You may think how you hold the club is important, but our study shows that how tightly you grip is the real difference-maker. Getty Images You may think how you hold the club is important. (Actually, it is.
) But our study shows that how tightly you wrap your mitts around the handle — or how lightly — is the real difference-maker. We tested a dozen Tour pros, slicers, hookers and high-handicappers using special pressure-recording grips and found that how hard you squeeze at different parts of the swing is what separates good shots from the ones you’d like to forget. Too tightly? Too lightly? The answers, simply, are meaningful to finding the middle of the fairway or the green or looking for that lost Titleist in the fescue.
This is not a story of grip it and rip it. Read on to nix your bugaboo ballflight once and for all. My team at the Golf Lab (thank you, Jonny Collins and Carson Hau) in Toronto analyzed the 7-iron swings of four different groups of golfers: 1) professionals, 2) slicers, 3) hookers and 4) high-handicappers, focusing solely on grip pressure at six key points in the swing.
To collect the data we employed the services of a launch monitor, GEARS Motion Capture, a SwingCatalyst 3D Motion Plate and — most important — SensorGrips installed on premium LA Golf shafts (above). We captured full swings and those used for high and low pitch shots from 50 yards. As you can tell from simply glancing at the base results below, good golfers squeeze the handle much .
