The secret grip

Anyone try these grips yet from dicks? I just got one today for free on my driver, they are supposed to be less tapered so where your right hand holds the club it's thicker and it has a weight in the back to improve balance.

This is the Boccieri grip, with the 17-gram counterweight in the butt. Company owner Steve Boccieri invented the Heavy Putter and started selling it in 2003.

Jack Nicklaus is the spokesman for the Secret Grip. Back in the 1970s, Nicklaus and other strong players would put a fishing weight into the butt of their drivers to slow down their hand action.

Nicklaus talks about this on p. 63 of Golf My Way. In the 1974 edition, he discussed the benefits and  suggested the lack of head-grip balance was hampering the lightweight offering of the era, the short-lived aluminum shaft.

Counterweighting - or backweighting - is rather controversial. Golfsmith did a study on it a few years back, and says it helps players retain feel when they go with lightweight shafts

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Counterweighting got discussed at the golf expo my wife and I visited this morning. The local pro basically said if it works for you, go with it. He suggested giving it a trial run by blowing the grip off your driver, putting 10-15 grams of lead tape over the shaft butt, and reinstalling the grip. He said this was cheaper way to test things out rather than buying the Secret grips for all your long clubs.

The Boccieri web site talks about counterweighting: http://boccierigolf.com/secret-grip/

Yea I thought I would give it a try since it was free, and they install it for you for free also.

I was at the PGA expo in Orlando a few months ago. This grip is made to make you hit a higher trajectory. It works, i was hitting the top of the net when i tried 2 irons (1st with regular grip & 2nd with secret grip). This is great for your long irons that you have a hard time getting up in the air. It also helps you stick the green because your angle of landing is higher so you can hold the green better. Bad part is if you play when it's really windy your going to get killed by the wind. Hope that helps. They gave me a few grips for free for trying them out. I haven't put it on my clubs yet, but i probably will put it on my 2 and 3 iron.

I had the Secret Grip put on one of my driver shafts (Grafalloy Epic, 68g Regular) that had fallen out of favor with me and went to the range yesterday.  I was already warmed up having hit 40 or so balls before trying the driver.  I hit a couple of low hooks first but after getting used to the feel I hit a few that rivaled and in a couple of cases exceeded the height and carry distance on my favorite shaft, the UST ProForce V2HL.  I have a propensity for hitting everything low but was able to generate a nice high ball flight when I put an easy swing on my driver with the new grip.  All in all the change in weight and position of the weight in the grip has potential but I'm going to give it a few more visits to the range before being sure that it makes the difference that I think that it might.

Sounds pretty interesting I might just try it.

I have 7 new ones for sale for $16 each plus shpg if anyone is lookin. Can ship Can or USA.

sold

Sounds interesting...got the coupon from the website for a free grip and installation.  I am going to take my driver to Dick's and see how it plays.  Doesn't hurt to give it a try (especially for free!).  At worst, i'll have to get my driver re-gripped again, at best it will help by driver woes!  Win-Win for me.

Many years ago one company offered a weighted add-on that you simply snapped onto the butt end of your grip to see if backweighting was right for you. Unlike what one previous poster claimed, backweighting was supposed to provide a counterbalance effect and "speed up" your hand action. Backweighted grips have been around since the 60's or earlier, and aren't really a "secret".

I tried the secret grip on my Nike Covert driver.  After 2 rounds, I had the pro at Golf Galaxy cut it off and put a Golf pride multi compound on it.

It doesn't appear to taper as much from the butt as it moves towards the open end of the grip and as a result, the feeling in my bottom hand was such that the grip was thicker.  It wasn't as comfortable as the rest of my clubs.

This may sound ridiculously simple, but why could not one just tape 2 nickels and a penny onto the grip with some electrical tape? tA nickel weighs 5 grams and a penny weights 2.5 grams for a combined weight of 17 grams. The insert in "The Secret" is 16 grams.

(this may have been addressed before, but I could not find it).

Dumb idea?

yah, I know "3" nickels...I had a mathematically challenged moment there.

I guess the tape might interfere with your grip.

I had the "Free" secret grip instakked on my 7 iron...it's a nice grip and so far, I can not determine that it provides anything other than a normal grip....I would not pay $17.95 per grip for the rest of my irons.

Well, just  for "S's and G's" I taped them and it is barely noticeable plus effectively gives a 7 iron nearly the same shaft length as a 6 iron.  I agree that it probably wont make that much difference, but then again Nicklaus reportedly put fishing weights inside his grips. It would change the swing weight though. I will let you know if you like after I try it on the course. Seems sturdy enough now, but hard to say how the tape will hold once the sun gets to it, inertia of the swing e.t.c.  Something to play with I guess.

Back in the day when I was considered a very long driver, I backweighted my old Powerbilit Citation and loved it. Dynamic Gold X-100 shaft and used some lead discs in the butt of the grip. Hit most drives well over 300 yards ( was fairly strong kid with very strong hands) with some much longer. Snapped the shaft eventually and moved to the old Taylormade Tour Burner and did  the same backweighting.

Never got the super long drives with the Taylormade but the club was more forgiving. Now that I am 60 years old and playing the new technology, I have been considering going back to a backweighted club in one last ditch effort to maintain some semblance of distance ( can't make it too easy for the youngsters to beat me).

If you have never tried backweighting, it is at least something to try. Personally I think you will like it. I always felt it smoothed out the pace of my swing while speeding up my hand action (nothing definitive; just my perception and feel of my swing).

It does make the club feel lighter in your hands ( we did the same thing to baseball bats in college to move the center of gravity closer to the hands, making the bat feel lighter).

Taping to the grip.

Is it legal by the rules?

Good point, probably not. Good enough for testing it out to see if you like it then you could maybe glue them into the butt of a grip prior to installation, might not even need the glue.