Pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke may be right for you

You are probably familiar with Super Stroke putter grips, the fat grips designed to help minimize wrist motion for a more consistent putting stroke. You may have discounted their straight, constant-diameter grips if you are, like me, a pistol-style putter grip aficionado, but if you are in the market for a change in your putter grip the lineup of Super Stroke pistol-style grips may be worth a look.

There are three models in the Super Stroke line of pistol-style grips: from slimmest to fattest they are the Pistol Tour, Pistol 1.0 and Pistol 2.0. The Pistol Tour weighs in at a nominal 69 grams, the 2.0 at 83 grams, and the 2.0, though the widest grip in the lineup at 1.32 inches, comes in at the lowest weight – a positively svelte 51 grams.

The Zenergy Pistol Tour is the slimmest of the
three pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke.

Besides the larger grip diameter, the other notable feature of the Super Stroke putter grips is what they call the Tech-Port – an internally-threaded plastic insert located in the butt end of the grip that allows the installation of the Super Stroke putter weights. The weights come in 25-, 50-, and 75-gram sizes, and are very handy for fine-tuning the balance of your putter. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will be familiar with my thoughts on counterweighting in putters – this is a feature that I am very enthusiastic about.

I recently did a trial run with the Super Stroke Pistol Tour, the slenderest model in their lineup of pistol-style grips, to get a feel for what these grips, with their compromise position between standard grips and the really wide-girth constant-diameter grips, can offer to the golfer who is looking for a change. Compared to my usual putter grip, the standard Odyssey White Hot Pro pistol-style grip, the Pistol Tour is nearly identical in weight, with only a couple of grams difference between the two examples of each grip that I measured; the main difference between the two lies in the shape of the grip rather than the weight.

While the Pistol Tour has the contoured shape that you would expect in a pistol grip, it has a noticeably greater girth than the White Hot Pro. I measured the Pistol Tour at 1.07-inch wide at the butt end of the grip, with a width of .95-inch at the bottom end. Compare this to the White Hot Pro’s .87-inch and .70-inch dimensions for the same locations – a 20% taper compared to the Pistol Tour’s 11% taper. The Pistol Tour also tapers less front to back than the White Hot Pro, from 1.25-inch to .88-inch at the bottom, compared to the White Hot Pro’s 1.17-inch to .70-inch (it is circular at the bottom end.)

That small amount of taper is the reason for the most noticeable difference that I found in the “Before ” and “After” configurations of my Odyssey Works Tank Cruiser 1 putter when I swapped out the White Hot Pro grip for the Super Stroke Pistol Tour: despite a 2.5-gram difference in weight between the two grips (the Pistol Tour is heavier), and a minus 1-gram difference in weight after the swap (there was some tape buildup under the old grip), the swing weight of the putter with the Super Stroke grip went from D4 to D8 – a noticeable shift toward a head-heavy setup.

The reason for this significant change lies in where the weight is located; the more uniform thickness of the Pistol Tour grip places more of its mass down the shaft, farther from the butt end, with a commensurate increase in swing weight. This characteristic of the Pistol Tour is not necessarily a negative, it is just something that you need to be aware of if you are contemplating changing from a more conventional grip to a Super Stroke model.

Another grip characteristic that is very important, of course, is feel. The Super Stroke putter grips use a rubber material with a soft surface that is grippy but not tacky, and which holds up well with a bit of regular cleaning. In addition, there is a simulated stitched seam down the back side of the grip that acts as a position reference to help you place your hands on the grip consistently shot after shot.

If you are looking for a change in your putter setup, but aren’t ready to jump from your standard pistol grip all the way to a full-on constant-diameter grip, the Super Stroke line-up of pistol grips might be just what you are looking for – with the added bonus of being able to fine-tune your putter’s end-to-end balance with the Super Stroke putter weights.