00:03Hello, I'm Katie Dawkins, I'm an advanced PGA professional and I'm here at West Hill
00:09Golf Club on their lovely greens to talk to you about the claw putter grip and how it works.
00:16Made famous in 2003 by Mark O'Meara who adopted the claw putting grip to help to save his putting
00:22game and he won in Dubai. It's since become quite popular as other players have watched
00:27successes of other players who've had a go at it, it seems to be working and the recent Ryder Cup
00:32saw Tommy Fleetwood, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood all putting with the claw grip. So why does it
00:40work so well? The claw grip puts the shoulders in control taking out that bottom hand and stopping
00:47any sort of handsy action so anyone who suffers from the yips or suffers from missed short putts
00:52may well need to have a little go at this. Here's how we do it. So to actually apply the
00:57claw grip
00:57in your putting setup, you need to take your top hand and stick the butt of the putter almost up
01:04into your lifeline and hold it very softly. The other hand comes in and almost like creating a
01:11little nodule in this area here or a little shelf, you hook that shelf in and underneath and these
01:19hands just rest very softly on the flat edge of the top of your putter grip. What you'll find from
01:24there is that this arm is kind of out of control, you're really putting just with this side and all
01:30that you're going to do is rock the shoulders back and through and give yourself a nice smooth action.
01:37The feeling of the stroke is light and really smooth. The roll on the ball is going to be much
01:42better than if you were holding it for dear life like this and getting a bit twitchy with it. It's
01:47definitely worth having a go. So what you'll find on the longer putts, especially on greens as beautiful
01:53as these ones at West Hill, is it's fine if the greens are nice and smooth and they're quite speedy.
02:02On greens that are a little bit shaggier and a little bit slower, you will struggle. The other
02:07thing to bear in mind is that the claw grip is a big decision to make. In your golf game,
02:12once you go claw,
02:13you never go back. It's very hard to make the change back to a traditional putting grip if you
02:19like. So if your putting isn't a problem, don't change it, but perhaps the claw is the grip for you.
02:25Give it a whirl, see how it goes and hopefully you'll start to save shots on that green with that
02:30lovely
02:31loose, free-flowing stroke.
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