I have a question from Hamburg, Germany, from Chris Mueller. Chris states, 'I have changed my grip from the suggested little finger interlace to the baseball grip because of pain in my right hand. Amazingly my terrible slice has now been replaced with a slight draw, excellent news. But I would really like to know why?'
O.K., first off I guess we need to at least interject here that the interlace, I am sure, is really the interlock grip, is what you were doing with the little finger; say if you were a right-handed player your right hand is in between the pointer finger of your left hand. You went to the baseball grip which means there is no more fingers either overlapping or interlocking and you have them separated. I would have to say that I am assuming that when you said you had pain in your right hand, it is probably very much more in the fingers and probably pretty close to the fingers that you used to interlock. That was putting extra stress and strain on your swing, which was possibly not allowing you to really use your right hand enough to hit the ball and with enough power and was therefore causing you to under-release. Which means your right hand, if you are a right-handed golfer, which sounds like what you are saying here is, that your right hand was consequently moving into impact and through with the right palm going skyward, which is opening the face and therefore your slice.
As soon as you stopped interlocking and went to the 10-finger grip I think that took a lot of the stress and the pain out of the fingers in your hands and now allowed you to use, with less pain and more strength, your right hand.
As you know, in the Peak Performance Golf Swing, I believe we use the same grip pressure, the same speed, the same force and the same energy of both hands and swing them at the same speed. Now you are able to do all of those things. With swinging at the same speed, instead of under-releasing, your right hand now is releasing square into impact and releasing through which means your palm is staying perpendicular to the ground and you are able to swing up to your T-Finish finish better.
So with more constant and consistent speed of both hands moving at the same speed and releasing through impact to the good T-Finish, the release is squaring the club up and allowing you to not hit the ball straight to a little drop. I think that was a wise move, especially if it reduced the pain in your fingers, which allows you to actually use your right hand more, or at least equally with your left. Good move and I think it is obvious that results are going from a slice to the draw, is proof positive that it was a good move.
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