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Symptom

My grip is too strong or too weak

Your hands sit turned too far one way on the handle, the face keeps arriving open or closed, and the ball misses to the same side shot after shot.

This usually traces to something already true before the club moves: grip, aim, posture, or where the ball sits in your stance. All of those are checkable standing still, which is why the questions ask you to look rather than to guess.

Common ways golfers describe this

  • Is my grip too weak?
  • Is my grip too strong?
  • My right hand is too far under the grip
  • How should I hold the club to stop slicing?
Feet, hips and shoulders all square, seen from aboveA golfer at address seen from directly above, with the target at the top of the picture and the golfer standing to the left of the ball. A dashed line runs from the ball straight up the page to a pin: the target line. Three lines cross the body, drawn one behind another. The nearest to the ball runs through two footprints and is the feet, square to the target line. The middle line, dashed with a cross tick at each end, is the hips, square to the target line. The furthest line, dash-and-dot with an open circle at each end, is the shoulders, square to the target line. The figure moves. The three lines are laid down one at a time in the order a golfer checks them, feet first, then hips, then shoulders, and each arrives square to the target line before turning to the aim it is drawn at. A line that is aimed off the target is therefore seen turning away from square rather than only being reported as off it.
  • Feet, in the footprints: square to the line
  • Hips, cross ticks: square to the line
  • Shoulders, round ends: square to the line
  • Target line
Aim is three lines rather than one, and they can disagree without a golfer feeling it. They are drawn square here, which is the position the questions ask you to check yours against.

Narrow it to one cause

Each question is here because golfers answer it differently, and that difference is what rules a cause out. Nothing is generated while you answer: every question, cause and fix was written and checked in advance.

Start the questions

A few questions · no account needed

What you will be asked

  1. Looking down at address, how many knuckles can you see on your lead hand?
  2. On your trail hand, where does the V between thumb and forefinger point?
  3. On a well-struck mid-iron, where does the ball start and which way does it bend?
  4. Do you take your grip with the clubhead resting on the ground, or with the club held up in front of you?
  5. Have you ever changed your grip on purpose to get rid of a curve?

Where this can come from

These are the causes this symptom resolves to, in the order they turn up most often. That order is not a diagnosis and it is not your answer: two of them can produce a shot that looks identical from behind. Each has a fix you can read now, whether or not you answer anything.

  1. Grip too weak

    The hands sit rotated toward the target on the handle, so the lead wrist has to do extra work to square the face in the time available. A weak grip does not cause a slice on its own, but it makes an open face the default outcome rather than something the golfer has to actively produce.

    Read the fix

  2. Grip too strong

    The hands sit rotated away from the target on the handle, so the face tends to arrive closed unless something else compensates. A strong grip is not a fault by itself and many good players use one, but paired with a path already moving right it is what turns a draw into a hook.

    Read the fix

  3. Face open at impact

    The clubface is pointing right of where the club is travelling when it meets the ball. Start direction is governed almost entirely by where the face points at impact, and the curve comes from how far the face sits open to the path. An open face is why the ball starts right, curves right, and loses height-adjusted distance: loft is effectively added as the face rotates open.

    Read the fix

  4. Face closed at impact

    The face points left of where the club is travelling. The ball starts left of the path and keeps turning left, and because a closed face also removes loft, the flight is usually lower and more diving than the golfer expected. The same closed face that produces a playable draw produces a hook once it outruns the path by enough.

    Read the fix

  5. Clubface aimed off at address

    The face is soled pointing somewhere other than the intended start line before the swing begins. It usually happens when the stance is taken first and the face is squared to the body rather than the target, or when the grip is completed after the club is already on the ground. Everything the swing does afterwards is a correction for a starting error.

    Read the fix

Related symptoms

These are not here because they sound similar. Each one can come from a cause on the list above, which is why fixing one sometimes quietly fixes another. The closest matches are first.

What this rests on

If something here contradicts what a launch monitor tells you, say so. Corrections change the page.

Discussion

Golfers who have had this shot, on what it turned out to be and what sorted it. Read it as experience rather than diagnosis: the questions above are what narrow it to a cause.

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