Grip Buddy Review

Grip Buddy
Grade: B

Teacher’s Comments: Quite effective in encouraging a proper “in the fingers” grip.

I never cease to be amazed at the resourcefulness variety of golf training tools. There is a gadget for every conceivable fault and probably a few for faults that no one has yet developed (although anyone who has seen Charles Barkley’s swing might think he encompasses them all).

If a proper grip is your bugbear, the Grip Buddy offers an elegant solution to a piece of the puzzle. The Grip Buddy is designed to help you learn to keep your grip positioned in the fingers, and not in the palm of the hand (a very typical setup fault).

The Grip Buddy is comprised of a hard plastic shell with a velcro strap attached to the top. The shell is designed to snap onto the grip of any standard club.

To use the Grip Buddy, you slide your fingers into the strip, positioning the shell across the fingers as illustrated in innumerable golf instruction guides. Then, with the club grounded, you snap the Grip Buddy over the top of the golf grip. The Grip Buddy thus helps keep your fingers in place while you take a normal swing with your regular club.

In practice, I found that the Grip Buddy works as advertised. It keeps the grip in the fingers throughout the swing, and is easily transferrable between clubs. With extended use, I believe that it should really help people who tend to palm their grips.

I think it is important to note what the Grip Buddy does not do. It does not help with interlocking, with the “V” positions, or with thumb placement. It is really only designed to do one thing: keep the grip in the fingers. The Grip Buddy thus is a one-trick pony, but it handles that trick very well.

My one complaint with the Grip Buddy is that the plastic is quite hard. I suppose that’s necessary to ensure that it can withstand repeated on-off cycles, but it is a little uncomfortable. You definitely don’t want to use this without a glove.

I can recommend this for golfers who want to work on keeping their grips in their fingers.