How to measure your hand for golf grips

Grip size is set by your hands, so a good fitting starts with two quick measurements. Neither needs special tools. A ruler or tape measure and a golf glove get you most of the way there, and together they catch the mistakes that either one alone would miss.

Measurement 1: hand length

Open your gloved hand flat, fingers together. Measure from the crease where your palm meets your wrist up to the tip of your middle finger. Keep the ruler straight along the middle of your palm. Write down the number in inches.

Match it to a starting size:

• Under 7 inches: undersize, or standard with no tape.
• 7 to 8.25 inches: standard.
• 8.25 to 9.25 inches: midsize.
• Over 9.25 inches: jumbo.

Hand length is the single most reliable number for grip sizing, which is why it leads the fitting. If you only do one measurement, do this one.

Measurement 2: the fingertip test

This one checks the fit rather than the size on paper. Hold a club in your top hand with a normal grip and look at where the fingertips of that hand land:

• Fingertips dig into your palm: the grip is too small. Size up or add tape.
• Fingertips just touch your palm: the size is right.
• There is a gap between fingertips and palm: the grip is too big. Size down.

The fingertip test is handy because it reflects your actual hand shape, including finger length, which a single length measurement can miss. Two golfers with the same hand length but different finger lengths can land on different sizes, and this is how you catch that.

Cross-check with your glove

Your golf glove size is a fast sanity check. Small maps to undersize, medium and medium-large to standard, large to midsize, and extra large to jumbo. If your hand measurement and glove size line up, you can be confident. If they disagree by more than one step, re-measure your hand, because the glove alone is a rougher guide.

Putting it together

Start from the hand-length size, confirm it with the fingertip test, and use the glove as a tiebreaker. When two of the three point the same way, that is your size. If you land right on a boundary, you can split the difference with build-up tape instead of jumping a full size. For the sizes themselves and what each one feels like, see the grip size chart.