You might not think of an NFL player as being the typical developer of golf products. But that’s the case with Matt Furstenburg, a former NFL tight end who has partnered with two chemical engineers to create an item that helps restore and enhance grips on golf clubs in all conditions.
Grip Boost Golf Spray restores the grip on worn-down gloves and clubs. It can be applied directly to the glove, club grip, or both with a few sprays and lasts about nine holes before a reapplication is necessary. Water and sweat resistant, it provides about 60 sprays per bottle.
“Golfers were complaining about sweaty grips and difficulty swinging in the rain,” said Furstenburg, who now lives on a golf course. “We wanted to have something that worked through both rain and sweat, and allowed you to have a solid grip in those conditions.”
As an ode to his Maryland roots, the spray uses an eco-friendly ingredient derived from crab shells. Crab polymers have been used in the past for bandages, but the ingredient has yet to be used in a sports product on the market.
Co-founders and chemical engineers Chanda Arya and Kevin Diehn worked with crab-shell materials at the University of Maryland’s Department of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering, where they also met Furstenburg in 2012 at his alma mater. After a year with the Baltimore Ravens and two years of research, Furstenburg and his team launched Grip Boost Inc. in 2014.
The company debuted a gel product that restored the grip to football gloves, an issue that Furstenburg, who also played for the University of Maryland, struggled with throughout his football career. After the launch of the football-glove product, the team developed a product for baseball, softball and have now moved into the golf world.