The grip is the only part of a golf club you actually touch, and four companies decide what almost everyone holds. Golf Pride, Lamkin, Winn and SuperStroke work from a shared assumption — that a grip is a consumable, black and ribbed, replaced when it goes shiny. Five smaller houses start somewhere else, and they are why the category has become interesting again.
What the independents sell splits two ways. RIPIT and Stick Grips work on the full-swing set and treat the grip as a surface to print on, in limited art series and monogram repeats. The other three work on the putter, where BestGrips wraps cowhide by hand the way grips were made before rubber won on price, Garsen builds a trapezoid nobody else tools up for, and Rosemark moulds a micro-texture that has won ten million dollars on tour.
The economics explain the shape of the field. A full set is thirteen grips, so a Stick set runs about a hundred and seventy-five dollars and a RIPIT set about three hundred and twenty-five. That is why so many of these brands lead with putter grips. A putter grip is a single purchase, an easy first buy, and the one club where a golfer will tolerate something that looks unusual.
The five below run from thirteen dollars to forty, and all of them are in stock as of late August. Two are for the whole set, three are for the one club where a golfer will try something strange.
Two · art series and monogramsThese two treat the grip as the last unclaimed surface on a golf club, which is the newest idea in the category and the one the big four have not followed.
Three · leather, trapezoid, micro-textureThe putter grip is where a golfer will accept something unusual, so it is where the small houses do their most interesting work — one in leather, one in a shape, one in a surface.
Five are covered here. RIPIT out of Australia for printed art-series grips at $24.95 and Stick Grips at $13.49 for full-swing sets; BestGrips in Conroe, Texas for handmade leather at $35, Garsen for the trapezoid QUAD at $39.99, and Rosemark for tour-proven micro-texture at $35 on the putter side.
A full set is thirteen grips. At Stick's $13.49 that comes to about $175, and at RIPIT's $24.95 about $324. That arithmetic is why several small brands lead with putter grips instead, which are a single purchase.
Leather was the standard before rubber won on price and durability, and BestGrips has been making them by hand in Conroe, Texas since 2003. Leather moves under the hand differently to rubber and it patinas with use. It also costs more and wants more care.
A putter grip with a trapezoid cross-section — a flat top for the thumbs and angled sides that set the shoulders back and tuck the elbows in, which reduces wrist action through the stroke. It comes in tapered and non-tapered versions and works with claw and saw grips.
Rosemark is the clearest case: more than ten million dollars won on tour with its grips, and Russell Knox took the 2018 Travelers Championship using the 1.25 MFS. Garsen's QUAD has also been in play on tour.
It is a moulded or printed reference on the grip that shows you where the club face is pointing without looking down at it. RIPIT puts one at both ends of every grip, and Stick moulds in separate hand and club-face markers. It is a rules-legal aid as long as it does not indicate line of play once you are over the ball.
Rosemark sells into more than twenty-five countries. RIPIT is Australian and ships internationally from there. BestGrips, Stick and Garsen are US-based, so check shipping on the product page before ordering from abroad.
PURE is a family-owned maker in Mesa, Arizona producing 100 per cent US-made grips, and on the face of it belongs in this company. Its own store currently carries a notice saying it is not fulfilling orders directly and points buyers to Amazon instead, so it is left out here.
