A cabretta leather golf glove is the most disposable thing in your bag, and most of that is the owner's doing. The leather is thin sheepskin. Treat it like a sock and it lasts a few rounds; treat it like a leather shoe and it lasts a season. Here is the shoe version.
During the round
Take it off between shots. The glove is for the swing. Walking with it on, riding in the cart with it on, and putting with it on keeps the leather wet with sweat for four hours, and wet leather stretches and goes slick. Hang it by the tab from the bag or a back pocket between shots. This is the single biggest thing you can do.
Keep it off the wet. If it starts to rain, switch to a synthetic or rain glove and put the leather one somewhere dry. A cabretta glove that gets soaked once will never grip quite the same again.
Don't ball it up. The side pocket of the bag is where gloves go to die: creased, damp, and folded against the pad of the thumb. Lay it flat or clip it open.
After the round
Dry it flat, at room temperature. Open it up, smooth the fingers straight, and leave it on a table or a windowsill out of direct sun. Never on a radiator, in a car, or with a hair dryer — heat cooks the oils out of sheepskin and leaves it stiff and cracked. A glove that dried stiff can sometimes be recovered by putting it on and flexing your hand a few dozen times, but it will not come all the way back.
Rotate. Two gloves in rotation outlast three used one after another, because neither is ever put on damp. If you play twice a week, this is the difference between buying gloves every month and every quarter.
Store it in the package or a flat sleeve. Once dry, the original packaging or a plastic glove sleeve keeps it flat and stops it drying out further between rounds.
Cleaning a leather golf glove
Dirt and sunscreen residue can be wiped off with a barely damp cloth while the glove is on your hand, so it keeps its shape. Do not machine-wash, do not soak, and do not use leather conditioner made for boots — it is too heavy and it makes the palm greasy. If a glove smells, air it; if it still smells, it has reached the end.
When to replace it
Replace a glove when the palm or thumb pad has worn through, when the leather has gone shiny and hard across the heel of the hand, or when the closure tab no longer holds. A glove with a small hole at the fingertip is fine to keep as a practice glove. On average, players who follow the habits above get somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five rounds from a cabretta glove; players who do not get eight to ten.
Ours
The HITTEMSTRAIGHT cabretta glove is cut for feel — thin enough to tell where the grip sits — with the tracer graphic on the back, in white for the left hand, sizes L, XL and XXL. One care note specific to ours: the graphic is printed, not stitched, so keep it out of the dryer and off heaters for that reason too. See the glove · Cabretta vs synthetic: which to buy
