Can a putter grip help you square up and improve consistency? We gave 12 readers a Garsen Quad Tour Putter Grip to test and review. Here’s what they found.
What is Forum Member Testing?
MyGolfSpy offers a unique opportunity to all of its readers of all abilities, ages and handicaps to test, review and keep a variety of different golf equipment, apps, apparel and more. Successful candidates are selected by forum staff.
Members who are selected interact, engage and write a review on the specific product while enjoying the fun of trying new gear!
Member testing is vital because it gets gear in the hands of you, the golfer. Our members give honest feedback on how any product or service works for a variety of handicaps and abilities to ensure our readers are even more informed when making purchasing decisions.
To learn more about how testers are selected, go to this forum thread: Want to be a tester?
The Testing Opportunity: The Garsen Quad Tour Putter Grip
When was the last time you thought about what grip was on your putter? Is it something that you are picky about or are you happy to play whatever is originally on the putter?
Garsen putter grips are not as well known as other brands but they have had success at all levels of professional golf and offer options to suit various putting strokes and grips.
Testers were given three grips as part of testing: Ultimate, Quad Tour and Max. As we had 12 testers for this opportunity, we split them into three groups of four so each putting grip had equal representation during testing. In this article, we will review the Quad Tour. Reviews of the Ultimate and Max will follow at a later date.
This is how Garsen describes the Quad Tour:
“The Garsen Quad Tour line features a unique parallelogram design fitting perfectly into most traditional golf grips. The Quad Tour also works great for claw, and saw style putting grips. With a flat topline and bottom, players can easily square up the putter face with complete consistency every time.
The QUAD TOUR grip gives you the benefits of the EDGE and MAX but places your hands in a traditional position.”
For the most part, our Member Tests are centered around data and objective evidence. Putter grips are much more subtle and subjective.
Forum Member Reviews and Insights
As we have done before with these Forum Member Review recaps, we will start with first impressions. While not always critical to how something plays on the course, it is an important factor and can speak to shelf appeal or general excitement for using a product.
Tester Siamese Moose was pleasantly surprised:
“This grip has a wonderful tacky feel. I am not at all a fan of the PU grips that feel like a sponge, and this one avoids that problem. There’s a pleasant firmness to it.”
Tester ACalling had similar thoughts to start his review of the Garsen Quad Tour.
“Right away you can tell that the Quad Tour is a high-quality grip. The feel of it has great tackiness but no give, or “squishiness” to it. In my experience I believe that will help in the long run as grips that are too soft tend to show wear much faster. The design is nice and understated, just the Garsen logo on the front and the Quad Tour name on the sides at the bottom of the grip.”
With grips installed and first impressions made, it was time for our testers to take their new grips to the course and see how they performed.
We should highlight that the testers for the Garsen Quad Tour had handicaps ranging from 7 to 33 and who listed putting either as a strength or weakness.
Tester sglj3 felt confident with the Garsen Quad Tour:
“I was surprised at my confidence in using this grip. I had no problems with alignment or consistency in grip. And I was definitely able to gather enough feedback from the club to keep my putt speed accurate.”
ACalling added some high praise:.
“The results speak for themselves. I have had some of my best putting rounds recently since attaching this grip. If you boil down putting to two simple things, alignment, and pace, it’s hard to think that you can get a better fix for one of them so easily and at such a small cost investment.
Obviously, its not a magical grip to always hit the perfect line…it doesn’t prohibit any motion that may push or pull a shot, but it does make it so that at the start of the stroke your club is right where it needs to be.”
Siamese Moose took his putter with the Quad Tour to the course for others to provide feedback:
“Last night was league play, so I asked for opinions on the Quad Tour grip from the guys there. The comments include:
“Nice feel, I like it better than my SuperStroke (to be fair, his SuperStroke was ancient, and overdue for replacement!)
The Quad Tour is offered in both tapered and non-tapered options and all our testers ended up going with the non-tapered.
While the majority of on-course and practice feedback was good, there were a few hiccups especially when it came to installing this grip. Testers had the option to install it themselves or take it into a shop. Those who decided to do it themselves struggled.
Siamese Moose: “It’s a stretch to say this is truly bad, as opposed to just annoying, but putting this grip on was a ******. I’ve been gripping clubs for over 30 years, and I’ve never had a more difficult installation. I know other testers experienced the same problem. I won’t pull it off to measure the ID, but it should have been easy to put a 0.600″ core grip on a 0.580″ shaft. Getting it on was tough enough, but then getting it perfectly square without any twist was also tough.“
Tester sglj3: “ I struggled getting this grip on. Yes I was just using air but the other two went on easily but the tour felt like I was trying to squeeze my size 11 feet into size 9 cowboy boots.”
The Final Verdict
With the final scores tallied and reviews completed, two of the four testers made this putter their gamer. The other two preferred other putter grips in the Garsen lineup.
Grades for the Garsen putter prip ranged from 80 to 92 out of 100 from our testers—solid scores overall, suggesting this could be a good putter grip option.
Our testers had this to say in conclusion of their final reviews.
ACalling: “I definitely have had a positive overall experience with the grip so far, and for that reason it will be staying on the club and the club in my bag.”
“If you feel like trying something new, take a look at Garsen, if you have the fortune of having a local shop that carries them, you’ll see the difference right away just placing your hands around them, and I hope they lead you to some lower scores!”
Sglj3 isn’t keeping the grip on, but said this: “For me it would be a trade but not because it is not a quality grip it is the size. If you prefer a quality smaller grip and one that wins on tour then it is a great grip to get. Garsen in general is a company I have been following and am excited to have participated in this test. As for the Ultimate it is a keeper!“
Final word for this Forum Review Recap goes to Siamese Moose:
“I’d never heard of Garsen before. When this test was offered I looked into them, and was intrigued enough to apply. The combination of feel, shape, weight, and looks turns out to be spectacularly successful for my preferences.“
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