The unusual grip setup helping Rory McIlroy ‘hit whatever shot I want’

Rory McIlroy arrived at the BMW Championship after a week in which he had to search for his swing feels again. On Monday, he practiced at his home in Florida while longtime swing coach Michael Bannon and caddie Harry Diamond watched. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he continued the work on the range at Bellerive Country Club, the host venue for this week’s BMW Championship. Across those two practice days, McIlroy hit 313 balls.

Even a six-time major champion is not immune to a stretch when the golf swing loses stability. The previous week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, McIlroy finished 66th among 68 players. He said that over the past several months he had started to fall back into unwanted habits in his swing.

“Yeah, I’ve definitely gotten into some bad habits in my golf swing over the past few months,” McIlroy said Wednesday during his pre-tournament press conference. “As you play tournament golf, the golf swing takes a back seat and all you’re really trying to do is hit shots and be visual and be instinctive. But as you do that, you can start to revert back into some bad habits. And I’ve certainly done that this year.”

McIlroy said he spent Monday in Florida working with Bannon and Diamond. After that session, he felt the process was moving in the right direction, but he also knew that the new feeling would require a large number of repetitions to become reliable.

“But I spent the day at home in Florida on Monday, worked with my coach, Michael, and Harry, and we definitely, I feel like we’re heading into the right direction,” he said. “But, yeah, I have this feeling in my golf swing that I just, I need to engrain, and I just need to hit a ton of balls while doing it. Whether it be with the head cover under my right arm, or I’ve made a couple of clubs up with different grips to try to feel like where my hands should be halfway back. So I just have to hit a ton of balls to try to get that ingrained.”

The player also emphasized how difficult it is to transfer a practice-range feeling to a tournament round. A golfer can spend three hours working on one specific movement, but on the course there is no opportunity to stop after every shot and rebuild the motion.

“That’s what’s hard,” McIlroy said. “It’s hard to do that for three hours on the range and then try to go on the golf course and play like that as well. So I think the more reps I can get on the range, the more comfortable it will end up becoming when I get out on the course.”

The early BMW Championship results suggested that the work had produced an immediate improvement. In Thursday’s opening round, McIlroy shot a six-under 64 to tie for the lead. He followed with a 69 on Friday, and he began Saturday’s third round five strokes behind leader Wyndham Clark.

The most distinctive detail in his preparation involved two specially modified clubs. McIlroy explained that, in his preferred halfway-back position, his right hand should sit on top of the grip. To make that feeling more obvious, he fitted a lob wedge and a 7-iron with Flat Cat putter grips positioned at a 45-degree angle.

The setup creates a clearly defined flat surface. When the club reaches roughly halfway back, McIlroy’s right hand contacts that flat section and sits on top of the grip — the position where he wants to feel the hand.

“It just helps my right arm work better,” McIlroy said Friday. “Just the structure of it. Then the club gets more supported at the top. And then if I’m there, I feel like I can really hit whatever shot I want.”

He added that the drill was not designed to produce one particular shot shape. Its purpose was to improve the structure of the right arm and control the hand’s position as the club moved away from the ball. “So it’s more to help the right arm structure and sort of feel like keeping the right hand like on top of the grip more on the way back,” McIlroy said.

The flat grip therefore served as a training reference rather than a recommendation for standard tournament equipment. McIlroy used the altered lob wedge and 7-iron to receive immediate feedback about his right-hand position. The head cover under his right arm provided another practice aid, helping him maintain the intended connection between his arm and body.

The BMW Championship episode illustrated the difference between mechanical practice and tournament golf. After hitting 313 balls on the range, McIlroy carried the new feeling into competition, while stressing that consistency would require further repetitions. His 64 on Thursday and 69 on Friday represented a clear improvement over his 66th-place finish at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, although he still trailed Wyndham Clark by five strokes at the start of Saturday’s round.

The PGA Tour also posted video of McIlroy’s Thursday range session on YouTube. It showed the player working at Bellerive Country Club and using the practice aids he had described during his press conferences. For McIlroy, the sequence demonstrated how a simple visual reference — a flat grip surface under the right hand — can help restore swing control and the freedom to choose a shot trajectory.