John Green, PGA Master Professional,PGA Life Member,High Point, North Carolina
Getting measured for a golf grip is a lot like getting measured for a suit, right up until the part where you have to swing it.
John Green, a PGA Master Professional in High Point, North Carolina, who spent his career teaching and fitting before he retired in 2021, got tired of watching fitted sets come back over the one spec the customer never actually tested. His fix cost almost nothing. He built a rack of 11 clubs in graduated grip sizes and let players hit balls with them until they picked one. It’s an enduring idea that he still passes along to his PGA peers.
“Grip fitting has always come down to a measurement,” says Green, a member of the first graduating class of the PGM program at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. “You see whether the middle and ring fingers of the top hand just touch the palm, or you measure the hand and the longest finger and read it off a chart. Then the fitter tells the customer what they need to have, and the customer stands there.”
What convinced Green the chart was the problem surfaced during a busy period in 2015, when two big men with equally jumbo hands both told him they preferred the feel of a regular-size grip. He has also seen enough fitted sets returned over grip size to know what that costs a shop, which is usually every grip in the set swapped out to avoid refunding the whole order.
“The clubs didn’t feel right in their hands when they were swinging them,” says Green, the 2000 Illinois PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year. “The only way to avoid that is to have different grip sizes on clubs so the customer can actually hit balls with the size they’re being fitted for. They may end up back where they started. That’s fine. They chose it.”
Every fall most OEM fitting carts replace some or all of their iron shafts, and Green keeps 11 of them from his preferred manufacturer. Two get cut a half-inch under standard, four stay standard, two go a half-inch over, two go an inch over and one goes an inch and a half over. Shortening and extending throws the flex off, which does not matter when the only thing being tested is a pair of hands, though he prefers a light flex on the two shortest and stiff at the long end when he can get them.
“If you’re required to send the shafts back, call the rep and ask if you can keep them,” Green says. “They’ll probably say yes, because their heads are still attached and still getting used. I like the Golf Pride CP2 Wrap for this because it comes in every size and stretches on easy, and a lot of customers are going to handle these, so they get dirty. Those clean up and stay tacky.”
Those 11 shafts become nine grip sizes and two specialty clubs. Each size gets a club with the grip installed by itself and a club with two extra wraps underneath, which lands the feel squarely between two stock sizes. The sizes climb with the length, because taller players tend to have bigger hands. The single longest club carries eight extra wraps for the player whose hands really are that big. The last two are standard length with six wraps built into the bottom half of one grip and the top half of the other, which is what Green reaches for with a player who has arthritis in one hand.
With that system in place, the fitting starts wherever the fitter chooses – such as a hand size test, glove size, or reference to what a player is using now. Then Green hands over a club one size smaller than indicated and lets the back-and-forth run until the player finds their favorite.
“I’ve watched a lot of fittings over my career, and the one thing they have in common is the fitter telling the customer the specs he needs,” Green says. “The only part the customer participates in is hitting golf balls. Let customers get involved in the grip sizing and make the decision based on feel and results. Then they’ve made the decision themselves, and you don’t get the set back.”
