Everyone who plays this silly game knows how no two rounds are alike—one day the putter is cold, another day the trusty fade isn’t so trusty, and so on.
Consistency is craved in golf because it can be so hard to find, so fixing one variable is gold.
Golf Pride, the game’s top grip manufacturer, has a new answer for those seeking consistent hand placement, which is Job No. 1 in the swing.
The company’s newly debuted Align Max grip is the big brother—literally—to the original Align which arrived in 2017. Align’s technology consists of a raised rib spanning the backside of the grip, created to fit into the hand's natural contours.
“We’ve seen through our testing it benefits anyone who is serious about consistent hand placement,” says Greg Cavill, Golf Pride’s global head of engineering. “That can drift—you go to the course one weekend and you’re playing great, next weekend you can’t make solid contact. It can be a host of things which are off just slightly, and what we’re trying to do is just take one of those elements away, give you some reference point that makes you more consistent.”
The tech has been proven at the highest levels; Xander Schauffele won his two majors last year with Align grips. But the benefit of the original Align’s rib isn’t easily discovered when golfers go into big-box retailers and face what can be an intimidating variety of grips.
If you go to the grip baskets and sample a few, unshafted, you can’t fully appreciate the rib because it doesn’t fully “poke” until installed.
So Golf Pride created the Align Max, with the “Max” meaning the largest rib allowed by the United States Golf Association. Its equipment standards say that grips on woods and irons may have a rib as high as 0.04 inches, and that’s noticeable whether you hold the grip by itself casually in a golf shop or fully installed on your driver.
“It’s what I would call a static structure and it’s there regardless,” Cavill says. “It sells itself.”
Of course there’s also nothing like Tour validation, and Golf Pride got that last month at the Farmers Insurance Open when Harris English won with the Max Align.
English had previously used the original Align but went to the more pronounced rib design of Align Max throughout his bag at Torrey Pines and promptly picked up his first Tour win in four years.
“That’s how you build momentum, a spark like that,” Cavill says. “We’ve always had high confidence in this product and the concept.
“It’s always nice when a person feels it for the first time and it’s not uncommon for them to go, ‘Wow.’ And then the next comment is ‘is this legal?’ which is also fun because you know you’re pushing the limits.”
Align Max is available on Golf Pride’s multi-compound MCC and MCC Plus4 grips, in standard and midsize.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Golf Pride’s Newest Grip Aligns a Player’s Need for Consistency.
