Rules question

[Ian_S]

I was watching a video about club grip and the guy doing the video had marks on his gloves and hands showing where to place the club in your grip.



I was just wondering if there's anything in the rules of golf about this kind of thing. Can I get a pen and put dots on my glove showing where to put the club?

 

[Whee]

Didn't Ousthuizen (sp) have a dot on his left glove when he won in Scotland? If I remember rightly it was on his forefinger knuckle, and he was using it to make sure the club was in the right place, ie os he could see the dot.

 

[MashieNiblick]

Don't think there is anything in the Rules about marking the glove. The only stipulation I can see is that the glove is "plain" (Rule 14-3(c)(i). FAQs indicate that plain means the palm and gripping surface of the fingers is smooth.

By the way Oosthuizen's red dot was not a grip aid but a psychological one

From the Independent 20 July 2010

"A small red spot on the glove of golfer Louis Oosthuizen is credited with playing a critical role in his winning of The Open Championship at St Andrews last Sunday. The coloured spot was a visible manifestation of the growing influence of psychology in sport – it was designed to help the 27-year-old South African concentrate on his swing in the crucial moments leading up to a shot.

Sporting professionals are increasingly turning to similar mind-training tricks to improve their performance on the field. It may involve mental imagery that allows them to rehearse a game in their heads, or psychological blocking techniques that stop them from dwelling on past mistakes. In the case of Oosthuizen, an outsider who was widely expected to collapse under the pressure on the final day, it was a simple dot on his glove to make him focus on his swing. The idea came from Karl Morris, a Manchester sports psychologist who was asked to help Oosthuizen improve his concentration before starting his swing after a string of disappointing results in previous golfing events.

"His pre-shot routine was all over the place. I suggested he changed his whole game plan after he told me that when he played in the US Open last month he was making split decisions instead of thinking about what he should have been doing. One of the tips I gave him was to put a red spot on his glove and to focus on it during his swing," Dr Morris said."

Confirmed by Karl Morris in person at a seminar he gave at our club last year.

 

[Whee]

I stand corrected, cheers.