An often overlooked, but crucially important, aspect of golf is how you grip your club.
Everything else depends on holding the club correctly. Your takeaway, backswing, follow-through. Everything. All the work in the world can’t help you if you’re not holding the club correctly.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all issue. There are a number of ways to hold the club that suit different players. Even the pros aren’t aligned on a single method. But they all agree on its importance, and the grip is something Scottie Scheffler works on constantly.
Who better to learn from than the all-time leader in major wins, Jack Nicklaus? The “Golden Bear” has the fundamentals of golf down to a T, and constantly gives out golf tips to amateurs. He once revealed the easiest way for a golfer to grip the club, which should lead to massive improvement in their game.
What Jack Nicklaus says is the ‘easiest’ grip to learn
While Nicklaus acknowledged that there are many ways to hold a club that can lead to success, he named the interlocking grip as the easiest for amateurs to master.
Speaking to Golf Digest Magazine, he said, “My grip today is the one I started with- the interlocking grip, in which the little finger of the right hand and the forefinger of the left hand intertwine.
“I’ve nothing against either the overlapping grip or the ten-finger grip, but I really can’t understand why the interlocking grip isn’t more popular.
“It has, in my view, three big assets. First, it’s more natural than the overlapping grip, where the hooking of the small right finger over the knuckle of the left forefinger seems to be an artificial linage.
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“Second, the interlocking grip is the easiest to learn. Beginners find it much easier than the overlapping grip. Third, it automatically locks the hands together. You try pulling mine apart! However, the correct grip is the one that works best for you. You should experiment to discover which that is, then stick to it.”
He went on to say how to hold the club in your right hand, adding, “The right hand is primarily in the fingers for two reasons. First, a finger grip allows the right hand to whip the clubhead through the ball with a powerful swinging action. Imagine the way a baseball pitcher generates speed by grasping the ball near the end of his fingers.
“He’d never get that much speed if he held it in his palm. Gripping the club in the fingers of the right hand allows that hand to work in much the same way.”
Why Jack Nicklaus’ interlocking grip is effective
Nicklaus’ point about locking the hands together is an important one, and it’s worth a closer look.
The grip works because it creates a bridge between the two hands. Unlike the overlapping grip, which relies on friction between fingers to hold them together, locking the fingers weaves the hands into a single unit.
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This means the hands don’t fight each other at the top of the swing, causing the club face to open or close.
Unifying the hands like that can be a key factor in eliminating hooks and slices, so if you’re struggling with wayward misses, it could be worth a try.
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