Green Grass Golf Shop

Hello, friends. Welcome back into our series that still desperately needs a new name, Swing Tip Busters. I’m desperate for a new name. Someone please help. Anyway, today’s quick tip will focus around why are you topping the ball? Now, this may be a little different from the first video that we have on our channel. I don’t think you’ve seen this tip from any social media instructors. At least if you have, they should probably have their account deactivated. Maybe their golf club’s confiscated. Just take them out back and [lost footage…].

So the tip we’re going to bust today is actually one that you most often hear from your golf buddies. It’s that “wonderful” tip you lifted your head up after you topped the golf ball. Yeah, thanks Gary, why you go check and see how many squirrels you murdered with that last drive and leave me to it, yeah?  So let’s get this out of the way first. If you don’t lift your head up, you’re never going to be able to see where the ball is going.  You have to lift your head up to follow the ball. If you don’t lift your head up to follow the ball, you really restrict your range of motion. You’ve never seen a golfer on TV keep their head down through the entire swing, it looks ridiculous.  Maybe you lifted your chest up and your head up too early, maybe you didn’t stay down in a nice impact position, maintaining the angles you established at set up, but why did you do that?  Now, 99% of the players I see topping the ball and unable to stop it trace back to their grip, grip pressure, and how they release or don’t release the golf club.  Let me show you what I mean by that.

Just like all my in-person lessons, let’s start with the grip.  Just like my setup video, I have my reusable shopping bag here.  A few dozen balls and, you know, some training aids, just to add a little weight in there.  Now, this is something, by the way, if you’re working on your grip, you should keep in mind every time you pick something up with these handles like this.  These reusable shopping bags, also range buckets are really good, diaper bags. Always pick it up in the hand that’s on top of your grip.  It’s the left for the righties or right for the lefties.  Hold that down by your side and feel where that naturally wants to sit, where that hand naturally wants to hold that down by your side.  Memorize where that bag is naturally picked up with the hand on top.  Now if I bring that out in front where I hold my golf club, I can look down, I can see three knuckles.  That is where your grip should stay.  Now I’ll just put my club, my grip right on top of the handles, wrap my fingers around, my thumb over the top.  It should sit there just facing a little bit away from my target. when I bring my hand down in front, keep that hand down there.  When I look, I can see two or three knuckles without moving my head to see it better.  With my bottom hand, point my bottom palm toward towards my target, make sure my v’s created by my thumb and forefinger are pointed in the same direction.  Then wrap my fingers around in either the interlock or the overlap position, whichever is more comfortable for you, I overlap, and you’re good to go.  Now let me show you why the grip is in this position, alright, actually break down why the hands are in the position they’re in when they’re holding the golf club.  This works a lot better when you have a friend having them pull on the club while you have your grip set.  The reason why the grip is where it is and why we teach the grip this way is pretty simple.  The club is moving really fast throughout the swing, right?  Ideally, we are creating a lot of centrifugal force and speed with those arms and hands in the club as the downswing is a fraction of a second long.  When we’re swinging our arms like that as fast as we can, our body will lean and want to fall back onto its natural position.  So simply put, the grip is the way it is because that’s where the hands want to be with the arms extended in this spot.  With a proper grip we’re in the right spot no matter how much I stretch out my arms, how much my buddy pulls on that club, club face stays square.  When the grip is in what we call the weak position, what I see from most amateur newer golfers, especially ones fighting that slice, when we extend the club and I stretch our arms out, that club wants to open.  No wonder you can’t swear the club, you have to fight the natural rotation of your arms to keep that club square.  The same is true with the other way around we have a really strong grip it was really, really hard to stop from shutting when you have that grip in too strong a position.  It’s always going to want to return to this position when we have the arms extended.  So why not start them there, the club square, like we want to be at impact, right?

Now let’s talk grip pressure.  When the grip pressure is too tight and you’re strangling the club like I’ve seen so many of my students over the years, the forearms and the rest of your swing muscles tighten, the club doesn’t release properly throughout the impact zone here.  When the club doesn’t release properly, that pushes the chest and head up and back, doesn’t allow the weight to transfer to the front of our stance towards our target where it needs to be.  That is the biggest thing that doesn’t allow you to get down towards the golf ball.  That is where the tops come from.  That is the root cause for most golfers that the grip is either too tight, or it’s not in a position to allow the club to release properly. So let’s fix that.  The grip pressure is the hard one, right? This is a drill I came up with while I was writing the script. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but the only way I’ve ever heard it explained is to hold the grip like a wounded bird, right?  Because we’re all in animal control, just handling birds every day, right? (…soon as I’m done with these birds…) Or you need to hold it around a three or four out of ten, but everyone has a different understanding of what that means.  We need something concrete we can rely on to tell us how our body should feel throughout these motions.  This is my drill here.  What I’m going to do is take this 8.5 by 11 paper.  I’m going to roll that up hot dog style until it’s about the size of my golf grip.  Now the grip pressure that I want you to feel as you hold the club at setup is the same pressure you’re going to feel holding this paper in this position here.  Not so hard that it dents, but not so soft that it unrolls itself.  Now, this is a perfect feel of how the club should be held. This is that perfect three out of 10 that every instructor is always asking of you.  You should be holding the club with just enough pressure so it doesn’t fly out of your hands while you’re swinging it, just like you’re holding this piece of paper here.  Now, this is where most of your tops are coming from.  This is why you stand up or pick your head up.  Your grip is too tight.  You can’t release properly, carry your momentum through the target.  With nowhere else for that momentum to go, the ground pushes back, and then you’re up and you’re in jail.  The bottom of your fairway wood is in deep trouble of getting a nice fat dent.  That’s where our favorite tip comes from: “You lifted your head up,” “You didn’t stay down,”  That’s actually true, believe it or not. But there’s a reason for that, one your foursome you play with every Sunday isn’t telling you because they have no idea.  When you’re holding the club with a nice loose pressure like this, it frees the forearm muscles and the hands to release and the club to naturally rotate in its proper position.  When that happens, your chest is pulled down and through, club and arms are able to extend, you’re able to get down to the golf ball without any issues.  So the next time you top the ball, hopefully you’ll understand how and why and how to fix it. Hopefully play a whole lot better golf as a result.