There is a piece of received wisdom that circulates in stringing rooms and forum threads alike: if an overgrip wraps on smoothly — good stretch, forgiving backing, no puckering at the bevels — that ease of installation is a proxy for quality. A grip that fights you on the way onto the handle, the logic goes, will fight you on court too. It sounds reasonable. Plenty of experienced players repeat it. This overgrip review exists to take that claim apart, because after weighing the published specs and the consensus of independent testers, we think it gets the relationship roughly backwards.
The short version: installation ease is real, measurable in material terms, and worth caring about — but it correlates with elasticity and surface coating choices that trade directly against either sweat absorption or tack longevity. The easiest grips to wrap are frequently the ones players complain about later, for reasons baked into the same properties that made them easy to wrap.
How we evaluated
We did not run a lab, and we did not wrap forty racquets in a garage with a stopwatch. This is a synthesis. We drew on three kinds of sources:
- Manufacturer specifications — stated thickness, length, and material composition for four widely cross-shopped overgrips: Wilson Pro Overgrip, Tourna Grip (original), Yonex Super Grap, and Babolat VS Original.
- Independent tester reviews — primarily the playtest write-ups published by Tennis Warehouse and Tennis Express reviewers, who apply grips repeatedly and comment on both installation behavior and on-court decay.
- Owner feedback in volume — retailer review sections and long-running forum threads (Talk Tennis in particular), which are noisy individually but useful in aggregate for spotting recurring complaints.
Where a figure comes from the manufacturer, we say so. Where testers disagree with the marketing, we note it. Thickness figures below are manufacturer-stated; none of them, to our knowledge, have been independently verified with calipers by a named source, so treat small differences as directional rather than gospel.
The evidence: four grips, one pattern
| Grip | Stated thickness | Stretch during wrap (tester consensus) | Recurring owner complaint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wilson Pro Overgrip | 0.60 mm (Wilson) | High — very forgiving | Tack fades fast in heat/sweat |
| Yonex Super Grap | 0.60 mm (Yonex) | High — comparable to Wilson | Tack life; slick when saturated |
| Babolat VS Original | 0.43 mm (Babolat) | Low — thin, tears if overstretched | Fragile install; short lifespan |
| Tourna Grip (original) | ~0.45 mm (Tourna) | Low — dry, minimal give | Awkward wrap; edges lift early |
The pattern in tester and owner commentary is consistent. The two grips most often praised for effortless installation — Wilson Pro and Super Grap — are elastic, tacky-surfaced polyurethane grips, and they are also the two that draw the most complaints about tack fading under heavy sweat. Tennis Warehouse's playtest commentary on the Wilson Pro has long noted its ease of application and initial tack alongside its tendency to go slick in humid conditions; owner reviews echo the same arc.
Tourna Grip sits at the other pole. It is the grip most frequently described by reviewers as awkward to install — dry backing, little stretch, a tendency for edges to lift if the overlap is sloppy. It is also the grip with the strongest reputation among heavy sweaters, a reputation the company leans on with its long-standing claim that the grip gets tackier as it absorbs moisture. Independent testers broadly support the absorption claim while noting the trade: Tourna wears visibly and shreds sooner than the PU grips, and the fussy install is part of the ownership experience, not a one-time hurdle.
If installation ease predicted overall quality, this pattern should not exist. It does exist, and the mechanism explains why.
The mechanism: why easy wrapping costs you something
Three material properties drive how an overgrip installs, and each one has a second life on court.
Elasticity. A stretchy polyurethane grip conforms to bevels with minimal skill, which is why Wilson Pro and Super Grap are the standard recommendation for first-time wrappers. But that same PU construction absorbs less moisture than a dry, felt-like grip. The sweat has to go somewhere; on a low-absorption surface it sits on top, and the tack coating is what drowns first.
Surface coating. Tack that grabs your hand during installation is a coating, and coatings deplete. Owner feedback on both major PU grips converges on the same lifecycle: excellent for the first few sessions, then a fairly abrupt fall-off. Tourna's dry surface has almost nothing to deplete, which is why its adherents describe its performance as flat rather than front-loaded.
Thickness. Thinner grips like Babolat VS (0.43 mm, per Babolat) preserve bevel feel — a genuine advantage for players who want feedback — but thin material tears under wrapping tension. The install difficulty is not poor manufacturing; it is the direct cost of the thinness that is the product's entire point.
None of this makes installation ease meaningless. It makes it a signature of a design philosophy, not a quality grade.
Who this reasoning serves — and who it doesn't
If your frustration is tack that dies mid-match, the evidence points away from the easy-wrapping PU grips and toward absorbent, dry-surface options, and you should accept a clumsier install as the price. If your frustration is a grip that soaks up so much sweat it feels dead and mutes handle feedback, the reverse holds: a thin or moderately tacky PU grip, replaced often, fits better — and the pleasant installation is a bonus, not the reason.
Who this doesn't serve: players in dry climates with light hands, for whom nearly any of these four grips performs acceptably and installation ease is a legitimate tiebreaker. The myth is only expensive when conditions are hard.
Evidence grade: Moderate. The specs are manufacturer-stated, the behavioral pattern rests on tester consensus and aggregated owner feedback rather than controlled measurement, but the sources converge cleanly and the mechanism is plausible material science, not hand-waving. Reviewer's note: I keep two boxes in my bag — a PU grip for cool mornings and Tourna for anything above warm. I re-wrap the Tourna more often and swear at it every time, and I have stopped reading that as a flaw. The annoying install is the receipt for the grip I actually wanted.