I made a slight grip change recently that is solving a curvy shot problem that I have had for years. I thought it might be something you would want to try.

Something that has bothered me for a long time is that I can take my grip with a neutral-to-weak right hand, and when the shot goes drifting off to the left I find my right hand has turned neutral-to-strong, all by itself, at sometime during the swing.

I wondered if it was because my grip was too loose, letting my right hand rotate away from the left, carrying the clubface with it, without my even noticing it.

So I tried something. After I took my grip, I gently rotated my hands toward each other so they pressed together.

Voila! The right hand didn’t move when I swung. It was in the same place at the end of my swing as it was at address. Did this improve my ball-striking? You bet it did!

If you try it, you don’t want this pressure to be too hard, just hard enough so you know the right hand is always pressing leftward during the swing and thus not going to move out of position.

That’s all there is to it! This might be a good thing to try regardless of your ball flight.

There are lots of ways the clubhead can get out of square during the swing. This is a way of preventing a cause it might take you years to discover. Like it did me.

For years, I have had trouble with my clubface staying square in my backswing. It likes to close, and though I made great contact, the ball would careen to the left.

After trying everything I could think of to make it a habit to keep the clubface square, I thought, maybe it’s in my grip. Not whether I have a strong, neutral, or weak grip. but which kind of grip I use.

Everyone uses an overlapping grip by default. Something different would be a ten-finger grip.

It didn’t take much time to find out that I had much more control of the clubface with this grip, and it was easier to feel when the clubface was square as I took the club back, or whether it had closed.

And easier to keep the clubface square.

I’m hitting the ball much straighter now, and making more authoritative strikes.

There’s a piece in Harvey Penick’s blue book (p. 148) about Jimmy Demaret saying,

“In a reasonable swing, the right hand won’t take over from the left in a full-fingered grip. The two hands will work together. You get more power and better control.”

To which I say, yes, yes, and yes.

Give it a try. It’s not hard to get used to and you might be pleased with what you get.

A few months ago I wrote a post about light grip pressure, which I renamed soft grip pressure. I titled this post “light grip pressure” for SEO reasons, but I still mean “soft.”

But why have soft grip pressure? Because it gives you the clubhead speed you have coming to you.

If you hold the handle too tightly, you tense up your arms, shoulders, torso, and actually slow down the clubhead.

Try gripping a baseball tightly and throwing it as far as you can. Then grip it lightly and see. It goes a lot farther with number two.

Same thing with a golf club, especially your driver. The clubhead doesn’t have to hit the ball hard, but fast.

A soft grip sends the clubhead into the ball unrestrained. Free distance.

Everybody knows that you should hold a golf club lightly. As Harvey Penick said, Arnold Palmer does not hold the club lightly, but you are not Arnold Palmer.

But still, I don’t think you should of hold the club lightly.

Instead, I think you should hold the club softly. That word describes how the handle should press against the fleshly pads of your palm and your fingers when you enclose them around it. Softly.

I don’t really know what a light grip feels like. But I know when the handle feels soft in my hands, yet secure, and so do you. Use that kind of grip and see what you get.

It seems obvious that grip pressure refers to how firmly your fingers hold the handle. That is true, but the way to get the pressure right is not to think about your fingers.

Grip pressure includes how the the hands press against each other, namely how pocket in the palm of the right hand rests against the thumb of the left hand. Contact must be secure, but without a feeling of the hands pressing against each other here.

For left-handed golfers it is the pressure of the pocket of the left hand resting on the right thumb.

The key point is to maintain that amount of pressure at that spot during the entire swing. That is very easy to do, and has the effect of keeping your fingers from squeezing when they shouldn’t.

While you are learning how to do this, pay attention at the places where pressure can easily change, which are at takeaway, at the start of the forward swing, or as the hands approach impact.

The way you place your hands on the club directly affects the flight of your ball—left-to-right or right-to-left. But I’m not talking about weak grips and strong grips, though they do contribute. There are two points that are much more subtle, yet just as important, and which rarely get talked about.

Most books tell you to put your hands on the handle with the palms facing each other, parallel to each other (left photo, left hand only shown). That can, though, encourage right-to-left ball flight. The reason is that the lower hand can easily push the upper hand sideways, turning the upper hand over, which closes the clubface.

To prevent that, there’s a simple fix. Rotate your upper hand into the lower hand so that it acts something like a buttress (right photo). You end up with a neutral lower hand and a strong upper hand.

The lower hand can push against the upper hand, but because that hand is angled into the lower hand, it’s more difficult for the lower hand to turn the upper hand over. You’ll hit it straight, or maybe get a fade out of it.

The other point regards the location of the thumb on the lower hand. Ben Hogan advised having that thumb and the side of the hand tightly pressed against each other (left photo). Doing this firms up your wrist, which again inhibits the the lower hand from turning over. Goodbye draw, hello fade. This is what Hogan was trying to achieve.

If, though, you leave a gap between the thumb and the side of the hand (right photo), that loosens up the lower wrist, making it more possible for the lower hand to turn over, encouraging a draw flight. Goodbye fade, hello draw.

[Note: In the right-hand photo it looks like the right hand has rotated. It has not. The camera angle changed slightly.]

These two features, the rotation of the upper hand, and the position of the lower thumb, can be used separately or in tandem. You have to experiment to find what works for you.

Let me go over this again:

To promote a draw, (1) place the upper palm parallel to the lower palm, and/or (2) have a gap between the lower thumb and hand.

To promote a fade, (1) rotate the upper hand into the lower palm, and/or (2) rest the lower thumb against the hand.

If you’re at you wit’s end trying to cure unwanted curvature, give these a try.

There’s a grip feature that isn’t talked about very much. You hardly ever read about it in instruction books, maybe because the authors think it is an advanced technique. It might be.

But if you have been around the game for a while, you might have seen it, and you might want to try building it into your grip in an advantageous way.

Your right index finger is probably resting alongside the right middle finger when you hold the club, and doesn’t do much but sit there. If you play left-handed, I’m taking about your left index finger.

What I want you to try is separating that finger by placing it farther down on the handle. Put about one finger-width away from the middle finger so there is a gap between the two. That makes it what people call a trigger finger.

For you Golfing Machine nuts, it is Pressure Point #3.

You can stop there, but I went a step further. With my thumb, which is sitting on top of the handle, I press the handle against the middle bone in my index finger (medial phalange, if you must know). That clamps the handle between those two fingers and gives them a major role in guiding the club throughout the swing.

For Ben Hogan buffs, of which I am one, this is the exact opposite of what he said to do with these two fingers in his book Five Lessons, which he called swing wreckers. A more careful reading of the book reveals that he was opposed to the use of these two fingers for the average golfer, but they are used by advanced golfers for touch in striking the ball.

I see what he means. I find I have placed the club in the firm grasp of the two most sensitive fingers, the ones with which I, or all of us, do any kind of precision handwork. Given the precision that is required to hit a golf ball on the center of a square clubface, why wouldn’t I want to have these two fingers play a leading role?

When I take the club back, I take it back with these two fingers. That lets me bring the club up to the same place for the start of the forward much more often than not. During the forward swing, the pressure of these two fingers serves to prevent my right hand from turning over the left and hooking the ball.

The result is a stream of very straight shots, rather than draws that can get out of control without notice. I wish I had discovered this twenty years ago!

More specifically, I get more center hits with my driver, and more precision hits (ball first, ground second) with my irons.

What about short shots, that get hit with finesse stroke? Aren’t your right thumb and forefinger the name of the game when it comes to finesse?

What I’ve told you so far is how this is going for me. This might not work for you, or work in this form. I went through several variations of the trigger finger, to figure out just how to do it, before I hit upon this one, and it has taken some time to get to this place with it.

It’s just something you can play with that you might not have heard about. A few videos might be help you along.

Shawn Clement has a video that led me to the grasping concept, but he emphasizes power. And those are muscles in your forearm, not tendons.

One more, from the irrepressibly cute Aimee Cho, emphasizes the control aspect.

Two weeks ago I talked about the importance of having light grip pressure. I wanted to put up graphs comparing the grip pressure of a professional golfer with that of a mid-handicapper, but I couldn’t find them in time for publication.

Well, while prowling around the house a few days ago, looking for something else, I found the book that has the graphs.

So here they are.

The graphs are taken from a paper titled, Evaluation of Golf Club Control by Grip Pressure Measurement, by D.R. Budney and D.G. Bellow, reprinted in Science and Golf, A.J. Cochran, Ed., 1990.

Golfers swung a club with three transducers built into the grip to measure left hand pressure, right hand pressure, and pressure under the left thumb.

The first graph shows the grip pressure throughout the swing of a professional golfer. Notice that in the early stages of the swing, pressure at all places is quite light.

Pressure rose during the backswing in the left hand and thumb, and peaked in the right hand and left thumb during the downswing. Notice the drop in pressure in those two spots at impact.

Left hand pressure reached its peak just after impact.

The next graph is of an 11-handicap golfer. Pressure is greater from the very start. The patterns of peaks and drops occur at roughly the same places as for the professional golfer, but there is much more pressure at every point.

The amateur golfer is holding the club much tighter.

These graphs show that no matter what the grip pressure is at the start, it will tighten during the swing as the club moves faster and faster.

Keeping the pressure light at the start will minimize peak pressure, keeping as much tension as possible out of the hands and arms, leading to a more fluid and controlled golf swing.

After you get a general idea of how to swing a golf club, it becomes a matter of paying attention to the little things, that fine tuning which makes all the difference in the world.

One of the little things is grip pressure, which means having a light grip pressure.

In Jim Flick’s book, On Golf, he says in his section on grip pressure, “I cannot emphasize enough the importance of secure but light grip pressure. If you gain nothing else from this book, I hope you come away with respect and appreciation for correct grip pressure.”

The night before Greg Norman was to win his first British Open title, Jack Nicklaus, who was not in contention, advised Norman to keep an eye on his grip pressure the next day, since it can tighten up under the stress of competition. That’s all Nicklaus mentioned, because he knew that was the only thing he needed to say.

How light should your grip pressure be? It can be too light. Then the club would move around inside your hands during the swing. A slightly off-center hit could twist the clubface, costing you distance and direction.

Sam Snead’s advice to hold the club like a little bird isn’t good advice. I’ve held a wild sparrow in my hands, and that’s way too light for swinging a golf club.

The key is how firmly you hold the club at the start.

Sole a club, say a 6-iron, and take your grip with just enough pressure to pick up the club without it drooping in your hands.

The grip should feel like it presses gently into the pads on the inside of your fingers and palms.

Your hands will tighten a bit as you swing, but swing and practice just keeping them from tightening too much. This is a feel thing. When you practice, err on the side of too light a grip.

It’s easier to know you have to tighten up a bit more than to know you have to loosen it up a bit.

Also to be attended to is the condition of your grips. If they are worn smooth, or are dirty, they will slide around in your hands, causing you to hold on too tightly just to prevent that. Make sure they have a tacky feel.

Here’s the difference grip pressure makes for me.

When I hold the club too tightly, my right wrist gets tense and unable to move. That gets my hand jammed up against it, and the clubface closes on the backswing. The result is a hook with my irons, and a duck hook with my driver.

When my grip pressure is light, my wrist can bend the way it is supposed to on the way back, keeping the clubface square. The result is very straight ball flight.

If you lighten up your grip pressure, that little thing can have the affect of opening up your swing, and better shot-making.