• The Clubhouse

  • A Grip to Create a Hinge and Increase Clubhead Speed

I don't know how many of you have heard of or follow Paul Wilson, but he's pretty fascinating. Here's a video of his that shows the power he creates from a "slow, effortless" swing:
All of his videos are fascinating and well worth the watch.

After watching one of his videos the other night where he describes playing with relaxed wrists, I decided to hit a few balls into my net concentrating on just this. In particular, I focused on hanging onto the club with only the two fingers of the left hand (the small and ring finger on my left hand - I'm right handed). It felt good, but your fundamentals have to be good and you have to trust the swing. It is very much a body-based swing and takes the hands right out of it. It also requires a smooth swing transition. These are fundamentals that aids like the Whippy Tempo Master teach.

So, last night I tried it on the course. The results were generally good, but the sensation was new to me, so the results were bit mixed. On the 16th tee, I decided to try taking my hands out of the swing by doing almost a complete overlap of the hands. That is, three of my fingers of my right hand overlapped the left hand, and I continued to try concentrating on just holding on with the two fingers on my left hand. Only the trigger finger of my right hand was on the club, and I tried to keep it and the right thumb so loose that they barely touched the club. I then just concentrated on my turn -- not a violent turn, but just a smooth, "driven" turn.

OMG! The first ball I hit was not only centre cut, but I had to go apologize to the group in front of me because I rolled it just past them when they should have been about 25-30 yards out of my range. On the next hole, I always hit a 5 wood for control into a small landing area, but always end up with a 150-155 yard shot into the green. With my new grip, I hit the centre cut, but I ended up only 130 from the green! Same result on the 18th, including hitting an 8-iron over the green when it normally should have landed short-centre.

You're mileage may vary, and this might be just a momentary blip for me, too, but this initial experience blew my mind and I'm going to play around with it a bit.

There’s a lot of ways to generate distance and they all come from generating club head SPEED. The hands the are the easiest way to get more speed. They are also the most fickle. Soft wrists will absolutely add speed, what he preaches makes sense. I get 90-95 of my max distance at maybe 75% effort and I’d score a hell of a lot better if I would stick to that effort too haha. His swing is long and smooth, with a good bit of lag, I would love to emulate that consistently.

This is what I wish I could figure out. One drive is 190 and the next 270. I almost holed out with a 5h from nearly 200, but then I also hit a driver the same distance. I barely reach one dogleg at 220 and then I blow it through another 260+. This is all within the same round. It's not the wind or rollout, it's poor tempo and one of the most inconsistent swings ever 😞

He has a pretty high swing speed even when it looks like he is not swinging hard.
Not sure it's really teachable, or transferable to others like he thinks it is. Sure most guys could probably add 4-5 more mph of swingspeed by working on his methods, but the it's not like he's going to take a guu with an 89-mph speed and get them to 115, like he thinks he can.

    Putting his thoughts into practice can really improve your tempo and center strikes with less effort. Kind of an eccentric fellow and repetitive but solid. 👍🏌️‍♂️

    rsvman2 I'm not sure I've ever heard him make that claim. If you have a link for it, I'd be interested. I think his claim is that he can teach you a way to swing that is different and will add to your swing speed. Just loosening up the wrists added (or appears at this moment to have added) swing speed and yards for me. If he can lift an 89 MPH swing to 95 with less effort, I think most players would take it.

    BTW, the message behind my post wasn't about Wilson, per se, but that I achieved his end of a "soft wrist" by just changing my grip so that it was more difficult to manipulate the club with my hands. The grip I described literally creates a hinge in line with what Wilson teaches.

        kelco9 I have a swing speed monitor and use it frequently. I've increased my iron swing speed 10mph (7-iron 90mph) by simply adjusting my grip.

            rsvman2 I’m gonna write down all my secrets and sell it to the highest bidder to see if they can raise their club head speed to mine.. granted I don’t know wtf I do different, but I get more speed than 98% of golfers, so I must know something I don’t know about. Pretty sure what you say is true, I know a few things I do better than most, but since I started, I have always had more distance than most, so I’m gonna say a lot of it is just some sort of inherent unique ability. I’ve still never learned to truly control it, some 20+ years later, so it’s not much use, but chicks dig the long ball.

              kelco9 Essentially it's a super strong grip with four knuckles visible and the MCP joint of the index finger on top of the grip.

              It's explained in this video.