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Performance-enhancing handle and equipment incorporating same

Performance-enhancing handle and equipment incorporating same description/claims

1. Field of Invention

This invention relates to sports equipment. Specifically, the present invention relates to performance-enhancing handles, grips, and accompanying sports equipment, such as golf clubs, bats, rackets, sticks, and paddles.

2. Description of the Related Art

Performance-enhancing handles are employed in various demanding applications including golf clubs, baseball bats, tennis rackets, ping pong paddles, badminton rackets, and hockey sticks. Such applications often demand handles and accompanying grips that facilitate gripping and maximize performance for a particular stroke or application.

For the purposes of the present discussion, a handle may be any structure that facilitates manual leverage. A grip may be any surface or accompanying shape or set of contours adapted for use with a handle.

High performance handles and accompanying grips are particularly important in golf applications, which demand precise striking of relatively small balls. A conventional golf club handle includes a substantially cylindrical shaft covered with a textured gripping surface, such as leather or vinyl. The handle enables a user to wrap fingers of both hands around the shaft.

Various alternative grips and handles are often employed to enhance golf club gripability. Unfortunately, such grips are often not allowed during tournament play, but instead are used for training. As illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 412,479 to C. A. Davis, 5,984,795 to Joseph W. Stafford, and 5,299,802 to Jean Bouchet-Lassale, alternative grips may include various contours and handle protrusions to increase hand or finger leverage and/or grip. Such handles and grips often require all fingers to wrap or bend around the grip or handle.

The thumb, which is often called the first finger or the first digit, is the only digit that can readily oppose or turn back against the other fingers. The opposability of the thumb facilitates grasping objects, such as grips and handles, between the thumb and the fingers. To facilitate gripability, grips are often designed to maximize the ability of the thumb to flex and oppose forces imparted to the grips by the other fingers.

Grips that maximize opposability of the thumb often recruit various muscles and nerves of the hand and forearm, which control thumb movement and opposability. Hand muscles that control thumb movement include the abductor pollicis brevis, the flexor pollicis brevis, and the opponens pollicis, which are controlled by the median nerve. Forearm muscles that control thumb movement include the extensor pollicis longus, the abductor pollicis longus, the flexor pollicis longus, and the extensor pollicis brevis, which are controlled by the posterior interosseous nerve or the anterior interosseous nerve.

The index finger is often used to oppose thumb motion. Grips are often designed to recruit the index finger and its accompanying muscles and nerves, including the flexor indicis, the extensor digitorum communis, and the extensor indicis porprius.

Unfortunately, such grips and accompanying handles for maximizing gripability and involvement of various muscles, tendons, and nerves of the hands and forearm, often exhibit heretofore unrecognized shortcomings in certain applications, such as golf, where involvement of certain muscles, tendons, and nerves may be undesirable.

Certain embodiments of the present invention disclose a handle that includes grip structure for accommodating a hand. The grip structure includes a first mechanism that is coupled to the grip structure for reducing involvement of a thumb of a hand in grasping the grip. A second mechanism is coupled to the grip structure and reduces involvement of an additional digit of the hand in grasping the grip.

In a more specific embodiment, the handle is a golf club handle. The additional digit includes an index finger, a middle finger, and/or a ring finger of the hand. The involvement of a thumb includes involvement of muscles and tendons coupled to the thumb. The involvement of an additional digit includes involvement of muscles and tendons coupled to the additional digit.

The novel design of certain embodiments disclosed herein is facilitated by use of a grip structure that selectively decouples certain muscles, tendons, and nerves of the hand and forearm that are ordinarily used to control thumb and finger movement. Such embodiments may enhance relaxation of the hands and forearm involved in griping the grip, thereby improving performance of accompanying sports equipment and facilitating training. Unlike various embodiments discussed herein, conventional grips and handles often teach away from reducing the grip, leverage, or involvement of one or more digits of a hand.

Use of certain embodiments discussed herein may reduce undesirable snapping of the wrist before impact with a ball, such as a golf ball; may facilitate the backswing of a golf club, i.e., the loading phase; may increase user awareness of the orientation of the golf club; and may generally result in a smoother more relaxed stroke by reducing tension in certain hand and forearm muscles.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a user gripping a golf club handle equipped with an example grip structure for selectively affecting involvement of a thumb and index finger in a golf stroke.

FIG. 2 is a top angled perspective view of an example golf club employing the example grip structure of FIG. 1.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

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