What You Need To Know
- Golf Pride’s Reverse Taper putter grips are a twist on the typical putter grip, featuring a wider bottom half of the grip than top half
- The Reverse Taper grips come in three shapes — Round, Pistol and Flat — and two sizes — medium and large — with all three weighing between 63-70 grams
- Available as of April 15, 2024. Each grip retails for $29.99 each
During my visit to Golf Pride’s new headquarters last April, there were a few things that stuck out to me that I still think about: the Starbucks-style coffee bar, the putting course that spanned the entire office, the innovative designs that folks thought up & had manufactured in the back factory (even in one-off what-if experiments) and the passion with which the people I met with spoke about their company.
For many golfers, the grip on their clubs can be an afterthought, something that comes standard on any wedge, iron or driver. That couldn’t be further from the way the folks at Golf Pride view it. That may seem like an obvious observation, but folks like Jamie Ledford, the President of Golf Pride, live their work and very clearly put their money where their mouths are by proving grips are performance equipment.
When I was there, the CPX grips were the company’s latest rollout (and grips that I’ve used and purchased another set of since). Now, with the Reverse Taper, those gray-and-blue CPXs will have some company at the bottom of my golf bag with a red-and-black Reverse Taper putter grip.
A cool perk of this job has been getting to know Peter Sanders, SwingU’s Chief Data Officer. He invented the Strokes Gained stat and revolutionized the way we look at golf statistics. In talking to him, he’s not one to discount the “drive for show, putt for dough” mantra that so many stat-heads criticize as outdated.
Quite the opposite, in fact. While Peter agrees with many about the understated importance of driving and ball-striking, he still emphasizes the importance of putting on numerous occasions. What Peter has found is that regardless of skill level or handicap, putting accounts for just about 40% of every golfer’s strokes in a given round.
In the same way Ledford and his associates proved that new grips can limit dispersion and boost ball speed, they have come up with a better way to putt, simply by adjusting the grip.
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First Impressions
Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that are right in front of you. You can pick up one of the three shapes of Reverse Taper grips and shrug.
What’s so different about this? It looks the same as any other grip.
That’s when you realize you’re holding it upside down. We’re so conditioned to think grips go from thick at the top to thinner at the bottom, the Reverse Taper — see where the name comes from? — makes you think.
Coming in three shapes, there’s something for everyone. There’s no marketing jargon in the shapes.
“Within the putter grip category, we observed a trend in which manufacturers were actively trying to design products that removed the hands from the putting stroke, whereas our research indicates that by optimizing the connection between the hands and grip, players can improve their performance,” Ledford told Golf.com. “Through hundreds of concept iterations, our innovation team created Reverse Taper, which has tested quite positively with players of all skill levels.”
The traditional Round grip is for golfers who have come to expect the SuperStroke-ification of putter grips: a thick, circular grip, just with a slightly wider bottom than top.
The Pistol grip, again, begets the traditional pistol putter grip that fits into your palm comfortably for many players. And finally, the Flat grip is designed for players who have come to enjoy the palm-to-palm grip position.
How The Reverse Taper Grips Stack Up
Similar to what Ledford and team did with the new grip/ball speed test, they got to work trying to find the best way for the most golfers to putt, which meant once again, trusting the data. This time, Golf Pride conducted interviews, studied more than 300 putting grips, tracked 18,000 SAM PuttLab putts, did outdoor testing and went through 100 different iterations until the Reverse Taper was born.
“It’s a subtle reverse taper—it’s not crazy,” Golf Pride Chief Innovation Officer Andy Erickson told MyGolfSpy. “What we saw in the SAM PuttLab data is that it’s noticeably more square at impact across the board (compared to a parallel putter grip) for nearly every player we put through testing.”
What does a square putterface mean at impact? As little as two degrees open or closed could cause a golfer to miss a five-footer. And that room for error diminishes as you move farther from the hole. So, yeah, a square putter face at impact is important.
Personally, I gravitated towards the Round and Pistol offerings over the Flat. That’s not to say the Flat grip doesn’t have its merits — I admit I went through a FlatCat phase — but my current putter feels favor the more traditional style of grip.
The Takeaway
Let’s be honest, we’re golfers. Most of us would try anything (within reason) to shave a stroke or two or five off of our scores. And with the data to back up its claims, Reverse Taper is a unique and effective way to improve your putting.
The subtlety with which it has been designed isn’t in-your-face obvious, but the feel that you get over a putt is definitely a sensation that something slightly different is at play, and it engages both hands in a way a traditional grip never could.
The Golf Pride Reverse Taper putter grips are available for purchase as of April 15, 2024. They retail at $29.99 per grip, and come in Round, Pistol and Flat shapes and Medium and Large sizes. Find out more about the Reverse Taper on the Golf Pride website.
