It’s something you see often around PGA Tour chipping greens – a golfer chipping with only their right hand.
At first I thought it was little more than a curiosity. Some feel-based thing that pro golfers do just because they always have. Turns out there’s some science to it that pros have intuitively figured out. Understand the same concepts, and it can help you, too.
What the study found
The recent round of research comes from Golf Digest Best In State Teacher Liam Mucklow, who followed up on his fascinating grip study research (which you can read about here) with some insights into the short game.
Here’s a quick rundown of what pros do.
- For wedge shots around 30 yards, they grip the club about evenly with both hands at the start of their swing, so it’s close to 50-50
- They maintain this near 50-50 grip pressure throughout the entire chipping motion.
- Amateurs hitting the same shot, the study found, tend to grip the club much harder with their left hand and much softer with their trail hand.
- When measured, amateurs have about a 70-30 grip bias towards their lead hand (their left hand, for right-handed golfers).
How you can use it
In simplest terms, right-handed pros squeeze the club more with their right hand on these shots because they’re using their right hand more for these shots to manipulate the clubhead through the shot.
“Pros in the study were way more right-hand dominant in general on these shots,” Mucklow says. “It makes sense. We have a stronger motor connection to our thumb and two forefingers on our right hand as a right-handed person than in any other part of our body.”
Amateur golfers being more left-hand dominant in their chips tend to drag the club through impact more, Mucklow says, which stops them from being able to release the club, and can make dreaded chunk shots all too common. Keeping your right hand active helps you use your wedge the way it was designed.
2 things to remember
- Monitor your grip pressure; keep it 50-50 between both hands on your chips.
- Practise hitting one-handed chips with your trail hand only to ingrain the feel of a right-hand dominant chip shot.
