Tom Siddon, a three-time Northeastern New York PGA Section Rolland Stafford Sportsmanship Award winner and three-time Section Assistant Player of the Year, is the PGA Head Professional at Massena (New York) Country Club.
mcc_clubrepair@yahoo.com
I like to put smaller impulse items on counter to show what I have. The new super stroke grips are a great conversation starter to get someone to maybe get their whole set changed.
When fitting customers and students for new golf clubs, it’s easy to focus on shaft length, lie angle and lofts and easy to forget to fit for a proper grip. However, at Massena Country Club, we always make sure to fit our customers and students for the proper grips. With all of the new grip technology available today, there are plenty of options to offer consumers and find what will work best for their games and preferences. Most importantly, we fit the grips to ensure they are the proper size for the customer; when a customer gets a standard grip, it’s often either too large or small for their hands, which can hinder their swings and hand action. From there, we drill down to discover what type of grip the customer prefers: A wrap or a velvet? How tacky do they want it? Cord or no cord? After that is determined, we can then get into aesthetics and pick a color that the customer likes.
Our instructors always fit for grips during the fittings, but we also make sure to evaluate our students’ grips during regular lessons and clinics. If we notice our students have grips that hinder their swings, we offer to properly fit them for grips and replace them. We advertise grip fittings and replacements in local newspapers and through our member communication efforts. We also have an entire wall in our shop dedicated to grips to show our customers and students all of the different varieties available and we encourage them to pick them up to see how they feel. Our grip fitting program has been an absolute success. We sell hundreds of grips per year, many of which come from full set regrippings or new clubfittings. Our average price per grip is about $9, which includes our labor charges, and with the amount we sell per year, it provides my golf shop with a nice boost in revenue.