How to Grip a Putter: The 4 Common Grips

There's no single correct way to grip a putter — there are four common ones, and each solves a different problem. Conventional is the default. Cross-handed tames a wristy stroke. The claw kills the yips. Arm-lock locks the shaft to your forearm so the face barely rotates. Pick based on what's actually breaking down in your stroke, not what looks normal on TV.

Key Takeaways

• The conventional (reverse overlap) grip is still the tour default and the right starting point for most beginners.
• Cross-handed, or left-hand-low, reduces excess wrist action by putting the lead hand in control of the stroke.
• The claw grip largely takes the trail hand out of the equation — a common fix for short-putt yips.
• Arm-lock connects the shaft to your lead forearm, which cuts down face rotation but requires a longer putter, usually 40 to 42 inches.
• Roughly a third of tour players now use something other than a conventional grip, so switching isn't a sign of a broken stroke.

What's the Standard Grip, and Who Should Start There?

The conventional putting grip, most often set up as a reverse overlap, puts the trail hand below the lead hand with the lead index finger draped across the fingers of the trail hand. Palms face each other, both thumbs run straight down the top of the grip, and the whole thing feels close to a natural handshake. If you've never had a putting problem worth naming, this is the grip you should be using. It gives both hands roughly equal say in the stroke, which is exactly what you want for touch and distance control on long lag putts across two tiers of a green. Most beginners should build their stroke here first and only go looking for an alternative once they can point to a specific issue — three-putting from 40 feet, a hooky pull on 4-footers, hands that won't stop shaking over a 3-footer. If you're brand new to the game generally, our golf for beginners guide is a good place to start before you get deep into putter mechanics.

Wristy Stroke Blowing Putts Past the Hole? Try Cross-Handed

Cross-handed, sometimes called left-hand-low for a right-handed golfer, simply swaps the hands from conventional — lead hand goes below trail hand instead of above it. That small swap changes the lever system in a real, mechanical way. In a conventional grip, the trail hand sits below the fulcrum and tends to dominate, and an overactive trail hand is exactly what causes that "flip" through impact where the wrists break down and the putter face snaps shut or stays open. Cross-handed puts the lead hand below the fulcrum instead, so the more the trail hand pushes, the more stable the wrist angle stays rather than less. The practical result: a cleaner, more shoulder-driven pendulum stroke and fewer putts that skid off-line because a wrist broke down at the worst possible moment. If your misses feel random — long one putt, way short the next, a few pulled left for no reason — a wristy stroke is worth suspecting, and cross-handed is the first thing to try before overhauling anything else.

Fighting the Yips on Short Putts? Try the Claw

The claw keeps your lead hand in a normal, conventional position on top of the grip, then changes the trail hand entirely — instead of wrapping around the handle, it holds the putter loosely between thumb and forefinger with the palm facing your body, more like you're pinching a pencil than gripping a club. That looseness is the whole point. A twitchy, overactive trail hand is a common driver of the yips, that involuntary jab or flinch that shows up mostly on short putts under pressure, and the claw all but disables that hand's ability to manipulate the putter face at the last instant. Justin Rose has used a version of the claw for years and has talked publicly about how it took the trail hand out of the stroke without asking him to relearn his whole setup. It won't fix a genuine yardage-and-line problem, but if your issue is specifically short putts where your hands seem to have a mind of their own, the claw is worth a bucket of range balls before you try anything more drastic.

Can't Keep the Face Square? Try Arm-Lock

Arm-lock is the most mechanically different of the four. You run the shaft of the putter up against your lead forearm at address and keep that contact through the entire stroke, using a longer putter — typically 40 to 42 inches versus the standard 33 to 35 — built with a grip long enough to reach the forearm. Because the shaft is resting against a moving arm rather than being anchored to your body, it's fully legal under the Rules of Golf even after the 2016 anchoring ban; the USGA's distinction is that nothing is held fixed against the torso, the whole assembly still swings freely. The payoff is stability: locking the shaft angle to your forearm removes a lot of the small-muscle movement in your hands and wrists that lets the face open or close mid-stroke, so the putter face tends to stay square through a longer, more repeatable window at impact. Bryson DeChambeau and Webb Simpson have both putted arm-lock at a high level, and it's become common enough on tour that a few players, Billy Horschel among them, have openly grumbled that it's too effective and should be restricted. If your miss pattern is scattered left and right rather than long and short — meaning the face, not your distance control, is the problem — arm-lock is the grip built specifically for that.

So Which One Should You Actually Use?

Work backward from the miss, not forward from the grip. No putting problems yet? Stay conventional. Putts drifting off-line inconsistently with no clear pattern? Try cross-handed first. Hands seizing up specifically inside six feet? Go claw. Face rotating open or closed regardless of distance? Arm-lock, understanding it means buying a longer putter. None of these is more "correct" than the others — tour pros use all four, sometimes the same player switching between two depending on the putt. And putting grip only fixes part of the equation; if your full-swing grip is also working against you, our guide to gripping a golf club covers that separately, since the two are related but not the same fix.

Sources

• Golf Digest — Pros trust this weird putting grip: why does it keep working?
• Golf.com — This is the reason that arm-anchor putting is still legal
• Golf.com — Billy Horschel calls for arm-lock putting ban: "Guys are doing it too good"
• Golf Insider — Cross-Handed Putting (Left Hand Low): A How-To Guide