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The Relationship between Your Grip and Alignment

You might find it very difficult to stand square to the target every time you hit the ball. For tour pros, that may be the most difficult thing they face on the course.

When trying to stand square, you may pay attention to the line of your feet. But that's not really enough because your shoulders or your knees might be either open or closed.

Some good players pay attention to the line of their shoulders. But very few players check the line of the knees.

But from what I saw, lots of golfers have their knees open to the target when they set up to the ball causing them to swing from out to in.

Your Grip has a lot to do with Alignment

A friend of mine used to have problems with slice or push shots with his longer clubs. He had a good swing and was hitting it well with his short iron or his middle iron.

But he had some problems with clubs that had less loft.

He asked me to take a look at his swing.

So I checked his alignment first. His shoulders and feet were square to the target line. But the line of his knee was open to the target. This was causing him problems with his longer clubs.

When your knees are open, you tend to swing from outside on the downswing forcing you to cut across the ball at impact. If you try to swing from inside, you might push the shot to the right in this case.

To fix his alignment of knee line, I checked his left hand grip. It looked fine at first. But for him, it was a weak grip. So I asked him to rotate both hands to the right on the grip until he saw 3 knuckles of his left hand at address.

When we check his knees after changing his grip, it was square to the target line.

We fixed his alignment by changing his grip. From this experience, I realized that the grip has a lot to do with alignment.

Check You Alignment

To check your alignment, after setting up to the ball, hold your club against the shoulders and knees without moving other parts of your body.

If shoulders or knees were open, you tend to hit a slice. If it's closed, you tend to hook the ball.



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