Dear Matt,
Sure, regular golf grips were the norm for a long time. Flat-top pistol grips came along later.
The function of the grip by the hands is to monitor the stroke in progress to make sure the tempo does not speed up and to make sure the forearms and hands are not rolling open or shut in the stroke. Any shape of grip works well for the first of these functions, and I often putt with a gripless old putt-putt putter (shaft only) to make sure my hands stay quiet enough to know whether the shaft is waggling or levering inside my grip due to excessive or too abrupt movement pace.
As for the second function, golf teachers have steadily taught that the thumbs should extend straight down the grip material, as the orientation of the back of the hand on the grip mirrors the putter face orientation. Keeping the thumbs straight down the shaft with no wrist action (dead hands) commits control of the putter face to body parts higher up the joint chain (i.e., arms, elbows, shoulders). If the forearms don't roll open or shut in the stroke, this means the elbows don't change orientation. If the elbows stay quiet, this means that the shoulder action alone controls the putter face during the stroke. Keeping the shoulder action moving in one vertical plane aimed parallel left of the intended putt is what keeps the putter face square with dead hands. When the hands are dead and the shoulder sockets move in a vertical plane, the motion of the hands is just a halfway version of what the putter head is doing at the end of the stick. In a vertical stroke, it is as if the shoulder sockets are parked against a wall and the lead socket is rotated down and back, then up and back to level, then up and back to the finish. Both sockets stay against the wall. This results in the toe of the putter head moving in a trajectory that keeps the toe right at the same distance, and keeps the sweetspot of the putter exactly on the line of the putt all the way, even though the putter rises up going back and rises up going forward. So the hands do the same, in a smaller version. The tips of the thumbs a) do not get any farther or closer to the putt line than when they start, and b) as the putter head rises with the face staying square but aiming more down going back to the top of the backstroke, the back of the lead hand also aims more down, but the thumbs keep their orientation, and this reverses going forward. The straight-down-the-line stroke is like a "slap" with the back of the hand at the sky moved by the shoulder, with no action in the hand and no rolling of the forearm. The whole time, the shaft of the putter stays aiming into the middle of the body and a view of the shaft from the eyes' position shows the thumbs right on top, without any twisting. If you held a short piece of pipe instead of a putter so that you can look clear thru the section of pipe while at address, the stroke does not change your ability to keep seeing straight thru the pipe as the stroke moves to the top of the backstroke or the top of the thru-stroke. And at all times, the thumbs stay right on top as seen from your eyes, without any need to move the hands in any way.
All this said, the reason a flat-top putter helps is that it allows the golfer to establish a plane of orientation of the putter by virtue of flattening the thumb tips against the flat grip surface. Keeping the putter from twisting out of square during the stroke essentially means feeling "no change" in the sensors of the thumb tips against the grip's flatness. The "bad" change that accompanies wristiness or armsiness (rolling the forearms open or shut) is noticed most as a slight shearing of the putter's flat material beneath the thumbs. It's a very subtle thing to notice. But once you cotton onto it, the difference between "nothing changing" and this twisting of the putter's flatness under the thumbs is definitely something you recall to be on alert for.
Another thing about flat-top grips is the way the lead edge of the putter handle fits into the lifeline of the lead hand. (I don't teach "a rear-hand mostly on the putter" grip, as this is a handsy stroke for streaky golfers.) The lead hand goes on the putter first and most, with the rear hand coming on as an after-thought on top of the lead hand. The key relation is that the edge of the handle needs to fit right along the lifeline of the lead hand's palm, along the base of the thumb pad from base knuckle of index finger to splitting the pads at the wrist. This lifeline runs about 30 degrees askew the line of the forearm, and a sound setup position has the wrist along the thumb line cocked down so the putter shaft and lifeline matches the alignment of the forearm bones. I call this the "fly-rod casting" positioning of the putter in the hand to match the forearms. All that said, a putter grip that is NOT round but has an edge to fit into the lifeline seems a little better, as this helps keep the thumb straight down the putter shaft and gives great inside-the-hands cues to proper setup position and to maintaining the putter face orientation during the progress of the stroke. I would say that as a matter of conscious feel of a good grip and good stroke in progress, the sense of the edge of the putter along the lifeline plus the sense of the thumb straight down the shaft is a pretty important ingredient to accurate and repeating putting.
So, to summarize, on the the one hand a non-tapered round grip like the Natural Golf grip works fine for a dead-hands stroke for the first function of monitoring the pace of the movement, but on the other hand the grips that present an edge to fit into the lifeline and that present a flat surface are really beneficial to the stroke. Flat-top pistol grips and square-profile grips work the same way. Golf pride has a grip with an especially well-defined leading edge, as the side is not rounding inward off the edge the way most grips do but is more edge-of-box like. This degree of definition, though, is a personal matter, and may distract some people.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting T
heorist and Instructor
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