Monthly Swing Tip by Ricky Oh – July 2024

Pressure Points Drill

When was the last time you checked your grip? Do you have correct pressure points? Have you modified your grip so that it is too strong due to slicing?

Your golf grip is the most important part of your golf swing. However, maybe when you first started to learn golf, you were never taught how to correctly hold the club. 

This drill is designed to help you to understand where you should feel pressure in your hands and how to use pressure to create shaft lean at impact. 

The lead hand grip pressure should be on the bottom three fingers. This helps your lead wrist to become the second leverage in your swing and also allows you to cock your wrist. 

The middle two fingers on your trail hand are used to hold the grip properly. This will allow you to locate pressure bottom of your right palm. I see far too many golfers change their trail hand to a stronger position (palm facing out), leading your trail wrist to radial deviation rather than extension on your backswing. This is main reason why many people change their grip so that it is too strong which means they slice balls more to the right.

The drill:

  1. Split your hands. Club head up in the air about your knee height. Lead arm, wrist and club forms the triangle.

2. Important to maintain the triangle on your trail arm, wrist and club. Bending your trail elbow moves your lead wrist into radial deviation. 

3. Lead arm parallel to the ground. No force on your hands just on your trail arm. 

4. Add body rotation (the extension line of the club will be pointing at the target line).

5. Club parallel to the ground. The last stage where you can control the club.

6. Impact. Forward shaft lean helps you to de-loft and compress the ball (some pro golfers have too much shaft lean which means they find it hard to control the distance consistency). The triangle is still there but flatter since your lead wrist levelled out.

See some top golfers below that are very similar in how they hold the club with their trail hand. I can’t stress enough how important the correct grip and pressure points are.