WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: True Temper, the parent company behind the No. 1 played iron shaft on the PGA Tour for decades and the largest shaft company in the game, is getting into the grip business. Its first venture is the Icon, a familiar-looking, single-material rubber grip with distinctive traction elements that the company hopes will appeal to better players, particularly those playing the professional tours.

PRICING: $7 per grip, plus installation.

3 COOL THINGS 1. Tour friendly

The Icon features a relatively similar look and construction to the most popular grip played on the PGA Tour, the Tour Velvet from industry leader Golf Pride. That’s probably not a surprise, given the first order of business for True Temper is getting tour adoption of the leading shaft company’s first-ever grip. Like the Tour Velvet, it will be a single-compound rubber construction and hover around 50 grams in weight in both 58 and 60 Round sizes. It also features a perforated pattern throughout the entire grip, much like similar grips in this space including Tour Velvet and Lamkin’s Crossline.

2. Pattern-based thinking

Of course, there is a fine line between doing the same thing as the category leader and innovating in a way that seems better but not too different. That’s the challenge of trying to get a relatively homogenous group of tour player to adopt your new product. True Temper has seen that in reverse in the shaft space, and now they find themselves on the chasing end of that arrangement. Icon straddles that same but better and not too different technology tightrope by working on the Icon’s tracktion feature. Specifically, the perforation on the Icon is what the company calls “five axes of traction” or a shape that looks more like an “X” on top of a vertical line, somewhat like an elongated asterisk. More importantly, the density of the perforation pattern is 20 percent greater than on Tour Velvet, with an even greater density on the lower portion of the grip where typically the ungloved hand would rest. It is not simply a visual change, said True Temper’s Don Brown, vice president of innovation, who noted the grip project has been three years in the making.

“A lot of what we’ve been doing is balancing our perforation pattern and depth with the compound to get something that from a firmness standpoint feels very similar to what is popular out on tour while providing more traction,” he said.

3. Only the beginning

While Icon will be offered initially in only the two most popular sizes, Brown said the plans are for a full lineup. That plan involves offering the same Icon look in a range of firmnesses. Rather than having to play a completely different kind of grip to get something softer, or presumably firmer, future Icon offerings will come in different durometers to resonate with players looking for something softer than the grip played by those with 120 mile per hour swing speeds.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com