How to Know if Wearing Golf Gloves Is Right for You

While it's not a requirement to wear a golf glove to play the game, a well-fitting golf glove can provide useful performance benefits for golfers—helping each drive go further, keeping your hands from tiring throughout the round, and even offering hints on what's going right (or wrong) with your golf swing. That's why you'll see most professionals wearing a golf glove during pro tours. Here's how a golf glove could improve your game, and how to find the right Nike gloves to add to your bag.

Golf gloves help create more friction between the hand and the club, which allows for better control of the club without the need to squeeze the hands and forearms too tight. When the lead arm (the left arm for right-handed golfers or the right arm for left-handed golfers) has a better grip on the club, it can do more of the work of pulling the club through the swing, instead of the back arm pushing the club through. This way of swinging—with more effort from the lead arm than from the back arm—is likely one of the techniques that makes professional golfers' swings superior, according to a research review on golf injuries from the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

And pulling the club with your lead arm—using your improved grip—can result in more than just better ball striking; it may also result in fewer elbow injuries, according to the scientists in the same journal review. Elbow strain injuries, often caused by gripping the club too tight, are among the most common for amateur golfers.

For almost all golfers on the pro tour, one glove suffices. The single glove is worn on the hand that's on top of your grip. This top hand is responsible for keeping the grip on the club. For right-handed swingers, that's the left hand. For lefties, the glove is worn on the right hand.

Look for a Goldilocks fit—not too loose but not too tight. If the glove is too tight, it will be harder to close the fingers, and there will be pulling at the fingertips. This can be distracting and uncomfortable, and it can get in the way of making the grip on the club more relaxed, which is one of the perks of using a golf glove.

If the glove is too big, the fabric will bunch around the fingers or extend past the fingertips, and may actually make the club feel like it's slipping more than it would with bare hands. Oversized gloves can also lead to rubbing, which can leave hands covered in blisters.

The ideal fit will feel like a second skin. The hand should move freely and comfortably. If you're trying on a glove in a shop, there may be a hand-size fitting chart to check hand size before buying. Consider asking someone at the shop if you can take a few swings with a glove on to check how it feels in action.

Some golfers have two different types of gloves—one for warm weather and one for colder weather.

Warmer weather gloves, such as the Nike Tour Classic 4 and the Nike Tech Extreme VII, will usually have lots of holes. These make the gloves breathable, keeping the hands cool and sweat-free. Gloves for colder weather, such as fleece gloves, will help keep the fingers toasty for a great feel on the grip—and will offer more comfort for playing through an early spring or late autumn round.