Woods’ interlock grip a result of his small hands from early childhood

○ Jang Ha-na, a twelve-year-old elementary school student, mesmerized officials from the IMG, world’s leading sports management firm. On November 14 in a golf clinic which was held prior to the Skins Tournament, Jang received a private lesson from Colin Montgomerie. After watching Jang’s swing, IMG officials recommended that he go to the United States. IMG officials said that Jang possessed an unbelievably fantastic swing and promised to subsidize all of her expenses if she decides to study at the David Leadbetter Golf Academy in Florida, which is operated by IMG. With her powerful swings that exceed 250 yards, Jang has swept all tournaments at the elementary school level, and became the first elementary school student ever to participate in the Korea Women’s Open early this year.

○ Another twelve-year-old elementary school student was lucky to get a private lesson from Tiger Woods. MBC, the sponsor of this event, was looking for a golf prodigy among the 200,000 won gallery ticket holders, and chose Jin-ho from Daegu after learning that Kim was an ardent fan of Woods.

Kim, whose room is papered with the pictures of Woods, started to play golf at the age of four, and his best score is 90. “I’m so happy and honored to get to see Tiger Woods, whom I could see only in pictures and on TV, and to get a lesson directly from him,” said Kim. Woods signed his autograph in his caricature and gave it to Kim.

○ The reason why Woods uses the interlock grip is because he started to play golf at such an early age when his hands were so small. “Because I started golf when I was so young, I used a baseball grip. I used to hold the golf club as I would hold baseball bat,” said Woods. As he grew older, he tried to use conventional and most popular overlap grip, but because his hands were still small, he did not feel comfortable with that grip.

After using the interlock grip, Woods could hold the club better and produced good swings. That is the reason why Woods stuck with the interlock grip even after his hands became large enough to use overlap grip. The interlock grip literally locks the hands together by intertwining the little finger of the bottom hand with the index finger of the top hand.

Young-Sik Ahn ysahn@donga.com