Perfect Right Hand Golf Position from Peak Performance Golf
Hi my name is Paul Wilson and I’m the creator of Swing Machine Golf and the director of the Paul Wilson Golf School at Bear’s Best Las Vegas. In this tip, I’m going to talk about the best placement for the right hand on the golf club.
Now, what I want for you to do is pay close attention, because I see so many people that do not have the right handle in the proper position. Hopefully, I can clear that up for you today and show you the right way to put the right hand on the golf club so that you can master that position.
So why is the right hand important?
Well, in a golf swing, particularly a right-handed golf swing, typically your left hand is the weaker hand and your right hand is the stronger hand. If you’re a leftie, that’s great because you’ve got a bonus, your left hand is already strong.
Now I’m talking, typically, the right-handed player, their left hand is weak and their right hand is strong. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to weaken the strong hand and we’re trying to strengthen the weak hand. As we do that, the hands balance out one another and allow our wrists to swing freely in the golf swing.
What happens often is people hold the golf club on too strong of a position in their right hand. And that’s because they’re looking for power or that feeling of power to try and hit that golf ball as hard as they can.
So when they do that, the harder they hit, the tighter the golf club becomes in the wrist or the tighter your wrist becomes. That slows down the golf club and opens the club face more.
Also, if you do happen to allow the wrist to return over, if the hands are in a strong position, that rolls the face over and you’ll end up in a closed position with the club and you end up hooking it.
So not only does the strong position create shots that can potentially slice or spin off to the right, but that strong position can also create hooks as well. What we want is for the right hand to be on in a very balanced position so that it’s not influencing or dominating throughout the golf swing.
Now, if you know anything about my teaching method, I based my teaching on the Iron Byron Swing Machine. With the Iron Byron, it’s only got one arm and that’s the golfer’s left arm in the backswing, left arm through impact, then it becomes the golfer’s right arm.
So in essence, by weakening the right hand, you’re taking that out of the picture and you’re creating a firm connection of the left which replicates the machine. So we don’t want this right arm in there trying to do anything because the machine doesn’t even have a right arm until after the ball’s been hit.
Hopefully, you understand that.
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We’re making a secure connection in the left and a weaker connection in the right.
Ok, so how do we get this?
With your left hand, what we want to try and do is follow the video that I did previously about that left hand placement or your top hand if you’re a left-handed player. So with the left hand or top hand, we’re putting this on where the golf club is across our palm.
I know about people that talk about the club in the fingers, I want it in the palm because it’s a secure position. And if you look at this hand, it’s going to go right across here (in palms) and to get that, we’re going to do that by keeping the thumb against the side of our hand.
So if we got the thumb against the side of our hand, the club will fit perfectly across your palm. You don’t even have to wonder where it’s going to go. Ok, so thumb is against the side, we’re going to take this hand and we’re going to put it where our thumb is straight down the shaft of the golf club or straight down the grip just for a second.
And from here, we’ll turn the right hand a little bit to the right. That allows us to see two knuckles of this top hand. So we got this hand on (top hand), this gap is closed (between thumb and side of hand), thumb is slightly right of center and you see two knuckles.
Now with our right hand, we’re going to bring this hand in and as we do, we want to take a look at the middle knuckle section. So what that means is we got one, two and three knuckle sections.
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I want you to be looking in the middle knuckle sections.
Typically people are going to be holding the golf club up here (top flesh of fingers). That’s the position of strength I was talking about. However, we want to feel weak in this hand. So, we’re going to hold it in the middle knuckle section.
So we got our left hand on the golf club, we’ve chosen the grip we’re going to use and now we’re going to put our hand on, bring it in and we’re going to stop right in the middle knuckle section.
We’re then going to curl the finger tips.
Now we’re going to wrap this hand on top of our left, covering the left thumb. So left hand on, we’re coming in like this (bring hand towards middle knuckle section), and we’re going to wrap it on top of the left thumb covering it.
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And what that does is it creates the letter ‘V’ right here (between the thumb and side of hand). So that letter ‘V’ is very important in your golf swing because that letter ‘V’ is going to cradle the golf club once we hit the top of the back swing.
So what that means is as the wrist hinges, it’s resting in that letter ‘V’ at the very top.
Ok, so I’ve taken my left hand position, my right hand wraps on top. I’ve got my letter ‘V.’ I go up to the top of the back swing and the club is actually resting in that ‘V.’ Now most people they would hold onto that golf club with their right thumb straight down the shaft.
If you do that, that’s a strong position, you can see that it’s in my middle or it’s down towards my palm here so that’s a strong position in the strong hand and the thumb is straight down.
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So when you do that and you take the club to the top, the club can’t be hinging properly because what happens is you feel pressure in the right thumb right here. And because your body or mind doesn’t like that pressure, it locks your wrist. So when you try to hinge fully, you feel the pressure.
Now if I go to the top in the wrong position, I’ll start feeling the pressure right about there (thumb). So what’s going to happen is your wrists are going to lock and all of a sudden you can’t hit the top of the backswing position.
You’ve probably heard about creating this ‘V’ on a golf club between your right index finger and thumb. Now you know the importance of it.
We’re creating a ‘V’ because the club is resting in that ‘V’ at the very top of our backswing.
Ok, so that’s very, very important that we get that. The whole idea is that we’re really wrapping this right hand on top of our left. Now, in that process, it is very, very uncomfortable. And again, that’s because we’re taking the power out of your stronger hand.
If you feel kind of weak on that hand, you’re not going to want to do that grip because you like that feeling of strength. The problem with the grip though, in a strong position, remember it’s going to put you in a position of strength where you’re trying to hit the golf ball too hard.
The harder you hit, the tighter your wrists, the more open the club face becomes.
Also, if you’re in a position that you’re trying to hit with the right hand, you’re doing something that the Iron Byron is NOT doing. So we want to take this hand out or eliminate it from our swing by putting it in a weaker position.
So we’ve got our left hand on in position with our thumb slightly right off the center. We come in with our right, we’re holding it in the middle knuckle section. Then we’re wrapping it on top of our left hand.
That’s how to get the right hand on in the position.
Now what I want you to be aware of is that your left hand on the golf club determines the position of the right hand. This is very, very important that you get this because if your left hand is on wrong, you will not be able to do the right hand position.
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So what I’m getting at is, if you take your left hand and the thumb is straight down the middle of the golf club, what’s going to happen is when you go to the middle to put your right hand on, your right thumb is actually going to fit in this groove right here.
So you can see the fleshy part of this thumb and your left thumb, they fit together perfectly. And if your thumb is out of position, you know one knuckle position here and thumb is going straight down and you try to put this position on the golf club, your right hand is now in a very weak position.
You can see that your ‘V’ or this line is pointed left in the setup position. So if the thumb is here and you’re trying to nestle that thumb in that groove, your right hand is on in a very weak position.
Likewise, if you’re in a 3 knuckle position with your left hand and your thumb is way over here and you try to put that thumb in that fleshy part right there, there is no way that your ‘V’ can get on top. So you’re actually gripping on the side of the golf club here.
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So that’s a real strong position in your strong hand which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. So in order to get the right hand on in the perfect position, we’re making sure that our thumb is just slightly right off center in a 1 o’clock position as we take our grip.
If we take it on in a 1 o’clock position, we’re going to allow the right hand to nestle on there perfectly and create our letter ‘V.’ So really be aware of that, that the left placement of the hand is critical to the placement of the right hand.
Now one other thing I want you to be aware of is that when you do your grip and you go to put this right hand on in it’s position, the pinky of your right hand is going to feel out of place.
So that will add to the feeling of being uncomfortable with your right hand. So what we want to try and do there is we want to understand that this isn’t about the comfort of the right hand or the pinkie. As you keep doing the grip, it is going to feel comfortable and you will get the right hand on in position.
So what I’m getting at is if you take your grip like this, what you don’t want to be doing is taking your pinkie and trying to get it way up here to get into a comfortable position.
As you can see, I can’t get my right hand on top of the golf club but right there, that feels really good. This is especially true with people who do interlocking grip so that they get their index finger and pinkie really nestled in there, but the problem is you can’t get your right hand on top.
So now the ‘V’ is not in position, you take that to the top and there’s no way that ‘V’ is going to cradle your golf club. So we want to be sure that we’re not trying to get this pinkie way in here. All that we’re concern with is the proper positioning looking down at your hands.
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So we’ve got the left hand on in position, we’re holding the club in the fingers of our right and we’re covering the left thumb looking for this letter ‘V’ to be right on top.
There’s also another way to check it and that is to find this line and this line parallel between our right ear and shoulders.
If your lines are all off, there’s no way you’re doing the right grip.
I know that was a lot of information but it’s very, very important that you get the right position in the right hand or the bottom hand grip.
We’re trying to weaken this hand so that it wraps on top better, balances the hands out and allows the club to swing freely throughout our swing. So we’re holding the left hand in a secure position, a 2 knuckle position, across our palm, fingers of the right, wrap it on top. No matter how uncomfortable it is, keep doing it and finally you will master the right hand position.