{"id":235392,"date":"2025-10-23T21:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/235392\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T21:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:48:16","slug":"secrets-from-where-it-all-starts-in-a-pros-swing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/235392\/","title":{"rendered":"Secrets From Where It All Starts in a Pro’s Swing"},"content":{"rendered":"

At PGA Tour events, the equipment trucks stand at the ready to help players, Titleist to Callaway to Ping to TaylorMade and more, all filled with their latest and greatest. And one thing in common.<\/p>\n

Hundreds upon hundreds of Golf Pride grips.<\/p>\n

Brett Zollman, Golf Pride\u2019s tour manager, is the Switzerland of equipment reps on the road, having no loyalty to any one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) but being friendly with staff from all of them. Because his company is the leader in the grip space and on any given week a number of players are going to want fresh ones.<\/p>\n

While on the road at the Bank of Utah Championship<\/a>, Zollman took a few minutes to talk to Sports Illustrated about his role in the pro golf equipment ecosystem and how players treat grips\u2014you know, the one thing that connects all of us to our clubs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here were some of his best anecdotes.<\/p>\n

> There\u2019s no baseline for switching out grips. This kinda sounds obvious for pros and amateurs; us weekend warriors might need new grips once a year or maybe more frequently if we\u2019re playing and practicing more. Pros of course go through grips more often\u2014but sometimes they\u2019ll also prolong when they can.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe baseline [for changing grips] is when you begin to see change in the grip,\u201d Zollman says. \u201cYou can clean the grips for sure, corded grips last a little longer because you can just expose a little more cord, that\u2019s done through sandpaper or just washing the grips.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Harris<\/p>\n

Harris English uses the Golf Pride Align Max grips, recognizable by the red rib on the bottom side of the grip. \/ Brett Davis-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

But reminder grips\u2014those that have a rib on the bottom for hand placement, like Golf Pride\u2019s Align series<\/a>\u2014might last even longer in a pro\u2019s bag.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they get the grips on exactly where they like it, often times they\u2019ll use that set of grips as long as they possibly can,\u201d Zollman says. \u201cThey may say \u2018I like where these are, I\u2019ll push it another couple weeks before we\u2019ve got to do something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

> The classics still dominate. Ask what Golf Pride\u2019s most popular models are with the pros and Zollman says it\u2019s the Tour Velvet<\/a> and Tour Velvet Cord. Some 60 to 70 players use them weekly on the PGA Tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes back to people growing up, like your first sets of clubs,\u201d Zollman says. \u201cIt comes stock on a lot of OEM products and you kind of have this comfortable, familiar feel and that\u2019s kind of what golf is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for what it\u2019s worth, the Tour Velvet line is also among the most inexpensive at retail.<\/p>\n

> But there is some room for color. While Zollman says most pros keep it simple with basic black, colors do make it into bags. Tyrrell Hatton has an affinity for purple and plays purple MCC Plus 4 grips<\/a>. Ben Griffin, who played at North Carolina, uses light blue MCC grips.<\/p>\n

\"Tyrrell<\/p>\n

Tyrrell Hatton is partial to purple grips. \/ Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Colors are more prevalent on the LPGA, where Zollman estimates around 40% of players dip into Golf Pride\u2019s extensive selections.<\/p>\n

> There are a lot of grips out there in a given week. Between a stocking trailer and the aforementioned OEM trailers, Zollman estimates that 6,000 to 8,000 grips are on-site in any given week. That covers all the popular ones and some more obscure models.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have it covered for the one-offs that we don\u2019t see too often,\u201d Zollman says \u201cA lot of times that comes from your Monday qualifiers or somebody that we just haven\u2019t seen in a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes the U.S. Open and the majors are fun because we see players from other countries that we don\u2019t necessarily see which might have a different grip or a different setup than we have traditionally stocked. But not too often are we caught off-guard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Golf<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Golf Pride grips are at the ready on the TaylorMade tour truck. On the bottom right are grips for TaylorMade staff players including Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa and Rory McIlroy. \/ Courtesy Brett Zollman<\/p>\n

> Putter grips can be sacred. While Zollman is in the business of making sure pros get new grips, he knows there are some untouchables.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutter grips are a little different. It\u2019s a lot of feel,\u201d Zollman says. \u201cWith putters, if somebody\u2019s had a grip on for a long time, that putter is not typically gonna go anywhere. They may bench it for a while then, they put it off to the side for a minute\u2014you know, kind of put it in a timeout.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may try something new, but they always want to have that backup that\u2019s comfortable, that\u2019s traditional, that they know what it is and they know how it operates so if something ever goes wrong, they can go back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

>There\u2019s a tale in the tape. Going into the weeds of grip setups, Zollman says most pros use grips with larger core diameters and then build them up with tape underneath, essentially stretching out the grip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys like a firmer product, something that\u2019s going to have less torque so they can have more control over the face,\u201d Zollman says. \u201cThey prefer to do that rather than go up to another size, if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At PGA Tour events, the equipment trucks stand at the ready to help players, Titleist to Callaway to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-235392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}