Grips and Overgrips: What to Buy and When to Change Them

Replacement grip vs overgrip — the bit everyone gets wrong

Your handle has two layers, and they are not interchangeable. The replacement grip — also called the base grip — is the cushioned band, typically 1.5 to 1.8mm thick, wrapped directly onto the bare pallet and secured with double-sided tape and usually a staple. It came on the racquet from the factory. It does most of the shock absorption, gives the handle its shape and bevel definition, and it is what the manufacturer measured when they printed a grip size on the butt cap.

The overgrip is a thin consumable, around half a millimetre, that goes over the top. Its job is the surface your hand actually touches: tack, sweat management and feel. It is designed to be thrown away and replaced constantly, which is why it costs a few dollars and comes in three-packs.

Three mistakes follow from confusing them. The first is peeling the base grip off and wrapping only an overgrip onto the bare handle — you lose the cushioning, the handle becomes skinny and the bevels bite into your palm. The second is buying a whole replacement grip when a three-dollar overgrip was all you needed. The third is stacking four overgrips on top of a base grip that has gone flat and lumpy, which produces a soft, vague, oddly-shaped handle. The rule of thumb: a base grip lasts many months to well over a year; an overgrip is a consumable you should be going through steadily.

Tacky vs dry — choose for your hands, not for the pros

Overgrips fall into two broad families. Tacky polyurethane grips have a slightly sticky surface that adheres to your skin. They feel fantastic fresh out of the packet, give a very secure hold in cool, dry conditions, and are what most tour players use — the Wilson Pro, Yonex Super Grap and Head Prime style of grip all live in this camp, with varying blends of tack, cushioning and absorbency. Their weakness is saturation: once genuinely soaked, tack becomes slick.

Dry or absorbent overgrips work the other way round. The Tourna Grip original is the archetype — it feels almost like thin paper when new, slightly unpleasant even, and then becomes grippier as it wicks up moisture. If you play in humidity, or your hands sweat enough that you are drying the handle on a towel between points, this is the family to try first.

There is also a cushioned middle ground: thicker, softer overgrips that add a bit of shock damping and comfort at the cost of a slightly less connected feel. Worth trying if your arm is unhappy.

The simple diagnostic: if you finish a set and the handle feels like a wet bar of soap, you are on the wrong type. What your favourite pro uses is not evidence about your hands — buy a three-pack of one tacky grip and one dry grip, run them over a month, and let your grip pressure tell you. A rosin bag or grip powder in the bag is a cheap supplement on brutal days.

How often to change them, and the cost argument

Honest ranges, because it varies more than most gear questions. Competitive players and heavy sweaters commonly fit a fresh overgrip every one to three hitting sessions. A typical club player gets somewhere around four to eight hours of court time out of one. A casual weekend player can genuinely go a month. Touring pros often put on a new one before every match and sometimes swap mid-match at a changeover.

Do not go by the calendar, go by the signals: the surface has gone shiny and darkened where your palm sits, the tack has disappeared, the grip slides a little when your hand is damp, or you notice yourself re-gripping and re-squeezing between points. That last one is the important one — a dead grip makes you hold on tighter, and a tighter forearm means less feel, less racquet head speed and more shock into your elbow.

Now the cost argument, which is the whole point. An overgrip runs roughly two to four dollars, and often under two in a twelve-pack. Compare that with fifteen to twenty-five dollars for a restring, or two hundred plus for a frame. Changing your overgrip is the lowest-cost, highest-frequency performance improvement available in tennis, and playing a whole season on one dead grip to save three dollars is a genuinely bad trade.

Two storage notes. Keep spares in their sealed plastic sleeve or a zip bag — air exposure dries the tack out. And do not leave your racquet baking in a hot car boot, which cooks the tack off both the overgrip and the base grip beneath it.

What an overgrip does to your grip size

Grip sizes go in eighths of an inch: 4, 4 1/8, 4 1/4, 4 3/8, 4 1/2, 4 5/8. A standard overgrip adds roughly a sixteenth of an inch — in other words, about half a grip size. Two overgrips gets you close to a full size up.

That single fact is why every buying guide tells you to size down when you are between two sizes. Building up is trivial; shaving a handle down is not. If you bought a 4 1/4 and it feels a touch small, one overgrip may be all the fix you need.

Two caveats. Overgrips slightly round off the octagonal bevels, and players who locate their grips by feel — anyone changing between continental and semi-western at speed — sometimes hate that. Thinner overgrips preserve the edges better; stacking three destroys them. Second, weight: an overgrip is around five to eight grams, sitting right at the butt, so it makes the frame a fraction more head-light. That is imperceptible for most people, but if you have customised your racquet with lead tape, keep your grip habits consistent so your balance does not drift session to session.

And if you need a full size and a half, stop stacking. That is a job for a proper sleeve.

How to wrap an overgrip properly

It takes about ninety seconds once you have done it a few times, and doing it well is the difference between a grip that lasts and one that bunches up by the second set.

• Strip the old overgrip and the old finishing tape, and wipe the handle down so the new one seats cleanly.
• Most overgrips are tapered at one end. Start with the straight, non-tapered end at the butt of the handle, sitting just above the butt cap, angled slightly so your first turn covers the bottom corner. Some people fold that first corner under for a neater start.
• Get the first turn tight. Almost every grip that slides down the handle mid-match had a loose first turn.
• Right-handers wrap clockwise as you look down at the butt cap; left-handers wrap anti-clockwise. Done correctly, the overlapping edge trails away from your palm as you rotate the racquet, so it will not peel.
• Overlap each turn by roughly an eighth of an inch — two or three millimetres — for a thin, firm feel. More overlap means a thicker, softer handle, so use overlap as a fine-tuning dial for size.
• Keep light, steady tension all the way up. Pull firmly but do not stretch it thin. Uneven tension is what causes ridges and bunching.
• Stop about an inch below the top of the handle so it does not interfere with your hand on a two-hander, then cut the tapered end at an angle for a flush finish.
• Secure it with the supplied finishing tape, wrapping so the tape bridges the top edge of the grip and the bare handle, then press it down firmly and roll the whole handle in your palm to seat it.

When to replace the base grip underneath

Because the overgrip takes the abuse, the base grip lasts a long time — typically six to eighteen months for a club player who always runs an overgrip, and much less if you play on the bare grip. But it does die eventually.

The signs are easy to read. It feels squishy and dead rather than resilient. The handle has gone soft, lumpy or uneven where your hand sits. You can feel the staple or the underlying pallet shape through it. Or it simply smells, which happens more than anyone admits.

Replacing one is straightforward: pull the staple, unwind the old grip, clean off the residue, add fresh double-sided tape if the handle needs it, and wrap starting at the butt with the same directional rule and roughly an eighth of an inch of overlap, stretching gently as you go. Trim the top end at an angle, staple or tape it, and finish. The natural time to do this is when you get the racquet restrung — the shop will usually do it for a few dollars if you would rather not.

A cushioned synthetic base grip is the sensible default for most players. Thinner, firmer synthetics give a more connected feel and preserve bevel definition; softer ones are kinder to the arm.

Leather grips and why some players use them

Leather is the traditional option and still has a devoted following. It is firm, thin and offers almost no cushioning, which sounds like a downside and is precisely the appeal for some players.

The first benefit is bevel definition. Leather keeps the octagon sharp, so you can feel exactly which flat your hand is on. If you change grips constantly between continental for serves and volleys and something further round for forehands — see the grip guide for the full system — that tactile feedback is genuinely useful.

The second is weight and balance. A leather grip typically adds somewhere around five to twelve grams over a synthetic, and it sits right at the bottom of the handle, which makes the frame more head-light and often makes it feel more planted and stable through contact. Players who customise their racquets frequently use leather as a deliberate balance tool alongside lead tape.

The downsides are real. Leather transmits more shock, which is a bad idea if your elbow is already complaining. It can raise blisters until it breaks in and moulds to your hand. And it gets slippery once wet. Which is why the classic setup is leather base plus a thin overgrip on top: crisp bevels, firm feel, custom balance, and a surface your hand can actually hold.

Sizing up properly: build-up sleeves and heat shrink

If you need more than one full size, or you bought a frame in the wrong size and the model is not sold in yours, there are better answers than stacking overgrips until the handle is round and vague.

A heat shrink sleeve is the common fix: a plastic tube that slides over the bare handle and is shrunk down with a heat gun before you fit the base grip over the top. They are sold in half-size and full-size versions, adding roughly eight and fifteen grams respectively. It is reasonably permanent but reversible — you slice it lengthwise and peel it off if you change your mind. Expect the added handle weight to make the racquet noticeably more head-light, which some people love and some do not.

Some brands use replaceable pallets, so a shop can swap in a larger or smaller moulded handle without any of this. Worth asking before you improvise. The DIY route — layers of thin foam or electrical tape under the base grip — does work, but it is easy to end up with a lumpy handle, and a stringer will usually do it properly for very little.

Going smaller is the hard direction. Shaving down a pallet is fiddly, permanent and easy to get wrong. Which brings us back to the standard advice, for the third time in this guide: when in doubt, buy the smaller size.

Getting your grip size right in the first place

Two quick checks. The ruler test: hold your hand open, palm up, and measure from the middle crease of your palm to the tip of your ring finger. That measurement in inches is approximately your grip size. The finger test: hold the racquet in a forehand grip and slide the index finger of your other hand into the gap between your fingertips and the base of your palm — one finger should fit snugly, with no room to spare and no need to force it.

Most adult men land at 4 3/8 or 4 1/2; most adult women somewhere between 4 1/8 and 4 3/8. Juniors and small-handed adults go smaller. These are starting points, not verdicts.

A handle that is too small twists in your hand on off-centre contact, which makes you squeeze harder to stop it. A handle that is too big slows down grip changes and keeps your forearm tense. Grip size gets blamed for tennis elbow a lot, and the research is genuinely mixed on how much difference an eighth of an inch makes — but a grip that has you clenching all match is worth fixing regardless of what the studies say, because a relaxed hand is faster and kinder to your arm.

Remember that how you wrap changes the answer too. More overlap on the overgrip means a fatter, softer handle. You have more fine control over grip size than the number stamped on the butt cap suggests.