What Ben Crenshaw and Byron Nelson told Tiger Woods about gripping the golf club at the 1998 Masters dinner

Add as preferred source on Google

The way a golfer grips the golf club can be one of the big differences between them either being a success or failure at any level of the game.

We hear so much talk of weak and strong grips and given the amount of content available online nowadays, it’s easy to get mixed up.

Of course, there are pros and coaches out there who might be worth listening to that bit more.

Scottie Scheffler has given his advice out on the grip before, while there are countless other examples of the best players ramming home the fundamentals.

However, sharing an interesting story from Tiger Woods’ first Masters dinner, the Golf Channel’s Martin Hall has revealed how Woods was given conflicting information from two of the game’s greats.

The advice Tiger Woods got from Ben Crenshaw and Byron Nelson

If you go to a Masters dinner and more so, host one, you are going to be surrounded by some of the very best to ever hit a golf ball.

For Tiger Woods, that moment came in 1998 when he hosted his first dinner after dominating the field in 1997.

However, rather than it be all cosy, Martin Hall revealed the story of how Woods got caught up in conflicting opinions from Ben Crenshaw and Byron Nelson.

“I had the chance to watch Tiger Woods do a clinic a few years ago, there was maybe 15 people there and I happened to be one of them. And someone said to Tiger, ‘What do you think about grip pressure, should it be light?'”, he revealed.

“And Tiger said ‘I won the Masters in 1997 and of course therefore hosted the champions dinner in 1998. And we’re sitting having dinner and I’ve got Byron Nelson to one side and Ben Crenshaw on that side and for whatever reason, grip pressure comes up’.

“‘Ben Crenshaw says to me ‘You want to hold the club so lightly, that I can almost take it out of your hand and you want your hands to be so soft through the whole of the swing’. And no sooner had Crenshaw said that that Byron Nelson then goes to Tiger, ‘We will talk about this later’.

“And Nelson takes Tiger outside and puts him by the big tree near the clubhouse and he says to Tiger ‘You know this idea of holding the club lightly, like Snead says, I don’t agree with it at all. When I won 11 in a row I held the club firmly, my arms were structured and I didn’t hold the club lightly at all.”

• READ MORE: The man involved in major Augusta controversy might help LIV Golf finally cause the PGA Tour a real problem

How Tiger Woods stunned his fellow players at the 1997 Masters

We all remember – or we’ve all looked back at highlights at least – of Woods’ incredible win by 12 in 1997 at Augusta National.

It was one of the best displays of golf we’ve ever seen and in all likelihood, we’re not going to see anyone destroy the field like that at the Masters again.

But while us fans were impressed, so were his fellow players. Indeed, Colin Montgomerie was among those to be blown away by Woods.

“It was the easiest 65 I’ve ever seen,” Montgomerie said in 2017, via Golf Digest. “The second hole was frightening. I hit the drive, I had the honor, and I hit my drive to the brow of the hill on the second.

“Now this is the forward tees, remember. They had not moved the second tee 60 yards back by then, so I was at the brow of the hill, just about reaching with my 4-wood; that shows you how old it was. And he was down… he must have been 150 yards ahead of me and hit a 9-iron to the back.

“Now from then on, from that second hole onwards, I thought, hang on a minute. This is something extraordinary. The pin was located back left in that very narrow tongue of the green there and he flew the green with a 9-iron, and I came up my usual short right, down the bottom right there, and I was amazed at that.

“That was the one shot that really springs to mind. This is a game that I had not seen before, and none of us had.”