Grip strength and distance.

[MonteScheinblum]

On 6/17/2025 at 8:32 PM, ThinkingPlus said:

I believe nothing, unless it's backed by high quality measurements. I have been burned far too many times by GD tips or old pro "this is what I do" BS. Never again.

If you compiled a list of the 50 most popular golf cliches.  You’d find they fall into 3 categories.  Not one stands as being helpful.

 

1.  With data collected in the last 10 years you’d find it’s mis leading at best and at worst, wrong.

2.  With data collected in the last 10 years you’d find it’s not completely wrong, but by far not the easiest or most efficient way you see it done in most good swings.

3.  With data collected in the last 10 years it is show to quite literally be 180* from what good players do.

 

Its not just swing advice tripe like hold lag and grip it like a baby bird.

 

Drive for show putt for dough

If you hook you need a stiffer shaft

If you slice you need a smaller grip

 

It’s no mystery what mostly happens in a good swing or how to build a proper set of clubs for a golfer, but bad narratives persist and maintain my job secutry.

 

 

[TheDeanAbides]

10 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

If you compiled a list of the 50 most popular golf cliches.  You’d find they fall into 3 categories.  Not one stands as being helpful.

 

1.  With data collected in the last 10 years you’d find it’s mis leading at best and at worst, wrong.

2.  With data collected in the last 10 years you’d find it’s not completely wrong, but by far not the easiest or most efficient way you see it done in most good swings.

3.  With data collected in the last 10 years it is show to quite literally be 180* from what good players do.

 

Its not just swing advice tripe like hold lag and grip it like a baby bird.

 

Drive for show putt for dough

If you hook you need a stiffer shaft

If you slice you need a smaller grip

 

It’s no mystery what mostly happens in a good swing or how to build a proper set of clubs for a golfer, but bad narratives persist and maintain my job secutry.

 

 

I have so many arguments with players about grip thickness. I've shown them that I can hit the same shots with ladies grips and thick old jumbo ones despite wearing a small glove. It blows their minds, but they think it must be a trick. 

[iacas]

29 minutes ago, TheDeanAbides said:

I have so many arguments with players about grip thickness. I've shown them that I can hit the same shots with ladies grips and thick old jumbo ones despite wearing a small glove. It blows their minds, but they think it must be a trick. 

 

Grips are about comfort mostly. We recorded videos back in the day with super oversized grips (not the Jumbo Max, but bigger than a slight oversized grip) and gripping the steel shaft with (I think) medical tubing stretched over it for grip, and the wrists and forearms worked almost exactly the same in both.

[mshills]

36 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Grips are about comfort mostly. We recorded videos back in the day with super oversized grips (not the Jumbo Max, but bigger than a slight oversized grip) and gripping the steel shaft with (I think) medical tubing stretched over it for grip, and the wrists and forearms worked almost exactly the same in both.

I went to jumbo max last year. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry said “that’s gonna make your shots go way right!” 🙄

 

It did not. I can hit hooks just as well with those grips as any other. Where do golfers get these brilliant ideas? “It sounds like it could be true so it must be true!” 🙄

 

They did seem to lessen fatigue a little bit but it wasn’t that noticeable. I have new clubs this year and I’m playing the grips Ping put on until they are worn out. 

[GolferPerson1]

On 6/12/2025 at 5:39 AM, RayPlan said:

The most intuitive explanation I've heard on the mechanism is that your body unconsciously governs the swing speed based on your grip strength to safely keep the club from flying out of your hands (or otherwise losing control of it). 

 

In other words, if your body senses that your grip strength is insufficient, it will not allow the energy generated in the swing to actually reach the club through your hands. That's the effect I described as a governor above, based on my interpretation of the virtuoso. 

 

I was at Golf Galaxy recently hitting a few drivers without a glove.  My CHS was down 10 mph from where it normally is and I could have sworn the trackman was broke or I had some undiagnosed injury.  No matter how hard I tried to swing I couldn't get within 5 mph of my typical numbers.  Turns out it was 100% related to not wearing a glove and my subconscious holding me back because my grip was off so this definitely tracks with my experience.

[Nickb333]

On 6/23/2025 at 7:24 AM, GolferPerson1 said:

 

I was at Golf Galaxy recently hitting a few drivers without a glove.  My CHS was down 10 mph from where it normally is and I could have sworn the trackman was broke or I had some undiagnosed injury.  No matter how hard I tried to swing I couldn't get within 5 mph of my typical numbers.  Turns out it was 100% related to not wearing a glove and my subconscious holding me back because my grip was off so this definitely tracks with my experience.

I could see that.

[golfortennis]

On 6/11/2025 at 10:21 PM, AzRoger said:

Just have to be aware that having strong grip strength isn't the same as gripping the club tightly. Tour pros have been shown to have very strong grip strength, probably from pounding 1000's of balls on the range, but at the same time they don't feel like they are gripping the club tightly.

 

Martin Chuck did an interview once saying how Sam Snead is credited with the "hold the club like a baby bird" advice.  To which he then said, "Did you ever shake his hand?  I did, and his grip was vise-like."  A lot of things are, and feel, easy, when you are strong.

[GoGoErky]

39 minutes ago, golfortennis said:

 

Martin Chuck did an interview once saying how Sam Snead is credited with the "hold the club like a baby bird" advice.  To which he then said, "Did you ever shake his hand?  I did, and his grip was vise-like."  A lot of things are, and feel, easy, when you are strong.

And those who use it leave out the rest of the saying which is an eagle trying to get away from you

[ShowMe]

Using the Pete Cowen "Wring the Towel" golf grip has greatly improved the consistency of my shots.  It's not just about gripping the club harder, it's employing the proper opposing pressure/forces that matters.

 

Oh, and since we're humble bragging about our gym feats related to grip, I do 12 sets of 8 bicep curls with 90lb straight bars and 45lb dumbbells on arm day.  And 180lb. lat pull downs on back day.  Not bad for a 63 year old and good for maintaining grip strength.  

 

 

[DaveLeeNC]

Just as a related/interesting aside ... I decided to add tennis ball squeezes to my daily routine. The motivation here was less about driver distance (which I surely need at age 75) and more about the fact that stronger soft tissues just seem to help with joint integrity and joint pain. For whatever reason my joints are all petri dishes for osteoarthritis - pretty much all of them although I have so far avoided joint replacement. I wouldn't know where to start. 

 

For lack of anything better I started with 20-30 seconds of pretty hard squeezes (rest/repeat). The squeezing is not too painful, but letting go is really painful (and thankfully quite short). That surprised me. 

 

dave

[golferdude54]

One can always invest in a few Captain of Crush hand grippers for less than the speed stick aids. It's about $25 for each resistance, and there's no need to go past the #3 one at all.

[Pnwpingi210]

2 hours ago, golferdude54 said:

One can always invest in a few Captain of Crush hand grippers for less than the speed stick aids. It's about $25 for each resistance, and there's no need to go past the #3 one at all.

I think we touched on it early, but those grippers train with some specificity and it may or may not translate well to golf. 
 

 

[coops]

8 hours ago, Pnwpingi210 said:

I think we touched on it early, but those grippers train with some specificity and it may or may not translate well to golf. 
 

 

 Or be good for your hand health 😉

 

Spotted this article in The Guardian - has some recommendations on how to strengthen your grip, but as far the 'grippers' go:

"What originally attracted me to them – that it’s so easy to crank out squeeze after squeeze after squeeze – is also what makes them dangerous. “They’re terrible,” she says. “People start using them and they give themselves some form of tendinopathy [tendon damage] from overloading. That repetitive gripping is awful.”

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/30/the-grip-secret-it-could-be-the-key-to-a-long-and-healthy-life-heres-how-to-improve-yours

 

Yoinks!

"A study of 140,000 adults in 17 countries found that a weak grip went hand in hand with a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and was a better guide to “all-cause mortality” than blood pressure. It is associated with osteoporosis, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, fall risk and obesity, as well as cognitive decline. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it is also linked to age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia."

 

[iacas]

31 minutes ago, coops said:

"A study of 140,000 adults in 17 countries found that a weak grip went hand in hand with a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and was a better guide to “all-cause mortality” than blood pressure. It is associated with osteoporosis, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, fall risk and obesity, as well as cognitive decline. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it is also linked to age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia."

 

Weakness in general probably goes hand in hand with that sort of thing. Stay active, people.

[GoGoErky]

50 minutes ago, iacas said:

 

Weakness in general probably goes hand in hand with that sort of thing. Stay active, people.

Right. 

[jaffabell]

On 6/26/2025 at 9:02 PM, ShowMe said:

Using the Pete Cowen "Wring the Towel" golf grip has greatly improved the consistency of my shots.  It's not just about gripping the club harder, it's employing the proper opposing pressure/forces that matters.

 

Oh, and since we're humble bragging about our gym feats related to grip, I do 12 sets of 8 bicep curls with 90lb straight bars and 45lb dumbbells on arm day.  And 180lb. lat pull downs on back day.  Not bad for a 63 year old and good for maintaining grip strength.  

 

 

This is brilliant beyond the towel squeezing, in particular around how to get good right arm width without it hurting. Never realised that over rotating right arm can make things worse

[ThinkingPlus]

Buy a bag of oranges. Get two oranges and cut them in half. Get a glass. Squeeze half an orange with each hand into glass. Repeat with other orange. Drink juice.

 

Win - win. Grip strength increases and you get your vitamin C for the day.

[Mike_C]

4 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

Buy a bag of oranges. Get two oranges and cut them in half. Get a glass. Squeeze half an orange with each hand into glass. Repeat with other orange. Drink juice.

 

Win - win. Grip strength increases and you get your vitamin C for the day.

You left something out.........you also need finger tip strength to open the  accompanying bottle of vodka....😉  

[Obee]

I read page one and page 2, so forgive me for asking, but do we have any kind of a causal link here? Or are people with strong grip-strength also full of fast-twitch muscle?

I was always plenty "strong" (could bench 295 in high school and college when I played baseball), but I never had any "explosiveness." I couldn't jump high or run fast, and I didn't hit the baseball particularly far for my strength. I also have never hit the golf bar far, even when I was in my 30's. My clubhead speed topped out at 108 to 110 back in the 90's, while my buddy, a pitcher, could hit 118 back then.

My guess is that my grip was relatively strong back then, but who knows...
 

@MonteScheinblum, thoughts?

[Rbsiedsc]

7 minutes ago, Obee said:

I read page one and page 2, so forgive me for asking, but do we have any kind of a causal link here? Or are people with strong grip-strength also full of fast-twitch muscle?

I was always plenty "strong" (could bench 295 in high school and college when I played baseball), but I never had any "explosiveness." I couldn't jump high or run fast, and I didn't hit the baseball particularly far for my strength. I also have never hit the golf bar far, even when I was in my 30's. My clubhead speed topped out at 108 to 110 back in the 90's, while my buddy, a pitcher, could hit 118 back then.

My guess is that my grip was relatively strong back then, but who knows...
 

@MonteScheinblum, thoughts?

did you ever train moving explosively? Example, dropping your bench weight to say 200 and moving it as fast as possible. You had plenty of strength but sounds like you never trained it to move fast and get the muscles trained to fire fast.

[HunkaHunkaBirdieLove]

29 minutes ago, Rbsiedsc said:

did you ever train moving explosively? Example, dropping your bench weight to say 200 and moving it as fast as possible. You had plenty of strength but sounds like you never trained it to move fast and get the muscles trained to fire fast.

This...and it's kind of elementary stuff. Strength is your ability to exert maximum effort in a single repetition, without a strict time constraint. Power (or explosiveness) is strength multiplied by speed. TPI covers this with nearly every golfer that goes through their program, using much of the data Dr. Rose gathers to determine where the golfer can make the most significant gains.

Edited June 30 by HunkaHunkaBirdieLove

[MonteScheinblum]

6 hours ago, Obee said:

I read page one and page 2, so forgive me for asking, but do we have any kind of a causal link here? Or are people with strong grip-strength also full of fast-twitch muscle?

I was always plenty "strong" (could bench 295 in high school and college when I played baseball), but I never had any "explosiveness." I couldn't jump high or run fast, and I didn't hit the baseball particularly far for my strength. I also have never hit the golf bar far, even when I was in my 30's. My clubhead speed topped out at 108 to 110 back in the 90's, while my buddy, a pitcher, could hit 118 back then.

My guess is that my grip was relatively strong back then, but who knows...
 

@MonteScheinblum, thoughts?

As someone said, I believe is is a governor

[oiler45]

This is a very interesting topic for me because hand action is the basis of my swing. I have a foot and ankle condition that negatively affects my strength and balance. My swing is basically an all arms and hands swing with very little weight transfer. I actually start off all my range sessions with the Padraig Harrington drill of keeping your feet together and hitting the ball as hard as you can with your wrists and hands. I also work my hands and forearms quite diligently as my condition can affect my hands as well (so far it hasn't). I visit a neuromuscular Doctor every year and they test my feet/ankle and hand/wrist strength at every visit. My feet barely register but my grip and finger strength is above average for a 67 year old man. I am not a long hitter by any means (CHS with driver of 85-90 mph) but I can score decently well if I play the proper tees. There is no way I could play well if my hand strength was below average with my type of swing.

I agree with Monte - grip strength is a swing speed governor, but it also has a bigger impact if you aren't able to swing conventionally. Reading the above I'm also going to ditch my grippers and concentrate on bar hangs, weight on a rope curls, and finger curls.

[Nickb333]

OK. The grip pressure affect on distance is undeniable and indisputable. But…

 

This is going to take some adjustment. The higher grip pressure seems to have forced a stronger grip for me. With no other conscious swing changes, I’ve gone from living toe side to heel side. I haven’t checked my swing path on a sim yet, but I’ll bet I’ve gone from out to in to in to out. 
 

Trying to get my head around that. 

[golferdude54]

So I found out Hank Aaron, the real HR king without steroids, would use the strongest hand gripper he could find and do 100 reps right side up and upside down, 200 total for each hand. He did this routine before and after every game. Very interesting…

[iacas]

 

We covered this in a recent episode of the podcast, but here are two quotes from two speed training-related biomechanists:

 

Dr. Tyler Standifird (associated with SuperSpeed, Smart2Move):

 

Quote

1. It needs to be trained specifically. I know there are groups who say it is trained just if we do heavy weight training, and that is kind of true, but the specificity of grip strength training is so easy and effective that we all should be doing it. I compare it to like how a bent over row in the gym strengthens your bicep, but that if you really want to get your bicep bigger you do curls.
2. Speed training is not enough, again at least in my experience I don’t think speed training on it’s own strengthens grip, helps you learn I think how to maybe utilize what you have in grip strength a bit better/more efficiently, but again refer back to number 1.
3. I agree with what you say about training it to avoid that slipping feeling. Just met with a player who is doing GRF assessments looking for more speed. He is up to maybe a 124/125 club speed, but is saying he feels the club slip just a bit. His grip strength is around 41 kg in the lead side, starting to be a limiting factor for him, can’t hold onto the club.

I’d say pros maybe apply more force in the swing if that makes sense. So if they are stronger their 8/10 might be 44 kg, vs a 45 year old amateur at 8/10 might be 31 kg. Also even the higher level players I have had on the sensor edge device are not 3/10. Not even close. Lowest I have seen with all my players, pro, amateurs and in between was about a 5.6/10. And that guy had a grip strength of 65 kg, so huge strength. Most people end up in the 7-9 range, regardless of skill level, its more of that patterns that change as players get better.

Using something like the SuperSpeed squeeze can be an effective way to “trick” a golfer into training grip strength when they think they are practicing golf. The fat grip is shown to enhance muscular activation in grip/forearm. So they will get that benefit when they take swings and additionally it will force them to grip down tighter because it feels that the club is going to move out of their hands. This helps them train the feels of developing more force when needed in the swing. Also static grip strength training, gripping something, squeezing something is very effective, no matter that apparatus used. The squeeze training includes these as well.

 

 

Dr. Sasho MacKenzie (The Stack obviously):

 

Quote

 

I don’t think grip strength, as measured by squeezing something, is important in golf.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. I see people get a lot faster without any change in grip strength. Alos, I can’t think of a single time where a club flew out of someone’s hands because they swung too fast for their level of grip strength.

Any low to moderate correlation between grip squeeze strength and clubhead speed is not causal.

I’ve measured juniors with 120 mph clubhead speed that couldn’t squeeze the juice out of a lemon.

Vijay only had one hand on the club at impact swinging at 120 mph.

 

 

 

The summary from me:

• I'm coming down on the side of correlation, not causation here.
• Pros grip the club more strongly at setup and more consistently throughout.
• Worn, slick, or firm (the rock hard ones, I don't mean anything but Winn) grips promote needing to squeeze the grip harder just to swing it.
• I have seen people limited by grip strength… when doing speed training. They swing faster than they expect, the club doesn't hit a ball, and the club flies out of their hands.
• Grip strength is important, but most people are generally "balanced" enough that they can grip a club firmly enough to support what their body can generate.
• I see little harm in training grip strength, but limited benefits, too.

 

[golferdude54]

 

Shaking hands with my opponent before every competitive round like… Also how good was Cobra Kai?

[BSI99]

Is this a chicken or the egg situation? Are good golfers good because they have strong grips, or do they have strong grips because they hit a ton of golf balls which makes them good? 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, BSI99 said:

Is this a chicken or the egg situation? Are good golfers good because they have strong grips, or do they have strong grips because they hit a ton of golf balls which makes them good? 

 

They're not good "because" they have firm grips. A weightlifter might whiff half the time he tries to hit the ball and hit it 150 yards with 80 MPH of driver clubhead speed. I've seen it.

 

It's correlation, not causation. That's all. 99% of the time.

[Nels55]

1 hour ago, BSI99 said:

Is this a chicken or the egg situation? Are good golfers good because they have strong grips, or do they have strong grips because they hit a ton of golf balls which makes them good? 

I think it is more like chicken soup.  More grip strength can't hurt and might help.