Grip Strength Exercises

Forearms and hands

Having strong hands and arms allows you to secure the club with less effort. This in turn keeps the wrists flexible.

Hogan showing us his grip.

When you have developed a good grip you can start focusing on increasing grip strength. For the left hand you want to be training the last three fingers (pinky, ring finger and middle finger) and for the right hand the ring and middle fingers.

Hogan explaining the grip and the pressure points.

Exercises

There are a couple of ways to train these muscles. You can use a grip strengthening device or a small rubber ball, and squeezing the steering wheel whilst driving to work will work too. Squeeze, hold it for 10 seconds and repeat. Don’t forget to switch hands after a while. Success guaranteed…

Attack vs. Defense

The ball, if the truth be known, plays a brilliant defensive game. Confident in its own emplacement, it does nothing to interfere, but waits for the player to attack.

Consider the matter a moment in a mood of exaggeration. The course is empty and you are without a partner. You and the ball are about to start the intimate personal duel in which only one can survive. You know you must attack and you are wondering about your plan. The ball is perfectly calm and brilliantly on the defensive.

You tee up and grasp the club, perhaps a little quickly, and with a number of plans in your mind. You start the address, that preliminary reconnaissance, the probing of the enemy line. Then you launch the assault, trying to stick to one plan, but halfway up the backswing you decide that the time is not ripe.

You drop the club and light a cigarette, and you give the enemy a threatening look while trying to conceal your fear. You walk away and take in the surrounding view. Everything is very peaceful. Some cows are grazing in the field to the right of the tee. A shot landing in that field will hardly disturb their peace, but you know that it will disturb you because it will cost you a stroke.

Trying to eradicate such thoughts you turn again to the tee, eagerly hoping that perhaps you can see a gap in the defenses. Everything is just as it was. The ball is impregnably calm, awaiting the expected attack. You walk to the start line once more, muttering as you go- "I wonder who it was who said that this is a cold-blooded business."

Only good generals survive. They survive and are successful because experience has taught them the principles and techniques of their art. These principles are the basis of their plan, and when they have decided just how they will attack---or the shot they wish to play---they waste no time in attacking, confident of success because they are obeying those principles which have stood the test of time.

E.M. Prain...1946

Putting Notes

The putter

Get yourself a simple blade style putter that let’s you know how well the ball has been struck. During training it’s very important to know what you are doing wrong. Say for instance that you don’t strike the ball with the center of the club. With some of the perimeter weighted putters this is very hard to feel. In my opinion, a good putter will give your hands the necessary feedback and will teach you the feeling and sound of a solid strike. Such a putter will make it easier to ingrain good habits. A simple ‘blade’ style design with less visual clutter allows for more precise aim IMO. I also prefer a putter that has enough weight to let you feel the clubhead during the stroke. With a heavier clubhead it’s also easier to start the backswing with a smooth, steady motion. If you go too heavy, you may find it hard to judge distance.

 

Setup

There lots of different ways of setting up to the ball. In the end it’s about finding a setup that allows you to rock your shoulders up and down square to where you want the ball to start.
For me that means that I basically stand square, or maybe slightly open to the target. If I grip the putter I feel that my shoulder line is slightly open (and the putter’s face is closed). From there I just square up my shoulders until the face of the putter is square to the target. I take a few practice strokes to check and groove this ‘dynamic’ alignment and if it’s good I take a small step forward and pull the trigger.
As far as your head is concerned, try to keep your chin against your chest. The more vertical your eyes can look down at the ball the better you will be able to see your line. Also, if you set up this way you can turn your head and trace the line to the hole with your eyes better.
I usually set up with an equal amount of weight on both my two feet but it may help to get some more weight on your front foot.

 

Grip

I use the a ‘standard’ putting grip with the right hand down. Most of the grip pressure is in my right hand, between thumb and index finger. My left hand, on the other hand, I wrap around the top end of the grip and my right hand very lightly, where it can function as a stabilizer.

 

Ball Position

Just slightly forward of low point is where I prefer the ball to be. It depends on your stance width but this will either be at the center or forward of the center between your feet. It also depends on the loft of the putter but the main purpose is to get the ball rolling as soon as possible after the strike. If you hit the ball after low point (on the upstroke) the ball will get some topspin, which is what gets the ball rolling faster. The ball needs to be struck at the top half to eliminate skidding.

 

Distance From the Ball

I try to get my eyes directly above (or slightly inside) the ball and let that dictate the way I stand to the ball. Besides that, you may need to have the lie of the putter changed so you can stand more comfortably. It’s important that the sole of the club is flush to the ground.

 

Anchor Points

Before (and during the stroke) I make sure that my left hip and my throat remain in a fixed position. I need to feel some stability in my legs/knees too. Practice this until it becomes second nature. This will give you a stable base upon which to swing the putter.

 

Starting the Stroke

I start the stroke by simultaneously dropping my left shoulder and taking the club away with my right hand. Ideally the shoulders and arms should move as one unit, with the shoulders moving in a vertical, up-and-down manner. During the stroke I keep my eyes focused on a small spot of the back of the ball. Sometimes it helps to stare at the ball without focusing on it. What you don’t want to do is follow the clubhead on it’s way back. I know this can be very tempting but it will only make for a wobbly takeaway.. Try to take the club away with a steadily accelerating tempo, gradually adding grip pressure.

 

A Change of Direction

The change of direction in the putting stroke is very important if you want to get any good at distance control. It should be almost effortless in the sense that the intensity and length of the backswing determines the timing and length of the downswing. It should be a natural reaction to the backswing without any interference from the hands and arms. The only thing to monitor is that the left shoulder moves upward during the downstroke.
Once you get this you will start to hit more putts with perfect speed and see lots of balls dying in the hole. It can be tricky to kill the hit instinct, even with putting, but the results are worth it. It may seem like you are giving up control of your downswing but in reality you’ll get way more control once you start seeing the true relation between backswing and downswing. The backswing being the action, the downswing being the reaction to that action. The added benefit is that your stroke will become purer because you won’t have to be steering the club on the downswing and contact will be better as well.
If you have trouble getting the hang of this you may find this helpful: Take a backswing, and pause the club at the the point where the change of direction takes place for just one second, and then let it all ‘fall’ towards the target. The momentum is set up by the intensity and length of the backswing and it can be stored by holding the club still before releasing it all on the downswing.

Restoring Irons – 8: Lie Adjustments

In the last installment of this series on restoring irons I wrote about regripping clubs. When you’re done with that you may want to change the loft and/or lie of your irons.

Vintage irons usually have weaker loft compared to modern irons, so you may want to bend those a bit stronger. The lie angle, which is the angle between the shaft and the leading edge of the club head, may need to be changed as well depending on how flat or upright you want to swing the club. Forged irons can be bent more easily than cast irons. With cast irons the risk of breaking the hosel is far bigger and you probably will only be able to bend them 2 or 3 degrees tops.

In this post I will describe the process of bending the lie angles of my Hogan irons. I bent these clubs 7 degrees flat and I did it using a bending bar, a vice and protractor. Normally you would use a professional Loft and Lie machine for this purpose but since I don’t own one I decided to be creative. Using a dedicated machine is much easier and faster than securing the head in a vice, but if you are on a budget you can get similar results using my method.

 

Left to right: A professional loft and lie machine and a bending bar. (Golfsmith)

If you have a workbench with a vice then that’s great. I don’t have a workbench in my apartment so I opted to bolt the vice onto some pieces of wood.

 

Securing the heads

Securing the head in the vice is the tricky part. As you can see, I used 2 small metal plates to protect the club from damage. You need to find a way to secure it so that it won't move while bending. The best way is to start by clamping the top line and the leading edge in the vice and try to bend the hosel. If the head starts to twist in the vice it means that you didn't secure it in a way that resists the forces of the bending operation.

 

Bending the hosels

Don’t try to bend the clubs in one go, make multiple smaller bends until you feel that you’ve got it right. After that you probably need to measure and check the new lie angle. You can do this by setting the club with the leading edge flush to the ground and measuring the angle between the shaft and the floor with the protractor.

 

If you have the head secured It's also important to position the bending bar as low as possible (where the hosel meets the head) and bend it at that position. If you bend to far up the hosel you may run into problems later if you need to remove or replace shafts…