Courtesy: GolfSmith

The golf grip. It's often overlooked and taken for granted.

At least, I never gave mine a second thought.

But a study conducted several years ago surprised me when I read it.

The study asked 151 golfers at two golf stores in Atlanta a bunch of questions relating to grips. No polling company worth its salt would say that 151 golfers is a scientifically representative sampling; you need something over a thousand to get that.

But of those 151 golfers, half got their golf clubs re-gripped once a year and nearly 80 percent did it every two years.

I'm turning red with shame as I write this because I am guilty of using grips for a longer time than the half-life of a nuclear blast. And I do recall that, on occasion, my 9 iron would reach the green before my ball did.

So, scientific study or not, re-gripping once a year is a darn good idea. And I hereby promise to do it, too.

The point of re-gripping came up in a conversation I had with my teaching pro, Mark Greenwood, Director of Swing Machine Golf Canada. We were chatting over coffee the other day and Mark told me that he gets his changed three times a year (plays a lot...)!

Remember, Mark is the guy who had some interesting things to say about how often you should replace your golf ball in an early post on eagleparbirdie.com.

He does not own shares in any ball or grip companies, to my knowledge.

Anyway, Mark told me the grips on his Dad's clubs were awful. They were as old as the clubs and his Dad had bought them before the Beatles had left Liverpool. Nuff said.

But his Dad also had arthritis in his hands and had trouble gripping the club with any pressure. His right hand was worse than his left (he's a right-handed player).

"We built up my Dad's new grips so that there were 9 wraps on the lower part of the grip for his right hand and only 6 wraps on the upper part for his left hand", Mark told me.

"Now he can grip them with the right pressure and, bingo, he's hitting the ball farther than ever!"

Very interesting. The size of the grip is critical, according to Mark. Club fitters everywhere would agree.

"If the grips are too big, you can't rotate your wrists properly at impact. Too small and you can over-rotate. Small grips will also cause you to grip too tightly", he said.

And tight grip pressure, as we all know, leads to tension through the wrist, and up the forearm to the shoulder and penalizes the golfer with a loss in clubhead speed.

Some other thoughts: wash your grips with warm, soapy water and dry them with a towel, rubbing up and down the grip. That removes the dirt and grime from your hands that can create a slippery surface around the grip.

Get your grips fitted to your hands just like you get a club fitted to your physical dimensions and your swing. That means going to a club fitter or club maker.

Mark maintains that grips on off-the shelf clubs are wrapped maybe once.

Best of all, re-gripping your clubs is one of the cheapest things you can do to improve your game! And the off-season usually finds plenty of great deals, too.