What you need to know: Golf Pride’s latest putter grip varies the thickness in the opposite manner of conventional grips, with the thicker part on the bottom-hand area and thinner in the top-hand section. The idea being to anchor the top hand and reduce tension in the lower hand.
Availability: Available for pre-order March 25. At retail April 15. The retail price is $30.
3 Cool Things
1. Data driven. Golf Pride didn’t simply decide on its own to make a grip with a reverse taper. In fact, it’s not an entirely new idea. Early in 2010, Jim Furyk cut the top out of his putter grip and put it on upside down so the bigger part of the grip would be in the bottom portion instead of at the top. Furyk won the Transitions Championship using that grip a few weeks later.
What Golf Pride did do, however, was interact with more than 1,000 golfers (more than 200 in person) to understand how the majority of golfers grip their putter. What they found were reverse overlap and left-hand low were the two most popular putter grips. They also studied 18,000 putts on SAM Putt Lab and saw a 15-percent improvement by being more square at impact.
“Within the putter grip category, we observed a trend in which manufacturers were actively trying to design products that removed the hands from the putting process, whereas our research indicates that by optimizing the connection between the hands and grip that players can improve their performance,” said James Ledford, president of Golf Pride.
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2. Each of the hands has a specific function. To Ledford’s point, the Reverse Taper is designed in a manner to enhance the performance function of each hand. The top hand acts as the steering wheel for the stroke, and the thinner section helps anchor that hand for added stability in the stroke. The lower hand, which guides acceleration of the stroke, receives a thicker section to help reduce unwanted tension in that hand and avoiding “flipping” during the stroke.
3. Two sizes, three options. Reverse Taper is constructed using polyurethane to deliver the right softness, texture and weight with a conventional and larger-size option. It also comes in three shapes. A conventional round grip, a pistol shape that helps golfers lock in their upper hand (and a solid choice for players who use a left-hand-low or right-hand-low technique) and a flat option with a slightly more oval-shaped upper section and often preferred by golfers with a palm-to-palm putting style.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
