Grip and setup: the parts of the swing that happen before it starts.

Directions on this page are for a right-handed golfer: the lead hand and lead side are the left, the trail side is the right. Left-handers reverse them, and the left-handed golf page covers why simple reversing does not always work.

The grip

Harrington: let the club move in the hands

Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion, told GOLF.com in 2023 that the grip's first job is mobility. In his view the club should be able to move up and down and side to side in the hands, and that is why he wants it held in the fingers: a grip that sits in the palm restricts that movement.

His starting check for the lead hand is to see about two knuckles when you look down, then adjust to a stronger or weaker grip as needed. He places the crease of the trail hand over the lead thumb and wraps the trail fingers around the handle. Harrington adds that getting the grip into the fingers takes deliberate practice.

Hulbert: there is no one neutral

Bill Hulbert, a PGA professional writing for the Southern California PGA, calls a neutral grip a good starting point for beginners and a change many experienced golfers want to make. He builds the lead hand by letting the arms hang softly from the shoulder sockets, and he has the lead-hand grip taken with the lead arm hanging off the lead leg before the club is brought in front of the body for the trail hand. The trail arm stays soft, and the trail palm faces the lead hand.

His bigger point is that "neutral" differs a great deal from person to person, so a teacher has to find each student's own neutral wrist angle. He also warns that a locked-out lead arm weakens the lead wrist, creates a false neutral and tends to send the hands outward while the club moves inside.

Hulbert explains the link between the wrist and the clubface: flexing the lead wrist closes the face and extending it opens the face. The teacher's job, as he sees it, is to match the grip to the student's clubface pattern. As evidence that no single grip is correct, he lists successful players with very different hands: Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson with strong grips, Ben Hogan and Jordan Spieth with weak ones, Adam Scott and Tiger Woods with neutral ones.

The "V" check: a disagreement

A widely repeated rule of thumb says the V shapes formed by each thumb and forefinger should point toward the trail shoulder or ear. Hulbert says this adage is unreliable. In his experience the V's tend to point up the shaft, and where they point changes with how much the shaft leans at address.

Overlapping, interlocking or ten-finger

Instruction sites describe three common ways of connecting the hands: overlapping (also called the Vardon grip), interlocking, and ten-finger, sometimes called the baseball grip. The advice we found on choosing between them, which treats it as a matter of hand size and comfort, comes from commercial instruction blogs rather than a coaching body, so treat it as unconfirmed. We also could not confirm the grip-pressure numbers often quoted online from a primary source, so this page does not give one.

Posture

Colin Sinclair, a PGA Senior Professional and Head Professional at Carnoustie Golf Links, says good posture at address gives a stable base for a repeatable swing. His central point is to tilt toward the ball from the hip joints rather than bending at the waist, because bending at the waist rounds the back.

Sinclair suggests a mirror drill: stand tall, put your fingertips at the front of your hip joints, then lean the upper body forward while pushing the hips and backside back. He adds flat shoulder blades and a slight knee bend, with the aim of feeling athletic and relaxed. Holding that posture through the swing, he says, improves the strike and cuts down on mis-hits. Eric Alpenfels, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher, makes a related point on the full swing page: a hunched or overly upright posture makes it harder to take the club back on the right path.

Stance width and ball position

The U.S. Golf Teachers Federation (USGTF) published averages in 2013 that it attributes to measurements of more than 100 Tour players. The article does not name the study, so these figures are unconfirmed. As reported, the ball lines up with the lead-foot instep for the driver and moves back about 2.7 inches between the driver and the 9-iron. The same article gives a 5-iron stance of about shoulder width, a driver stance with each foot about two inches outside the shoulders, a 9-iron stance about two inches narrower than the shoulders, and a lead foot flared about 25 degrees toward the target.

Not everyone moves the ball. Coach Sean Foley is reported by Golf Digest to favour a constant ball position for every club, handling club length through stance width instead. We could not read that article directly, so this version is also unconfirmed. Lee Trevino, on the full swing page, adds a different stance adjustment: slightly closed to draw the ball and slightly open to fade it.

Aim and alignment

How badly golfers aim

Rick Martino, a former GOLF Top 100 Teacher, described an aim study at the PGA Learning Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida, that covered everyone from Tour professionals to 40 handicappers (GOLF Magazine, 2001, republished in 2024). As he reports it, high handicappers (over 23) made clubface and shoulder alignment errors at twice the professionals' rate. Martino's account does not give the study's year or where it was published.

Martino's fixes:

• Aim at the line the ball should start on, allowing for any curve, rather than at the final target.
• Square the clubface once you are already tilted over in your address posture.
• Align the shoulders, not just the feet, parallel to that starting line.
• Have a friend or caddie check your aim, line up the logo on the ball when teeing up, and pick an intermediate target such as a divot.

Near spot or far target?

Eric Alpenfels and Dr Bob Christina, an emeritus professor of kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, had 29 golfers hit six shots each under three conditions: looking at the distant target only, at a spot about two feet ahead of the ball only, or at both (reported by GOLF.com in January 2019). They found the golfers hit straighter, about as far and with better strike when they focused only on the near spot, and suggested that seeing distant hazards prompts last-moment compensations in the swing. This was a small study reported in the media, and we found no peer-reviewed paper behind it, so treat it as an interesting result rather than a settled one.

A note on the Rules

Under the 2023 Rules of Golf, in effect from 1 January 2023, Rule 25.2 lets a player who is blind get help with aiming and taking a stance. The players with disabilities page covers the rest of Rule 25. The R&A says the next edition is due on 1 January 2028.