Dave McQuade, a PGA Master Professional, is the PGA director of golf at Collier’s Reserve Country Club in Naples, Fla.

Dave McQuade on the importance of educating members to “Get a Grip!”:
Here at Collier’s Reserve, we have huge success with grip sales because our membership is very educated on how often they need to re-grip and how failing to do so will negatively affect their golf game. One of the ways we encourage our members to “Get a Grip!” on their golf games is through our monthly golf shop newsletter, where we describe specific problems with worn out grips, such as excessive grip pressure, limited wrist action and a loss of distance. Through our newsletters, mass emails, point of sales displays and personal interaction at the club, our members are very aware that you should get new grips at least once per year; members who play more often or who play with softer grips may need multiple regrippings per year, which is information we actively pass on to our membership. Once we started sending out the newsletter about four years ago, this really helped to spread the word through our membership. Personally, I have a great passion for club repair and regripping, which I try to pass along through our golf staff so they can educate our members.

Dave McQuade on the business impact of educating members to “Get a Grip!”:
Educating our membership has helped greatly when it comes to getting them regripped more often. We do approximately $20,000 per year in grip sales while usually keeping $2,000 worth of grips in inventory. We offer a wide variety of grips, including Winn and Golf Pride; with the Winn grips, we recommend for our members to re-grip about every 30 rounds.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email DavidMcQuade@comcast.net