Best Squash Grips: Replacement & Overgrips by Feel

If one grip defines squash, it is this one. Karakal introduced the PU Super Grip nearly thirty years ago, and it remains the grip you will find in club shops, stringers’ drawers and pro-shop display boxes — the packaging in our photo is the 24-count counter box, which tells you how stringers buy it: in bulk, because players ask for it by name. Karakal markets it as the world’s No.1 PU grip, and while that is the maker’s own claim, the product’s three-decade run at the top of the squash market is a matter of simple retail fact. The formula is a thick polyurethane layer with what Karakal calls an SRF (Slow Release Formula) surface, designed to stay tacky rather than turning slick as it wears, and the brand credits nano-sized particles in the material with improving durability, gripping power and comfort.

The playing signature is soft, deep and secure: at 1.85 mm it is the joint-thickest replacement grip here, so it fills the hand, cushions impact and gives sweaty palms a lot of absorbent material to work with. Karakal sells it in a squash-specific 100 cm length (alongside a longer universal version), in a famously long colour list that runs to two-tone Duo and rainbow Multi variants, and in singles, 6-packs and 24-packs. Two honest cautions. That thickness is a real decision: on a handle that already fits you, it will feel a size fuller — wonderful for larger hands, too much for small ones. And the soft surface that makes it so comfortable is a consumable like any other; it stays tackier longer than most, but it is not immortal, and the replacement rhythm in our care section still applies.

Most grips on this page are racket-sport generalists. The HydroSorb Squash is not: HEAD sells it as a squash product, full stop — the word is printed on the pack — and its specification reads like it was written for this sport’s short, slim handle. At 1.5 mm it is the thinnest replacement grip here, and at 14 g the lightest, so it changes your handle’s size and your racket’s balance less than any rival on the page. For players whose racket already fits and who simply want the worn factory layer renewed without side effects, that restraint is the whole point.

The surface is a high-tack elastomer, and underneath it HEAD builds what it calls a twin-channel airflow system: two channels running the grip’s length that give sweat somewhere to go and air a path under the surface, aimed at the twin problems of a grip that stays wet and a grip that stays hot. The pack’s own two-word summary — sweat absorption, tackiness — is the honest brief. What it is not is a cushion: 1.5 mm of elastomer gives a firm, direct connection to the bevels, which feel players love and players with sore hands may find lean. If your priority is a plush, padded hold, the Karakal above is your card. If your priority is a squash-length, squash-weight grip that keeps a tacky surface working through a long match, this is the specialist.

Tecnifibre is the most squash-committed of the big racket brands, and the Squash Feel is its dedicated grip for the sport: a replacement grip built from felt and polyurethane, sold in squash green, black or white, with the pack promising exactly what the name does — comfort and a tacky feel. At 1.7 mm it sits in the instructive middle of this page: slimmer than the Karakal’s deep cushion, fuller than the HydroSorb’s minimal layer. For a player who finds the benchmark too much grip and the specialist too little, this is the calibrated option.

The felt content is the interesting engineering choice. Where a pure PU surface relies on its own tack, the felt-and-PU blend gives the Squash Feel a slightly drier, more textile hand-feel that stays consistent as palms warm up, and the self-adhesive strip makes fitting a clean, bubble-free job — peel, wrap, done. It is also the natural house match for the many club players whose racket already carries a Tecnifibre badge and whose factory grip this directly succeeds. The trade to know: felt-forward grips trade a little of the Karakal’s outright stickiness for that consistency, so the heaviest sweaters should keep reading to the overgrips below, where the true sweat specialists live.

Dunlop’s grip takes its name and its brief from a gecko’s foot — the natural world’s benchmark for a surface that holds on without glue. The Gecko-Tac’s tacky PU skin is moulded over an anti-vibration foam core, and Dunlop credits the design with up to 50% more grip than its previous grips; that is the maker’s figure, not a laboratory result we can stand behind, but the direction of travel is easy to understand the first time you wrap a hand around one: this is the stickiest replacement grip on the page, and it is sticky in a grabby, confidence-giving way rather than a gummy one.

At 1.9 mm it is also the joint-thickest card here, level with the Karakal, so the same handle-size warning applies — and the same comfort dividend. The foam core earns its keep for players who feel impact through the handle on mishits high in the string bed, softening the sting without going vague. Choose between this and the Karakal by surface preference: the Dunlop is the firmer, tackier hold, the Karakal the softer, more absorbent cushion. One buying note: Dunlop sells Gecko-Tac as both this replacement grip and a thinner overgrip under the same name, so check the pack says “replacement” before you strip your handle down to the bare pallet.

Every other grip on this page fights sweat with stickiness. The Tourna Grip fights it with absorption, and it has been doing so since Unique Sports created the original in 1977 — “the light blue grip that does not slip” is a slogan generations of racket players can verify from their own kit bags. The maker’s headline claim is that the material soaks up 350% of its own weight in moisture; treat the number as a manufacturer’s figure, but the behaviour behind it is the product’s whole reputation: where a tacky PU surface gets slicker as it gets wetter, the Tourna’s dry, almost chalky surface gets tackier when wet. For the player whose hands are the weather, that inversion is everything.

Buy the XL. The original Tourna Grip is cut short and narrow (99 cm × 25 mm) for one-handed tennis backhands; the XL’s 29 mm width covers a squash handle fully with a normal overlap, as the 30-roll pack in our photo shows. It is also reversible — flip it when the first side tires and you double its working life, a trick no other card here offers. The honest trades: the feel is dry rather than plush, players who love a sticky, cushioned hold often dislike it on first touch, and as a thin overgrip it is a consumable measured in weeks, not months. But when the question is purely “my racket slips when I sweat”, this is the answer the racket sports settled on decades ago.

The Wilson Pro Overgrip is one of the best-selling overgrips in racket sport, full stop, and the Perforated version is the one squash players should reach for. The base formula is a super-thin, high-stretch felt at 0.6 mm that wraps tight, adds almost nothing to your handle size, and keeps the bevels talking to your fingers — the feel-first overgrip on this page. The perforations punched through it are the squash-relevant upgrade: Wilson’s retail listings credit them with improving moisture absorption and drying faster than the standard version, which is exactly the failure mode — a tacky overgrip that stays wet and goes smooth — that squash’s rally density creates.

It earns its place here on a practical point too: specialist racket retailers list the Pro Overgrip Perforated for squash handles explicitly, and its 3, 12 and 60-pack ladder lets you match buying to habit — a 3-pack to try, the tub if it becomes your weekly ritual. Know its nature before you buy: 0.6 mm of felt is a feel product, not a cushion, and perforated or not it is a tacky-surface overgrip, so the genuinely soaked-hand player still belongs with the Tourna above. For everyone else — the player who wants the handle to feel fresh, thin and grippy every Monday — this is the refined choice.

Yonex launched the Super Grap in 1987 and calls it its best-selling overgrip — the maker likes to note it has sold enough tape to wrap around the world several times over, and for once the boast is easy to believe, because the AC102 is the overgrip you see on handles in every racket sport on earth. The recipe is a tacky polyurethane at 0.6 mm, a full 1,200 mm long and 25 mm wide, so a single wrap covers a squash handle with length to spare for a generous overlap. Yonex positions it as absorbing both shock and moisture, and in the hand it is the balanced middle of the overgrip family: tackier than the Tourna, softer than the Wilson felt, fresh-feeling for longer than either in mild-to-moderate sweat.

Its real superpower is logistics. Super Grap sells in 3-packs, rolls and tubs up to 60 wraps, in a colour catalogue that runs from plain white and black to citrus green and wine red, which makes it the easiest grip on this page to turn into a habit: keep a tub in the kit bag, rewrap whenever the surface dulls, never nurse a dying grip through another month. It will not out-absorb the Tourna in a soaked fifth game, and it will not out-feel the Wilson for the first hour. As the overgrip you actually change on schedule — which is the behaviour that matters most — nothing here is simpler to live with.