Help. (Grip change headaches.)

…A couple of guys you might have heard of used the interlockingrip – Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.

The club still needs to be more in ther fingers, not the palm, so that’s good work there.

If the club is coming lose at the top of your swing – you’re probably overswinging – trying too hard to get to parallel without getting your shoulders fully turned. (I’m guessing that your left arm is touching your chest) Work on keeping the club in front of your chest – not behind the right shoulder. You’ll see the pros with the compact swings have a lot of extension and the club doesn’t get behind them.

watch guys like Woods, Anthony Kim, Villegas, Bubba Watson… They never overswing and rarely get to parallel – but they extend extend extend.

slow dow and smooth it out until you can consistently hit a hook. Stand a 30" piece of 2×4 on 2" side and tee up a ball to hit with a 5 or 6 iron where you have some clearance between the toe of the club and the 2×4. Set up to the ball and when you’re comfortable, pick the club up and set it on top of the 2×4 then start your backswing sliding on the wood. At the top, you will naturally re-route the club just a bit to come inside so you don’t hit the wood. You’ll hit the wood a few times – so don’t worry about it – just tee another one up and start again.

hit a little bucket of balls like this 3 or 4 times a week and you will groove a nice draw in just a few weeks. I’d suggest practicing and not playing for a few weeks to give yourself a chance to get used to the swing.

Something to remember about the Hogan book – even though it is a classic, most people never have the problems that he faced. Hogan was a notorious hooker and he nearly quit the game because of it.

The 5 lessons teach things like a neutral to weak grip (Hogan had incredibly powerful hands and forearms), and holding off the release to eliminate the left side of the fairway by hitting a fade. So, if you’re fighting a slice, I would suggest putting the Hogan book away and picking up Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book”.

I play an interlock grip, almost always have except when I first started. I came from playing baseball, so I used a baseball grip. Here are my keys to remembering my grip. I had to think hard about this since I don’t mess with it much.

If you look at your finger, there are really 3 sections to it. I make sure that the section closest to my hand is the one that holds the underside of the grip. I always make sure that my left thumb is just slightly to the right of center of the grip. Depending on how I am swinging, I go from neutral to slightly weak with my right thumb.

And I swing to parallel or slightly past, so it can be done. Just make sure to keep a pretty firm grip on it all the way through.

More than likely, your previous grip was simply compensating for some other problem. One thing is for certain: you are impacting the ball with an open club face and/or coming over the top and your club is approaching the ball from the wrong side of the target line.

It’s hard to suggest a cause without seeing what’s going on. Do you have any swing video?

A lesson is probably going to be your least frustrating path to success.

…especially the drills. I have a day off Thursday – looks like I’ll be heading to the range.

Independent of the slice, this grip alteration has been frustrating as hell. I’ve been trying to keep a club with me as much as possible so as to get myself comfortable with the new hand positioning. It’s a bear of a task.