New Tour Velvet Tour Tack from Golf Pride grips.
It’s definitely a handful.
Especially if you add limited edition to their name. Which are. But they are also something else.
Since Golf Pride opened its new Global Innovation Center in Pinehurst, North Carolina in 2020, its synthetic rubber gear heads have been working on ways to fill what was thought to be an unbridgeable traction gap.
Traction with grip.
It may sound easy, but in Grip World these two things are usually mutually exclusive. It seems the best you can do is give up one to get more of the other. The Golf Pride has grips that offer relative mixes, but the new Tour Velvet Tour Tack may be the first to gain acceptance on the PGA TOUR.
And for that combination of grip and traction, we can thank Ricky Fowler.
Tour Velvet Tour Tack golf grips
The new Golf Pride Tour Velvet Tour Tack golf grips belong to the Continuum Tack-Traction gray area. Tack holds – generally called ““comfortable” handles– are at the soft end of the scale and have a slight texture pattern. Golf Pride grips like the CP2 and Tour Wrap work best in dry conditions and with dry hands. But if it’s damp and your hands sweat, they can be slipperier than a greased stick for 4p july picnic.
At the end of the Continuum Traction are grips that Golf Pride calls “performance”. They are harder and more textured to control moisture when it’s wet or damp and your hands are sweaty. These include the best-selling Golf Pride grips, MCC familyTour Velvet i full Z-Grip cable.
The new Tour Velvet Tour Tack falls somewhere in the middle of this continuum, leaning more towards Traction. As the name suggests, this is the basic Tour Velvet grip, but the Golf Pride has introduced a new unique dimple pattern that is softer and, for lack of a better word, stickier than the Tour Velvet. At the same time, it still has enough grip to operate in hot, humid or wet conditions.
As mentioned, the Tour Velvet Tour Tack falls more on the traction side of the Tack-Traction scale. Golf Pride CPX grip, with a unique texture studded with EXO diamonds it also offers traction and moisture control, but falls on the softer side of the scale. And the Tour Wrap Microsuede is one of them The softest and most grippy Golf Pride gripsbut also has a trace of adhesion due to the secondary polishing process to roughen the texture.
Price and Availability
Golf Pride developed the Tour Velvet Tour Tack at the request of Ricky Fowler. The grip proved popular in the Tour, and was used by, among others, Keegan Bradley and Stewart Cink, so Golf Pride decided to let the rest of us in.
As mentioned, this is an official limited edition. They only come in standard size and are only available on the Golf Pride website.
Golf Pride Tour Velvet Tour Tack golf grips retail for $10.99 each. They will go on sale today.
Visit golfpride.com for details.
A new study of golf pride
Exciting action is taking place at the new Golf Pride Innovation Center in Pinehurst. This is, of course, the seat of Golf Pride’s research and development laboratories. But it also serves as a testing and research center. The company’s latest study looked at how sunlight can affect grips and, by extension, performance.
Golf Pride tested 17 right-handed golfers, all with low single-figure handicaps, aged 24 to 40. They compared fitted 7-irons with fresh new Tour Velvet handles to handles aged in an accelerated UV chamber simulating 60 hours of direct sunlight.
What Golf Pride discovered is just that fresh grips increased ball speed an average of 1.3 miles per hour (overall average was 121.6 miles per hour) and increased carrying distance by 2.3 yards (average carrying capacity was 168.6 yards).
Additionally, the fresh grips also improved the punch to the face. Heel-toe dispersion increased by 11 percent, while high-to-low-foot strike improved by 10 percent. Not surprisingly, study participants also said they felt more confident fresh catches.
