Golf Pride is challenging the traditional view of golf club grips as mere afterthoughts. The company emphasizes designing grips as equipment tailored for hands to enhance performance. Through its Performance Lab, Golf Pride aims to establish data-driven standards for grips.
For years, golf club grips have received minimal attention during club fittings, often reduced to a simple preference question at the end of the process. Golf Pride, a leading grip manufacturer, views this approach as insufficient. "We believe we’re designing equipment for your hands," says James Ledford, Golf Pride president. "Not handles for your clubs."
Ledford highlights that while clubheads, shafts, and balls have undergone decades of standardized testing, grips lack similar scrutiny. "There really haven’t been established protocols for how to study grips the way the industry studies equipment," he explains. "We all understand clubhead delivery numbers. We don’t really have those standards yet for grips."
To address this, Golf Pride treats grips as active tools that affect strike quality, consistency, and confidence. The company advocates starting the fitting process with grips rather than ending with them, reversing the typical sequence where clubheads come first.
At its state-of-the-art Performance Lab in Pinehurst, N.C., Golf Pride offers Tour-level fittings considering factors like hand size, climate conditions, texture, and firmness. Participants then test options by hitting shots on a simulator to identify the best fit for their swing. "This is where we’re really trying to understand grips as equipment," Ledford says. "It’s about building real data around how grips influence performance."
Historically overlooked, grips have been a constant in golfers' bags. Golf Pride anticipates that recognizing their role will transform this dynamic.
