Sweaty Hands

Gotta thank Lag for me not wearing a glove now for probably close to a year and has saved me quite a bit of cash. I used to play without a glove, but somehow got sidetracked. Maybe because when it gets real hot and humid my hands sweat a great deal and no matter what I did I just couldn’t seem to get them “dry enough” to satisfy my mental state. If I think my hands are wet or moist in any way I’m cooked…even if I am holding on to the club with very, very firm pressure.

So that’s probably why I started wearing a glove…but when the glove got wet same deal. And I refuse to carry numerous gloves in the bag…just too expensive to do so.

I experimented with rosin, and gorilla snot but my hands get too sticky or tacky.

I haven’t tried this yet and was wondering if anyone has. What about a fast evaporating solvent…like rubbing alcohol. That would seem to clean the grip and hands quickly and evaporate just as fast.

Lag-Two-Bom, et al…anyone use rubbing alcohol that you know of…maybe the caddy keeps a bottle in the bag.

What do bare handed hitters use when using rubber grips? :slight_smile:

All alcohol will do is make them worse. Take the edge of a pocketknife and rough up the cord, that works really well and wash the grips with warm water and dishwasing soap as soon as you are done. You want to try to minimize the oils from your hand seeping into the grips in the first place, once they’re in there’s only so much you can do. But alcohol will dry the material terribly and ruin them.

You may want to try Gorilla Gold. They’ll make your hands tacky, but the guck (sp?) won’t get on your hands. The tackiness lasts about 1-2 minutes and then goes away…and your hands are now dry. Really good and only $4

3JACK

Thanks LCDV.

It’s not so much the grip that’s at issue. I use Simple Green, undiluted, on my cords and it really works well cutting grease and oil after a good firm brush scrubbing. I scrub them often too…the cords get nice and white and feel good :smiley:

I would tend to think that any solvent with constant long-term use would, as you state, be bad for the composite rubber compound and maybe the cord too. But do you think it would be harmful if only used maybe 1-2 times a year under intense humidity and heat and then scrub them up good after the round. I know acetone melts plastic so maybe any type of solvent would be harmful and may make the rubber feel “greasy” during play.

What’s more an issue is the hands. When they sweat it seems the more I try to dry them off, the sweatier they become or at a minimum just don’t get dry enough. So I was thinking about some fast evaporating solvent for the hands that would maybe soak up the sweat and hand oil in one fell swoop and the entire enchilada would evaporate in seconds.

Any other thoughts on that, or maybe solvents…or maybe I should just get off my dead ass and try it and see :laughing:

R3Jack: Just saw you post as I was submitting this. Is Gorilla gold the same as Gorilla Snot. I think that’s what it was called. Maybe it was Gorilla Gold, but I’m thinking it was called snot. If it is, tacky doesn’t work for me as it sounds like it would be applied only on the grip. The combination of tacky on the grip only and sweat feels “greasy”. I want bone dry hands. No tack, no sweat.

Thanks you two RR :slight_smile:

I dunno maybe talcum powder or something would help a little. I’m pretty lucky I’m just don’t really sweat no matter how humid it is, it’s kinda weird. Plus after so many years of playing I’m totally psycho about keeping my hands clean & dry when I’m playing & practicing. I tried some of the new black & yellow cord victory grips & they’re awful, I could see those slipping big time. It’s amazing it’s like every single thing relating to golf has turned to complete garbage. If I was gonna play a rubber grip I’d only use the old green Vic full cords or pro only if I could even find any, I managed to find just enough ‘new’ Neumann Calfs to wrap this set & I’ll make sure they last 20 years, I had to comb the 4 corners of the earth to find them but it was worth it. Talc I think would be your best bet something inert & natural.

Just thought of something, try bringing a little piece of blue ice with you & cool your hands off. That’s the best way to stop sweating anyway, that would at least help I would think…

I like the blue ice idea for starters. Since reading your post and doing some research I found some who claim that “cold or icy” towels will inhibit sweat temporily. I also like the talcum powder idea. I hadn’t thought about that before. There is a “new” old fashioned barber shop that just opened up in town and will have to pay a visit to discuss the whys and wheres of talcum powder.

I am still intrigued with a fast evaporating solvent idea. Going to do some more exploring on that. Maybe I’ll carry a gasoline soaked rag…may work :laughing:

Also found this:
http://www.dryhands.com/

Thanks LCDV :smiley:

Hi RR,

I enjoy your posts…I live in the Atlanta area and it gets sweltering hot/humid here for golf sometimes in the summer…When it’s above 95 degrees with high humidity I make sure I’ve got a rain glove in the bag…It’s not ideal but better than going thru 6 gloves…

Mashie

How about chalk like rock climbers use? Anyone ever tried that?

I have used it in both rock climbing and pole vaulting. It worked like a charm for those application and keeps your hand really dry.

I’ve also gone the gloveless route over the last 5 or 6 months and have had no issues with it to this point, but the weather has been pretty cool and mild for Texas. We’ll see if it’s still working in a month or two.

To Mashie’s point I used rain gloves exclusively last year. The wetter they get the better they grip whether it’s rain water or sweat. I don’t know if every manufacturer uses the same synthetic material but The FJ model (all black) works great. I’ll go back to it if the gloveless approach fails when the temperature/humidity start to climb.

Thanks for the goods guys.

On the FJ rain gloves: are those the kind where you need to get the glove itself wet too so both hands and glove are wet?

Years ago I had a “rain gloves” if that is what they were called, but were supposed to be specifically for rain. All they were were plain white real thin cotton gloves that had no real structure to them and therefore fit quite loosely. Tried them and was a no-go for me as the gloves fit too sloppy and didn’t seem to make much difference. For those gloves to work, according to the manufacturer, one was to actually soak the gloves and get them as wet as can be. Made no real sense to me at the time, but there I was once playing in the rain and bending down toward a water puddle soaking some little white gloves. Must have looked foolish to others maybe. Anyway…trash the white glove idea.

A friend of mine who plays hickory allmost all the time and does his own work on them has some grips on them that look like “reverse cowhide”…almost a suede look but a much rougher. IIRC I have swung them before during humid conditions and I think they were good. Gonna check with him next time I see him. I was thinking of maybe putting a layer of reverse cowhide overtop an underside composite if I can get them to adhere. Oh well…the first 100 years is always the toughest, but I will find a solution somewhere. :slight_smile:

RR,

I used the FJ gloves in a torrential rain during one event that I played in last spring… no lightening and not raining hard enough continuously for them to bring us off the course. It was “impossible to keep anything dry” conditions and everything was wet - grips, hands, you name it. The gloves worked great in those conditions.

I then started using them during hot/humid conditions. The glove is dry when I start play but picks up sweat as the round progresses (sometimes to the point that I could/would “wring out” the glove). Worked equally well for me on the hot/humid days as it did during heavy rain, and I got plenty of rounds out of it… WAY more than conventional leather.

Gorilla Gold…not sure if it’s the same as Gorilla Snot. Gorilla Gold is a small little cloth, about the size of a dish cloth. You just grip it. I’ve only used it once (only time I’ve needed it so far this year) and it does get your hands tacky, but it won’t make them greasy. And like I said, the tackiness lasts for about 1-2 minutes and then your hands will be bone dry. I’ve also been recommended Dry Hands (dryhands.com), but I haven’t tried it yet.

I played HS and college golf without a glove. But for some reason as I got older I would start getting blisters. I own a HIRZL golf glove that has a 100% sweatfree palm and is guaranteed for 3 months. Here’s a video for it.

youtube.com/watch?v=vDLj_lRE … rofilepage

I tried the Rain Grips thing and the HIRZL works much better. Not exactly cheap though ($25). Plus, the top of the hand part of the glove will get sweaty. I’m still experimenting. I think my best solution down in FLA is to go with 2 HIRZL gloves in rounds of golf and switch between the two every 4 holes or so to keep them both ‘fresh’ and then have some Gorilla Gold for my right hand if it starts sweating too much.

3JACK

As a former swinger, this thread brings back nightmares. Not just for the grip in the rain but for my hands getting cold.
I needed my wrists free and flexible and with a lighter grip pressure as a swinger. Much easier now to grip it firm with bare hands on full cord grips… even in a downpour, I can at least get around the course. Always best to have dry warm hands though. Sometimes you just can’t.

Been real hot and humid the past two days and a perfect time for some experimenting.

Today when my hands got too sweaty I grabbed some rubbing alcohol ( about a tablespoon I guess ) and rubbed it around the palms and fingers and surprisingly it worked real good…and real quick. I let my hands air dry and it only took maybe 20 seconds or so in the outside heat. Hands felt a little cooler when the alcohol dried and the hands were very dry…pretty cool stuff if you ask me: a possible solution within a solution. :slight_smile:

Interesting. I recently went gloveless and switched to full cord grips, which is such a huge improvement over playing with a glove in the summer. My hands are seemingly always torn up though.

The rubbing alcohol sounds like it may be a great solution, I’d just be worried about drying the grips out if they came into contact with it though.

That will pass in time…

I use cords also. The alcohol evaporated quite quickly and left the hands dry and cool…and wasn’t any alcohol left to get on the grip. I didn’t touch the grips or anything until the hands dried. Even at that, I don’t think alcohol would harm the grip in a limited use situation, as simply cleaning them after a round will restore the moisture if any was in fact removed by the alcohol. But I can’t imagine having to use alcohol during a round to get a grip dry. As long as the grip is real clean and white- and free of oil- before the round that would be all that is needed.

Just some initial experiments. :slight_smile:

I’ll mess with that this week. I don’t mind the whole torn up hands thing, as they’re pretty callused and starting to feel like my ironworker grandpa’s. I just keep athletic tape handy. This week, I also discovered the value of liquid bandages. I got a horrible blister on a pad on my upper palm, and I couldn’t afford to not practice for a few days, so I bought some of this liquid bandage stuff and it worked pretty well. It’s sortof like having super glue on your skin, but it made the blister less of an issue. It earned a permanent spot in the bag.

I have gotten in the habit of wiping my grips down in the club washer contraption at the range at least once every few days. I am surprised at how much better the cord grips last than the GP Multicompound New Decade ones, and the ones I use (lamkin crossline cords with the royal grip logo purchased on ebay) are way cheaper too.