Golf Accessories

The parts you actually touch

Golf equipment marketing spends its budget on drivers and balls, which makes sense: that's where the margins live. But walk through what actually connects you to a golf shot: your hands on the grip, a glove in between, your feet on the turf. That's the entire interface. Everything else in the bag is delivery.

This page covers that interface, plus the system that hauls it around the course. Dollar for dollar, it's the cheapest performance category in golf: a full set of grips installed at your own kitchen counter runs roughly $50 to $100, and even the priciest item here, a good pair of shoes, costs a fraction of a driver. Unlike the driver, the wrong pair punishes you on every step of every round.

Three rules run through everything below:

• Fit before features. Grip size, glove fit, shoe width: get the dimension right and the model choice gets easy.
• Match your conditions, not a spec sheet. Wet climate or dry, hilly course or flat, walk or ride. The answer usually lives there.
• Trade-offs, not winners. Softer grips wear faster. Spikeless is easier to live with; spikes hold better in slop. Anyone declaring one side the winner is usually selling the winning side.

Grips: size first, then feel

Grip size is the cheapest fitting decision in golf and one of the easiest to get wrong, mostly because almost nobody measures. Start with our grip size chart: lay your lead hand flat, measure from the wrist crease to the tip of your middle finger, and you have a starting size in under a minute. Treat it as a first guess, not a verdict: glove size, swing tendencies, and plain feel all get a vote.

Then comes comfort. If your hands ache (arthritis, or just a few decades of range balls), the formula is bigger, softer, tackier, so you can hold the club securely without squeezing it. Our guide to grips for arthritic hands explains why that combination works and why abrasive corded grips are the one thing to skip. If you've already narrowed it to the two benchmark soft grips, the Winn Dri-Tac vs Golf Pride CP2 Wrap head-to-head is a genuine trade, not a coronation: the Winn is softer and rules the rain but wears faster; the CP2 Wrap lasts noticeably longer and adds a little stability at the cost of some cushion.

One more thing the pro shop won't volunteer: installation is not skilled labor. Regripping your clubs at home takes about $50 of gear (hook blade, tape, solvent) and roughly twenty minutes of practice before you're competent. Once you know that, fresh grips stop being an every-third-season splurge and become routine maintenance.

Gloves and shoes: solve moisture, then solve width

Most glove complaints are really moisture complaints. If your grip feels slick by the sixth hole in July, upgrading to premium leather makes the problem worse, not better. Our glove guide for sweaty hands makes the counterintuitive case: a rain glove grips harder as it gets wet, and your sweat triggers the same reaction as rain. Then pair it with the boring system that actually works: carry two or three gloves and rotate every few holes, because no single glove fixes sweat on its own.

Shoes are two decisions, and the second one matters more. The first is traction: spikeless vs spiked comes down to your conditions and your swing, not fashion. Mostly dry rounds, plenty of walking, one shoe for the course and the errands after: spikeless. Wet, muddy, hilly, or you swing hard: spiked, with soft spikes you can renew for years.

The second decision is fit, and here's the mistake we see constantly: the shoe pinches at the sides, so the golfer sizes up. Now the shoe is longer and still too narrow. Our wide-feet shoe guide is blunt about it: buy your true length in a genuine width, from brands that actually sell width sizes, and buy from somewhere with easy returns, because sizing between brands is a mess.

One question decides the carry system

Bags and push carts generate endless spec-sheet arguments (pockets, cupholders, fold dimensions) and nearly all of it is noise until you answer one question: do you walk or ride?

• Walk and carry? Stand bag. Legs to prop it up, a padded dual strap, a light frame.
• Ride a powered cart most rounds? Cart bag. No legs, far more storage, built to strap in.
• Push cart? Either works, and a flat-based stand bag is the most versatile single bag you can own.

The full reasoning is in our stand bag vs cart bag breakdown. If you're on the push-cart path, the next fork is 3-wheel vs 4-wheel, and the answer is that most golfers on reasonably flat courses are perfectly happy with a quality 3-wheel: lighter, easier to steer, folds smaller in the trunk. Four wheels earn their keep on genuine hills and side slopes, in wind, or under a heavily loaded cart bag. Your course and your trunk decide this one, not the forum thread.

Free strokes: club care and a mat that rolls true

Two last line items. The first is nearly free: cleaning your clubs. Clean grooves are free strokes, and the routine is dish soap, lukewarm water, and a soft brush on the irons and wedges. The guide's real value is the list of don'ts: never submerge woods, putters, or grips; no hot water; no wire brushes; no dishwasher. Ten minutes after a round covers it.

The second is the one accessory that doubles as practice equipment: a putting mat. Most of them are curl-prone strips of carpet with alignment graphics printed on top. Our putting mat guide ranks by the only spec that matters: a straight putt goes straight, at a realistic speed, and treats ball returns and training lines as tiebreakers, not selling points.

That's the category. A grip in a size you actually measured, installed by you. A glove that works with your sweat instead of against it. Shoes in your real width. A bag that matches how you get around the course. Clean grooves, and a mat that doesn't lie. None of it photographs as well as a new driver, and nearly all of it sits closer to your golf swing than anything else money can buy.