Craig Phillips, the Director of Golf at Nuneaton Golf Club tells The PGA of Great Britain & Ireland’s Matthew Suddaby how his regripping service and support from Golf Pride is benefitting his business.
Why did you decide to offer a regripping service?
Regripplng is something we do through our PGA training and something I have been involved with for a long time. I’ve been regripping golf clubs for more than 20 years! Sometimes it’s an element of the club which is overlooked by golfers, who tend to look at the head and the shaft and forget their only contact with the club is actually the grip.
For that reason we’ll do MOT checks throughout the year. We’ll often pick a club out of the bag and say “how do you manage to hold onto this?” You’ll find it’s one of those typical shiny grips where you can pretty much see your face in it!
It’s all just about starting the conversation and making them aware that regripping their clubs can help them to improve their golf.
What benefits will a golfer get from regripping their clubs?
On social media now you see a lot of people talking about grip pressure and that’s really important. Your only contact with the golf club is your hands and you’ll feel that pressure through the grip, so it’s important you’ve got it right.
The right size of grip is important too – if the grip is too small you’ll have more wrist action. These are just a couple of the selling points that you can take to the customer to show them how important the grip is, when right now it’s probably something that they’re overlooking.
How often should a golfer regrip their clubs?
It really depends on how much they use them. If they use them a lot they will get worn quite quickly but you would definitely say that, after a year, you would like them to come in and get an MOT done. Often we will start that conversation by asking the customer how their grips are looking and feeling and we’ll give them a quick check while they’re here.
How do you know which grips will suit a certain golfer?
Simply by talking to them and getting it in their hands – the Golf Pride display allows you to do that.
We’ll start them off with the normal, standard golf grip and then move them up to the mid-size and then pop a jumbo in their hands. We get them to feel it and then tell us which one gives them the feeling that they want. It’s their feedback that we’re after and allows us to make the right decision on what will suit them best.
Why did you choose to stock Golf Pride grips?
We stock quite a few of the major brands in our pro shop here and we feel it is a nice fit among those. Golf Pride provides us with a grip wall which instantly helps you to sell that product to the customer.
Rather than sticking to the old school ‘do you do grips?’ approach, customers can instantly see it right in front of them.
Once they’ve found the type of grip they need, we often find that the variety of the range means we can offer them loads of different colours to suit their tastes.
We’ve given the wall a prominent position in the shop where customers can touch them, feel them and put them in their hands. That then gives us a good lead into the sale of a golf grip and a starting point for us to begin to educate them on the importance of regripping.
How does regripping complement your business?
Once I had the grip wall installed I would say that sales in gripping went up at least five times, if not more.
During the course of the year we’re maybe doing three sets a week but that can go up to three or four a day at busy times during the winter.
This time of year is big for us in that respect. We do a lot of regripping in the winter because if you go out on the course and that grip is slippery, it is really going to affect your golf.
We do a lot of promotion on social media and through poster around the golf dub. At this time of year we increase that a little bit as it is an important time for regripping but, importantly, we don’t just limit ourselves to the pro shop – we promote the service right around the golf club.
It’s nice to have that additional service to offer to the customer. We’ll often ask them If they are staying around at the club for a bite to eat or a drink and if they are we ask for half-an-hour to take a look at their grips.
Once we’ve done the regripping and taken it upstairs to the customer they will usually turn around and go “wow, you’ve done that already – that’s fantastic!”
What advice would you give other pros considering offering a regripping service?
The first thing they have to do is get a nice display, which is something Golf Pride can offer.
Get that in as it immediately makes your customers aware you have this service available to them and creates a starting point for the conversation. Once they can see it and feel it, they can make a choice on the grip and then you haw that final bit where you offer the slick service.
I feel by offering Golf Pride and displaying the products on a grip wall where the customer can feel them, you are enhancing that service and ensuring the member has exactly the right grip for their clubs.
For more information on Golf Pride visit www.golfpride.com.
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