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From the very first moment you touched a club, your golf game has been dramatically affected by your grip.

Given this obvious fact, it’s amazing to me how many golfers discount how important this part of your game is. After all, why would you spend hundreds of dollars and hours of your time with lessons and practice when the basics are truly what is holding you back from improving?

Thankfully, all the confusion surrounding golf grips is easily fixed with just a little information. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Importance of a Grip

Before we talk about the three main types of golf grips, we should really talk about why your grip is so important.

Simply put, your grip is what allows you to transfer your body’s movement into your club, and through your club, into the ball.

While it might be obvious, this really is worth emphasizing as your grip will determine your success or failure when it comes to the physical consistency with your swing.

Strong or weak grips might heighten or negate the effect of a shaky swing. Too much pressure from a grip can over or under rotate your wrists, leading to errant shots. And the list goes on and on.

So, with that said, let’s take a look at the three main golf grips a golfer can use.

The Baseball Grip (Ten Finger Grip)

Whether you look back at playing t-ball as a kid or your first golf swing an overwhelming majority of golfers start their careers with the baseball grip, otherwise, known as the “ten-finger grip”.

For a right-handed golfer, simply grab the club with your right hand stacked on top of your left and then approach the ball.

While the baseball grip is simple, other benefits of this grip include greater leverage from the absence of interlocking fingers. This can create more clubhead speed at impact; something that improves distance.

Finally, the dominance of the right hand in the baseball grip helps prevent a fade. This makes the baseball grip especially useful for golfers that struggle with a slice or fade.

However, while the baseball grip is simple and powerful for new golfers, this comes at a price. Since you lack any connection between hands with the ten-finger grip, you run the risk of sacrificing your grips consistency for the positives listed above.

If you’d like to keep that consistency with your grip, however, we may have a solution for you down below…

The Overlap Grip (Vardon Grip)

Next up after the baseball grip is the “overlap grip” or the “Vardon grip”. This grip was popularized by Henry Vardon in the late 19th century and is the most popular grip of professional golfers. A picture of the grip is shown on the right.

To do the overlap grip, first, grab the club as you would for the baseball grip. From there, slide the little finger of your right hand into the space between the index and middle finger of your left hand. After, just move your finger around until the grip feels comfortable and you should be all set.

While the Vardon Grip, like the baseball grip, is also simple to adapt, its overlapping nature adds to the structure and stability of the overall grip.

This might seem like an improvement over the baseball grip, however, this grip removes the leverage created by stacking your hands in the previous grip. Although this isn’t a big deal for most golfers, losing the extra distance, especially with the driver and long irons, is a significant tradeoff.

All and all, the improved stability and comfort of the overlap grip is usually worth the decreased distance. This, along with the ease of adaptation, has caused the overlap grip to be one of golf’s most popular grips.

The Interlock Grip

Our final grip today is the one I personally use when I golf, the interlock grip.

While the overlap grip promoted the tradeoff of consistency for distance, the interlock grip takes this one step further.

As you can see to the right, the interlock grip features an interconnection of the left index finger and the right pinky finger. This interlocking set-up not only increases the strength of the grip itself but, more importantly, this grip forces both of your hands to work together during a swing.

This forced cohesion between hands is, in my opinion, the interlock grip’s greatest strength. By forcing a golfer to use both hands in unison, this grip dramatically improves the consistency of a golfer’s ball-striking at impact. It’s for this massive reason that I only teach the interlock grip during my lessons.

Unfortunately, all good things inevitably come with a tradeoff. For this grip, in particular, it is exceedingly difficult to adapt to. Where other grips might not cause any inconvenience when you switch to them, the interlocking grip will take months of consistent practice to start to feel normal.

For this reason, I would recommend learning this grip during the offseason if you are interested in trying it out. If that’s not possible, even just grabbing a club and taking a couple swings a day will help reduce the time it takes for this grip to feel natural.

It might seem like a little bit of work, but I promise the pay off from improved ball striking will be worth it.

The Wrap-Up

While there is no shortage of grips to try out in the golfing world, I’m confident that one of the three grips will help you find what you’re looking for in your golf game.

Whether you’re looking for improved distance, comfort, consistency, or some of each, the above grips will, hopefully, help you achieve your goals the next time you step on the course.

So, while it might be inconvenient to leave your trusty old grip from the past, it might be worth it to try out some of the grips we listed above.

After all, you never know when you might come across your new favorite grip.