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Bob Lamkin and Bob Lamkin Sr. have had a hand in the golf grip industry for many decades.
Bob Lamkin and Bob Lamkin Sr. have had a hand in the golf grip industry for many decades.
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Golf equipment is big business. Really big, as in billions of dollars and multinational corporations owning many of the major players.

But America’s first grip company – started in 1925 in the Chicago garage of Elver Lamkin – remains family owned, with Bob Lamkin leading the San Diego company that bears his name with the same passion as his elders.

“My grandfather was a wonderful man, an entrepreneur and innovator who was passionate about golf,” Lamkin said about the humble start of Lamkin Golf Grips. “He was working in a leather factory at the time and decided to wrap scrap leather around the handles of some golf clubs.”

Prior to that, “grips were a nondescript material covered in wax,” Lamkin said. “There was no science to it at all.”

Until that point, that is.

“Leather not only made it possible to play in all weather conditions, but leather – good leather – lasted a long time,” said Lamkin, whose family’s products became an industry standard and helped the company withstand the Great Depression and World War II.

It also didn’t hurt that Arnold Palmer fell in love with Lamkin grips and has been a spokesman for 60 of the company’s 90 years.

“And Arnold still plays with leather grips,” Lamkin said about the material that, for the most part, has been phased out because of cost and practicality. 

A move to molded rubber grips and a relocation to San Diego in 1986 kept the company at the top of its game while putting it in the middle of the golf manufacturing action.

“It’s a matter of getting the right material married to the right surface pattern design, then making sure the size is right,” Lamkin said about the company’s grip philosophy. “Getting all three aligned is the core of what we do.”

Grip creation, he said, involves a combination of awareness and eye appeal. And the introduction this year of Wrap-Tech and UTx Wrap models, made of a synthetic material that retains its tackiness in all conditions, are testament to the company’s forward-thinking philosophy.

“The science is about the newest technology that makes the grips more effective, longer lasting and better performing,” Lamkin said. “The art is what will look good to your eye and feels comfortable in your hands.”

Celebrating 90 years in the business is testimony to Lamkin’s success, as are some of the top-name players and club manufacturers that use the grips, including Brandt Snedeker, Keegan Bradley, Justin Rose, TaylorMade, Callaway, Ping, Cobra and Wilson.

How much longer the company stays at the forefront of the industry is up to several factors, but one part of golf that will likely never change is the reliance of golfers on products from Lamkin and its competitors.

“The grip is the only piece of equipment that the golfer actually comes into contact with,” Bob Lamkin said. “So the grip is really important.”