There’s a good chance you’ve never changed your overgrip. You might not even know what an overgrip is. If you bought a racket and started playing, the grip it came with – or the first one someone put on it – is probably still there, slowly becoming a stranger to your hand.

This is a small, fixable problem. It costs about £3, takes two minutes, and changes how the racket feels in your hand more noticeably than most players expect.

What an overgrip is

A padel racket comes with a base grip – a thicker layer of material wound around the handle during manufacturing. The base grip is not designed to be changed frequently. It provides the shape and cushioning of the handle.

An overgrip is a thin layer wound on top of the base grip. Thinner, tackier or drier depending on the type, and absolutely designed to be replaced regularly. Most rackets you’ll see at club level have an overgrip on them already. The question is how old it is.

The grip is the only point of contact between you and the racket. Every shot, every volley, every overhead passes through that interface. If it feels wrong – slippery, worn smooth, damp – the rest of your technique has to compensate. Players do this without realising it: adjusting their grip pressure, tensing up slightly, changing their swing path. Fixing the grip doesn’t just feel better; it removes a variable you’ve been working around.

Tacky vs dry: what they are

Overgrips come in two broad types.

Tacky grips have a slightly sticky surface that feels almost adhesive when new. They grip your hand, which means you need less grip pressure to maintain control. This is especially useful if you’re a player who tends to squeeze the racket too hard (very common at club level), because the grip is doing some of the holding for you. The downside is that in sweaty hands, tacky grips can feel unpleasant – they don’t absorb moisture particularly well, and once they’re saturated they lose their advantage quickly.

Dry or absorbent grips feel chalky or almost towelling-like by comparison. They don’t grip your hand in the same way, but they pull sweat away from your palm rather than letting it sit on the surface. For players who run hot, or who play outdoors in warm weather, dry grips tend to last longer through a session and maintain their feel better as conditions change.

Most recreational UK club players are well served by a tacky grip during the cooler months and might find a dry grip preferable in summer or for longer sessions. If you’ve only ever used one type, trying the other costs £3 and takes two minutes.

How often to change it

Here is the uncomfortable answer: almost certainly more often than you do now.

A new overgrip looks white or bright-coloured, feels slightly tacky or cushioned depending on type, and has a consistent texture across the whole surface. After several sessions, it starts to discolour, flatten, and lose whatever properties made it useful. By the time it’s dark at the palm contact point and feels slippery, it’s been ready for replacement for quite some time.

As a rough guide: if you play once or twice a week, change your overgrip every four to six weeks. If you play more than that, or if you tend to sweat heavily, do it fortnightly. Some competitive players change grips before every match. You don’t need to go that far, but you probably need to go further than you currently do.

The reason players don’t is that the change in feel is gradual. You adapt to the deterioration without noticing. Only when you put on a fresh grip do you realise how far the old one had gone. If you’ve never had this experience, try it once – the difference is usually large enough to be embarrassing.

Brands worth trusting

At the £3–8 price point, there are four brands that come up consistently and all perform reliably.

Wilson Pro Overgrip is probably the most common overgrip in the world – it has been the default choice in tennis for decades and translates well to padel. Tacky, thin, comfortable, widely available. A three-pack costs around £5–6 and it’s a sensible default if you’ve never bought one before.

Tourna Grip is the dry grip of choice for sweaty hands. Its slightly rough surface actively absorbs moisture and tends to outlast tacky alternatives during long or intense sessions. It feels strange to players used to tacky grips, but converts are often convinced after one session. A 10-pack is available for around £10–12, making it one of the better-value options if you change grips regularly.

Tecnifibre makes a solid mid-range overgrip that splits the difference between tacky and absorbent. It’s widely recommended for players who find pure tacky grips too much but pure dry grips too foreign. Three-packs are typically £5–7.

Head Xtreme Soft is a tacky, well-cushioned grip that works particularly well on padel rackets because of its slight extra thickness – useful for players who find their racket handle slightly thin. Three-packs are around £5.

None of these will disappoint. If you’re looking for a starting point, Wilson or Head for tacky; Tourna for dry. You can order any of them from Amazon, Padel Market, or most sports retailers for delivery within a day or two.

The one upgrade argument

If you haven’t changed your overgrip in months – or ever – do it before you spend money on anything else.

Before a new racket, new shoes, new balls. Before any of it. If your racket is the next thing you’re thinking about, the first racket guide and the upgrade guide between them cover everything you need to decide what to buy and when. The grip is where your hand meets the racket, and if that interface isn’t working, everything else is compensating for it.

A £3 overgrip does not transform your game. But a grip that’s worn smooth and damp is undermining everything you’re trying to do with the racket: your feel for pace, your ability to generate spin, your confidence going into volleys. A fresh grip removes that drag. For most players, the improvement in feel is immediate and obvious. And once the racket feels right in your hand, a session working on your padel footwork is the next thing that changes how matches go – grip and movement are the two cheapest and most overlooked areas of club-level improvement.

Buy a three-pack. Put one on now. Put the other two in your bag for the next few months. It’s a small thing – perhaps the smallest and cheapest improvement available to any club player – and it gets overlooked almost universally.

Which is a shame, because it really does make a difference.