Why a good grip creates good angles

Golf Monthly Top 25 coach Keith Wood explains how a good grip creates good angles and helps everything else fall more naturally into place

Angles within the golf swing are, in principle, what makes it all work. Good grip creates good angles, which brings motion and freedom. So I would advocate a nice neutral grip because it offers full mobility in terms of wrist hinge and rotation, lining your wrists up properly and putting your hands in a very free position. Here's a great piece on how you grip a golf club.

I believe that a good grip creates good angles - the angles you will later need to generate, store and then release power at the right time in the golf swing

With a strong grip, where the left hand sits too much on top of the club and the right hand too much underneath, the capacity to hinge the club in any direction unfortunately becomes very limited.

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But golfers are ingenious creatures who will always find a way to hinge somehow, and with a strong grip they will invariably hinge the clubhead too much behind them on the way back, keeping the clubhead low to the ground.

If you reverse those hand positions with the left hand sitting too much underneath the club and the right hand too much on top, the weak grip also offers very limited hinge capacity. Weak grips typically send the club out in front of you as you take it away forcing you to then lift the club to attain any real height in your swing.

A good neutral grip helps to link everything together in the golf swing, not only generating the levers and angles that will allow you to take the club away properly, but also sequencing the arm swing to the body movement.

The creation, storage and release of angles play a key role in power generation, and all of that will flow much more readily from a good grip. Experiment with a neutral grip and see how much more easily everything else is then able to fall into place in your swing.