The Complete Handbook of Golf Gloves

Chapter 1: Understanding Golf Gloves

A golf glove is a single-surface leather (or synthetic) covering worn on the lead hand - the left hand for a right-handed golfer - that serves as the interface between your palm and the club grip. It is not a fashion statement. It is not a hand protector. It is a precision friction device designed to transmit force from your body to the shaft without slipping. When you swing a driver at 100 mph, the forces pulling the club away from your hands peak at roughly 60-70 pounds. Without a glove, maintaining a secure hold on a rubber grip for an entire round requires a death grip, which destroys swing tempo and leads to blisters. With a properly fitted glove, you can hold the club with approximately 20-30% less grip pressure, which improves your release and your ability to feel the clubhead during the swing.

To understand what a glove is and how it works, you need to understand the materials. The overwhelming majority of premium golf gloves are made from cabretta leather, which comes from sheep raised in parts of Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Cabretta is selected because it has a unique combination of properties: it is thin (typically 0.4-0.6 mm), strong for its weight, and when tanned correctly, it maintains a high coefficient of friction against rubber even when your hands begin to sweat. The process of making a single cabretta glove involves splitting the skin to a uniform thickness,