Golf Grip and Stance Basics for Junior Golfers
The two fundamentals worth getting right before anything else - how a child holds the club, and how they stand to the ball.
Almost every swing fault a junior golfer develops can be traced back to how they hold the club and how they stand to the ball. The good news for parents is that these are the two things you can check without knowing anything about golf, and they are the two things a coach will thank you for maintaining between lessons.
Grip: the ten-finger grip is fine to start
Most golf instruction eventually moves a child toward an overlap or interlock grip, but there is no rush. For very young beginners a simple ten-finger grip - all fingers of both hands on the club, baseball-bat style - is easier to control and perfectly fine while a child is still building hand strength and coordination.
| Grip | What it is | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ten-finger (baseball) | All ten fingers on the handle, hands touching but not linked | Young beginners and any child with small or weak hands | The hands can work independently and fight each other as swing speed grows |
| Overlap (Vardon) | The trail-hand little finger rests on top of the lead-hand index finger | Juniors with hands big enough to hold the club securely, and most adults | Can feel insecure for a child whose hands are still small |
| Interlock | The trail-hand little finger and lead-hand index finger hook together | Juniors with smaller hands who want the hands linked | Interlocking too deeply pulls the club into the palms |
Descriptive, not a recommendation - a coach who has watched your child swing is far better placed to choose. The point is that all three are legitimate, and none is a beginner's mistake.
The checks that apply to every grip
- The club sits more in the fingers than deep in the palms
- The hands sit close together and work as one unit
- Grip pressure is light - somewhere around 4 out of 10
- The hands are in the same place on the handle every time
The toothpaste image works well with children: hold the club as though you are holding a tube of toothpaste with the cap off, firmly enough not to drop it and gently enough not to squeeze any out. A grip that is too tight is one of the most common causes of a tense, restricted junior swing.
Grip size is a real variable
A grip that is too thick for small hands prevents the fingers wrapping properly and encourages a stiff, armsy motion. Junior clubs come with junior grips for this reason, and it is one of the specific things that goes wrong on a cut-down adult club, which keeps its adult-sized grip.
Sizing, materials and when to replace a worn grip are covered in golf grips explained.
Stance: shoulder width, athletic, repeatable
A good junior stance does not need to be complicated. Feet roughly shoulder-width apart, weight balanced on the middle of the feet rather than the heels or toes, knees softly bent, and a slight forward bend from the hips rather than the waist - the same athletic ready position you would see before a basketball free throw or fielding a ground ball.
The bend is the part most often wrong. Children tend to slump from the middle of the back with the chin on the chest. Bending from the hip joints with the back reasonably straight and the chin up leaves room for the shoulders to turn, which is the whole point of the position.
Ball position changes with the club
Stance width and ball position are not fixed across the bag, and a child who sets up identically for every club will strike some of them badly.
| Club | Stance width | Ball position |
|---|---|---|
| Wedges and short irons | Narrow - inside shoulder width | Middle of the stance |
| Mid irons | About shoulder width | Just forward of middle |
| Hybrids and fairway woods | Shoulder width or slightly wider | Two ball widths forward of middle |
| Driver | Widest - outside shoulder width | Opposite the lead heel, teed up |
A conventional starting framework rather than a rule. Coaches vary it to suit a player's build and swing, and a fitting or lesson takes precedence over any table.
Alignment: the fault nobody notices
A junior can have a perfectly good grip, stance and swing and still hit the ball nowhere near the target, simply because they are aimed somewhere else. Aim is invisible to the player - from over the ball, everything looks like it points at the target.
The fix costs nothing: lay a spare club on the ground pointing at the target, parallel to the feet, and let the child see the relationship. Ten minutes of this on a range mat will often fix a 'slice' that was really an alignment problem.
What a parent can usefully check
You do not need technical golf knowledge to be helpful here. The most valuable thing is consistency:
- Does the setup look roughly the same before every shot?
- Are the hands in the same place on the grip each time?
- Are they taking the time to set up, or rushing because they want to swing?
- Do the shoulders look relaxed, or hunched up towards the ears?
Kids rush the setup when they are excited, and a rushed setup is a common source of inconsistent contact well before swing mechanics become the issue. A simple pre-shot routine - grip, aim, stance, one look at the target, swing - is worth more to a young golfer than any technical tip.
Left-handed juniors
Everything above applies in mirror image for a left-handed child, and that is worth stating because most instructional material, most videos and most helpful strangers at the range describe it right-handed. A left-handed junior being coached by a right-handed parent works best when the parent stands facing them and mirrors, rather than trying to translate.
The bigger practical issue is equipment: left-handed junior sets exist but sell in much smaller numbers, so a mis-sized set is more likely simply because the choice was thinner.
What to expect when buying, and where the gaps are, is set out in our gear guide for left-handed junior golfers.
Do juniors need a glove?
A glove is not required, and plenty of good juniors play without one. What it does is improve grip security in heat and humidity, which in an Australian summer is not a small thing, and it reduces blistering for a child who has suddenly started practising a lot.
If the child is regripping the club between shots, wiping their hand on their shorts, or complaining about the club twisting, a glove is worth trying before anything technical is changed. A glove that is too big does nothing, so fit matters - it should be snug across the palm with no loose fingertip material.
Sizing is covered in the junior golf glove sizing guide.
How often to revisit the fundamentals
Grip and stance drift, especially through growth spurts and after breaks from playing. A quick check at the start of a practice session is enough, and it is far easier than diagnosing the swing fault that a drifted grip eventually causes.
The faults that most often follow a drifted grip or setup, and how they show up in ball flight, are in junior golf swing faults and fixes.
It is also worth building the setup check into the start of a session - see our junior warm-up routine.
And for the vocabulary a coach will use while adjusting any of this, see parts of a golf club explained.