The Loop

Change your own grips and win a new driver!

October 09, 2014

Two days before my friends and I left for Scotland and Ireland, last spring, I decided to replace the grips on all my golf clubs, both as a gesture of respect to the great courses we'd be visiting and as a way of avoiding work. A few weeks before, I'd bought thirteen Lamkin Crossline Full Cord grips and a bunch of gripping supplies, all from Golfsmith.

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Changing your own grips is pretty easy, and if you get stuck there are lots of helpful instructional videos on YouTube, including the one at the bottom of this post. I changed my grips in my basement. You'll notice that before I began I cleared a clean work space:

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I did my driver last. I placed it in my bench vise, to hold it steady, and used a rubber vise clamp (also sold by Golfsmith) to protect the shaft. I tightened the vise, and then, to make sure the club was extra secure, I gave the vise one more turn—and when I did that the shaft cracked longitudinally.

One of the great things about modern drivers is that if you crack a shaft you can easily replace it all by yourself. But when I went to the golf shop at my club to buy a new one I discovered that this year's Callaway driver shafts (which is what the shop had in stock) don't fit last year's Callaway drivers (which is what I owned): the little locking attachment thingy is different.

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That made me furious but also glad, because it meant that, because we were leaving the country the next day, I had no alternative but to buy a new driver.

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When we got to Scotland, though, I decided that I didn't like my new driver (I hadn't had time to try it before we left). That night, I emailed my pro at home and asked him to order me a new shaft for my old driver, so that I could switch as soon as we got back. But then, the next day, I decided that I did like my new driver. In fact, I loved it! By then, though, the new shaft was already on a UPS truck somewhere.

So now I feel like the luckiest, smartest guy in the world, because I have one and a half brand-new drivers, and I paid for them partly with money I saved by changing my own grips.