Regripping My Clubs - GolfBlogger Golf Blog

I played a lot of golf this past season, and found that my grips were getting a little more worn than I would like, so I recently took advantage of a snowy day to regrip several of my clubs.

Regripping clubs is easy and economical. It does, however, require some gear. Fortunately, you can buy most of this stuff inexpensively on Amazon:

You’ll also need mineral spirits, a workbench vise, a basin to catch the mineral spirits (I use a paint roller tray), and a hair dryer. You probably have a hair dryer. The other things you can get at your local hardware store (including the hook blade utility knife).

You can get the whole kit for around $40, not including the grips and vise. Given what pro shops charge to change grips, there is a lot of money to be saved here.

The procedure is simple. Use the hook blade utility knife to slice off the old grips. Keep the point up so as not to scratch the shaft.

Use the hairdryer to heat up the old grip tape to loosen it. Sometimes I can just pull the old tape off. At other times, I find it helpful to use a grip tape stripper. It should come off easily if heated sufficiently. If you need to use force, be careful with the stripper so as to not scratch the shaft.

Clamp the shaft into the vise, using the vise clamp. Put the paint tray or other basin under the grip

Wrap the grip tape around the shaft. There are two ways to do this: spiral it on, and lengthwise. I do it lengthwise. I start on one side of the butt end of the shaft, tape it up to and over the top and back down the opposite side.

If you spiral it up, put a bit of tape over the top of the club. That helps it to slide on later.

Use the grip to determine how far down the club to extend the tape. A litle too long is better than a little too short. If the tape is too long, I use an exacto knife to carefully trip the amount that extends below the grip.

Peel the top layer of the grip tape, exposing the adhesive.

Next, half fill the grip with mineral spirits, holding your finger over the small hole on the butt end. Hold a finger on the other hand over the open end and slosh the spirits around inside the grip.

Then, pour the spirits from inside the grip slowly over the grip tape. This should make it very slippery. If it’s not, pour some more spirits over it.

Align the grip side you want facing up to the proper side and then swiftly slide the grip over the butt end. The key is to do straight on in one smooth motion. Do it fast. Don’t try to precisely align the grip while sliding it on. Just get it on. If it stalls, or seems hard to put on, you didn’t enough spirits on the grip. Try to back the grip off and then add more spirits to the inside and to the grip tape.

Seriously, I don’t think you can use enough mineral spirits. I like my grip tape sopping wet.

Once the grip is on, if you have used sufficient spirits, you will have several minutes to twist it to align it perfectly. I find that most grips have small alignment lines at the bottom and top. Assuming you have gotten the grip on in a fashion close to the way you want the logo to face, you will only need to make minor adjustments.

As an aside, I often will regrip my clubs without using a vice. With sufficient mineral spirits, I can hold the club shaft in one hand and slide the grip on with the other.

And you’re done.

I tend to do the grips in an assembly line style process. I cut all the grips off, then strip the tape from each, then tape them all back up, then one-by-one peel the top, slather on the mineral spirits and slide on the golf grips.

I can do a whole set in under an hour.

For a first try, I suggest buying an extra grip. That way, if you underestimate the amount of mineral spirits needed, and one gets stuck, you can cut it off, and try again.

The mineral spirits you catch in the pan can be reused. A roll of tape will last a long time.

Note that all of this is for round grips for woods and irons. While putter grips use the same process for putting the grip on, aligning the tops, sides and bottoms is more difficult. I have a special alignment board for that.