Ravenous Bugblatter Beast
Deep in thought
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- Sep 6, 2005
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I bought a copy of the book Friday evening, and damn, it's good reading. I've been kind of focusing on absorbing the first lesson, which is about gripping a club.
The first lesson of the book Ben Hogan's Five Lessons is all about gripping a golf club. In it, he explains the importance of a correct grip, why it's important and how a grip will affect a player's swing. If you have a poor grip on the club, you're going to have troubles with the club at the top of the backswing and the transition to the downswing, if the club isn't securely held, it will wiggle, or slip, and remove it from the square position you may have had at address. If you think about it, you'll realize the problem will increase in seriousness with the longer clubs, like the driver, the 3-wood, the 4-iron -- a small variance at the grip end will cause greater perturbation at the clubhead end. If you need to see what I mean, take a short pencil, grip it at the eraser end, wiggle it, and the point will move a tiny bit. Take a long pencil, grip it at the eraser, and wiggle it like the short pencil, the point will move a lot more.
I think that working on my grip helped me hit the 3-woods I hit on Sunday. I was often having problems with the woods because of the longer shafts, and a somewhat poor grip that got loose at transition. So I think improving my grip should help also with the driver problems I've been having lately, although I'm still having troubles with the swing too.
But there's a funny thing about gripping a club. It is a precise problem because while there are problems with a grip that can't hold the club securely, the other problem comes when people overcompensate and grip the club too hard, which results in muscular tension that'll destroy a fluid golf swing. It's that problem which causes Hogan to devote almost 18 pages to the grip, to teach us the importance of developing a secure yet relaxed grip.
Hogan describes a well-formed grip as one that catches the attention of the inner muscles of the arm, if you begin to feel the muscles on the outsides of the arms, you're overgripping and tension will interfere with your body making a relaxed and fluid swing.
The first lesson of the book Ben Hogan's Five Lessons is all about gripping a golf club. In it, he explains the importance of a correct grip, why it's important and how a grip will affect a player's swing. If you have a poor grip on the club, you're going to have troubles with the club at the top of the backswing and the transition to the downswing, if the club isn't securely held, it will wiggle, or slip, and remove it from the square position you may have had at address. If you think about it, you'll realize the problem will increase in seriousness with the longer clubs, like the driver, the 3-wood, the 4-iron -- a small variance at the grip end will cause greater perturbation at the clubhead end. If you need to see what I mean, take a short pencil, grip it at the eraser end, wiggle it, and the point will move a tiny bit. Take a long pencil, grip it at the eraser, and wiggle it like the short pencil, the point will move a lot more.
I think that working on my grip helped me hit the 3-woods I hit on Sunday. I was often having problems with the woods because of the longer shafts, and a somewhat poor grip that got loose at transition. So I think improving my grip should help also with the driver problems I've been having lately, although I'm still having troubles with the swing too.
But there's a funny thing about gripping a club. It is a precise problem because while there are problems with a grip that can't hold the club securely, the other problem comes when people overcompensate and grip the club too hard, which results in muscular tension that'll destroy a fluid golf swing. It's that problem which causes Hogan to devote almost 18 pages to the grip, to teach us the importance of developing a secure yet relaxed grip.
Hogan describes a well-formed grip as one that catches the attention of the inner muscles of the arm, if you begin to feel the muscles on the outsides of the arms, you're overgripping and tension will interfere with your body making a relaxed and fluid swing.