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The Wedge Guy: Why you aren’t a “right-handed” or “left-handed” golfer

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Editor’s note: The featured image is of Alex Noren‘s heavily calloused hands.

I’ve made a life out of watching so many recreational golfers struggle to achieve a measure of proficiency and consistency in their basic ball-striking skills. Statistics indicate the vast majority of golfers have never broken 90, and far too many are stuck with average scores even higher.

Today’s post is mainly for those golfers who fall into that category, but I think the rest of you might find this interesting as well.

For the past two years, I’ve spent some time with new high-handicap friends who are in various stages of golf skill, from relative beginner to decades-long struggle. I am always amazed at how golfers can play this game for years and never achieve a reasonable measure of ball-striking consistency.

I firmly believe from those observations that most mid- to high-handicap players fail to achieve the consistency they desire because they are trying to “hit” the ball by manipulating the club with their master hand, instead of swinging the club with their body core and arms.

And I just had an epiphany of sorts. So, hear me out and think about it this way…

My years of observation convinces me that the reason golf is so darned difficult just might be this: regardless of whether it’s a drive or a short chip, the most basic error is believing you control the strike of the ball with the hands. I was taught early in life that the most basic fundamental of all is that the golf swing is a rotational move of the body core, with the hands and club following that rotation through the impact zone.

And this just dawned on me, maybe the challenge for golfers to completely grasp and adopt this basic fundamental lies in the notion that we play golf either “right-handed” or “left-handed”. If you are generally right-handed in your everyday skills, and you play golf in the manner we have always called “right-handed”, then you stand on the left side of the ball (facing the target). You have your weaker side leading the swing, and you are probably trying to “guide” the club to the ball with your master hand. After all, you are playing “right-handed” aren’t you?

The opposite is true of those who approach the game from the right side of the ball, which we call “left-handed.”
I contend that the skill of striking a golf ball consistently isn’t any kind of “X-handed” game. So, what if you change your thinking that if you stand on the left side of the ball (again, facing the target), then you are playing the game “left-sided.” And if you stand on the right side of the ball, then you are playing “right-sided.”

Thinking about it that way, if you are left-sided, then it stands to reason that your left side leads the body core, arms, hands, and club through impact – in that order. You’re not a “right-handed” player, you are a left-sided player. And as a left-sided player, you must set up in your address position with the left side of your body in a strong position to push the club back on the takeaway and pull the club through on the downswing through impact.

Here’s why this is so important.

The golf swing is essentially a chain with multiple reasonably rigid links. The body core links to the shoulders, which link to the lead arm, which is connected to the club with the hands, and the club is the last link in the chain. So, if you were moving a length of chain that was too heavy to pick up, would you pull it or try to push it? Obviously, you cannot push a chain, but when you try to control the swing with your right hand, you are literally trying to push this chain from the middle.

I believe that there is no reason for any golfer to be “stuck” with abilities that keep their scores in the 90s to 100s, but I also feel certain that it would take extraordinary eye-hand coordination for any hand-dominant player to achieve a measure of consistency in scoring in low single digits.

Many years ago, I would do seminars for golf club fitters, and developed a convincing “show and tell” to prove just how difficult it is to control a golf club with your hands. I would have a volunteer from the audience come up and sign their name on my flip chart with a Sharpie. Isn’t signing your name one of the most familiar eye-hand activities you do?

Then I would hand that volunteer a wedge with a Sharpie taped to the hosel and have them attempt to sign their name again. The result was usually a nearly illegible hen scratch of a scribble.

So, if you can’t sign your name from the end of a wedge, what chance do you have of making a consistently solid strike of the golf ball?

Right-sided or left-sided, no matter which you are, I hope you get the same epiphany from today’s post as the one that inspired me to write it.

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Terry Koehler is a fourth generation Texan and a graduate of Texas A&M University. Over his 40-year career in the golf industry, he has created over 100 putter designs, sets of irons and drivers, and in 2014, he put together the team that reintroduced the Ben Hogan brand to the golf equipment industry. Since the early 2000s, Terry has been a prolific writer, sharing his knowledge as “The Wedge Guy”.   But his most compelling work is in the wedge category. Since he first patented his “Koehler Sole” in the early 1990s, he has been challenging “conventional wisdom” reflected in ‘tour design’ wedges. The performance of his wedge designs have stimulated other companies to move slightly more mass toward the top of the blade in their wedges, but none approach the dramatic design of his Edison Forged wedges, which have been robotically proven to significantly raise the bar for wedge performance. Terry serves as Chairman and Director of Innovation for Edison Golf – check it out at www.EdisonWedges.com.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. geohogan

    Sep 8, 2023 at 12:06 pm

    Golfers can swing left sided or right sided; and they also swing trail arm straightening (push to impact.. “hitter is term used by Homer Kelly) or trail arm bent(pulling to impact), “swinger” term used by HK.

    Ben Hogan was pulling with both arms through impact… most push , right arm straightening to impact. Not even Homer Kelly conceived of both arms pulling.

  2. geohogan

    Jul 26, 2023 at 8:52 pm

    Your intention controls complex chain action movements..eg golf swing.
    it isnt conscious control of hands, or body, or elbow, hips etc. From top of BS t impact happens too quickly for conscious control(less than 1/4 second)
    It is the correct singular intention at top of BS, befre the DS begins
    that controls the DS.

  3. Terry Koehler

    Jul 21, 2023 at 1:18 pm

    I think those guys who play from their strong left side have a bit of advantage over most of us who don’t. The very point I was making with this article.

    • geohogan

      Oct 30, 2023 at 5:22 pm

      Right hand swingers who are right hand dominant, simply have to consciously keep the right palm facing the sky in DS.
      Making it a conscious intention, prevents the dominant hand taking over the golf swing, especially under pressure(flight or fight), when the dominant hand will try to take over.

  4. Brandon dune

    Jul 20, 2023 at 12:20 am

    When i sat down for my pre bed dump I thought this was going to be the article that changed my golf game. Nope lt was toilet material.

  5. R

    Jul 19, 2023 at 1:13 pm

    So what about Mickelson and Spieth who play with their strong handed-side as the lead side? What about those players? Like Shohei Ohtani who throws right handed and bats left handed

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Clement: Weak grips are injuries in the making for many golfers

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The crazy things golfers do to square the face!

Like Jordan Spieth, trying to go to a bowed wrist at the top or in the downswing to square the club is placing you in a dangerous position for your lead wrist; you are one tree root or deep rough situation away from a nasty injury that could easily require surgery. Don’t let this be you.

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Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

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Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

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My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply.  Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean.  Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

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