One thing many golfers of all skill types don’t know is that they often go too long before re-gripping their clubs. The natural elements, hand sweat and oils and course play will break down the natural rubber. This leads us to one of the most common questions regarding grips. “How often should I re-grip my clubs?”  In this “Play Better Golf “ segment, Golf Pride ambassador and one of the top golf instructors in the game, Michael Breed, shares some tips to knowing when to install new grips and increase your performance.

Michael Breed: Basic rule? Once a year. Once a year you should change your grips. Somebody like me, I’m probably playing a little bit more, I’m going to change my grips maybe two to three times a year.

Now, we start with with frequency that we play, frequency that we practice and as we start thinking about playing and practicing understand this when we are grabbing our club. Do not fall in love with practicing with one club. What will happen is is that you’re going to wear that club out. You might grab your 8-iron and do a lot of playing and practicing with that and all of a sudden you start getting a burnout where your lead thumb would be and another burnout where your trail thumb would be. All sudden we have to replace that grip but we’re not replacing all the other grips. We want to be uniform and all that, don’t fall in love with one club, practice with all the clubs the exact same amount.

The only clubs that you might practice more with and this would be true for me is my wedges. I’m going to spend a lot more time working on my wedge play. As a result of working on my wedge play, I’m probably going to change those grips out a little bit more frequently. So what I would tell you is this, change your grips out at least once a year. Then, you have to figure out how often am I playing and practicing and as a result of the playing in practicing, what’s the exposure that my grips are getting to my hands (which are going to get dirty, your hands are going to get dirty, I hate to tell you that but that’s the way it is. That’s why they make soap).

So you’ve got to make sure that you get that practice time, that playing time all figured out and then what you will figure out is when you’re grabbing this club, it will feel a little slippery to you. When it does that’s when you have to start to change it.

When replacing your grips, be sure to check out the new MCC Align and MCC Align Plus 4 grips from Golf Pride. For more information on this innovative line of grips, check out our recent blog post, “Golf Pride MCC Align Grips.”