as posture and alignment. So do I.

 

[West Coast Duffer]

Lots of great posts, I wish I had a video camera to post my swing but as mentioned I need to see a pro for some lessons and properly identify my faults.