NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
Despite not having a catchy nickname like “Two Gloves,” Aaron Rai is becoming a more and more familiar name – or he should be for anyone paying attention to the No. 22 golfer in the Official World Golf Ranking. The Englishman of Asian descent has become consistently better since he eked into the top 100 after a T3 in the 2023 Canadian Open and solidified his place there last September with a runner-up finish in the DP World Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
Already a two-time winner on the DP World Tour before he broke his PGA Tour maiden two weeks ago by winning the Wyndham Championship, Rai has quietly been one of the most consistent pros in the world this summer. Starting with a T14 at the RBC Canadian Open followed by a solid T19 in the U.S. Open, Rai had steadily pushed toward his breakout in Greensboro, North Carolina: T2 Rocket Mortgage, T7 John Deere, T4 Scottish Open and T75 in the windy and wet Open at Royal Troon.
There’s a charming simplicity to the unassuming golfer born and raised in Wolverhampton, England, by non-golfing working-class parents from India. He received two gloves as a kid and got in the habit of wearing both. When he had only one glove once in a tournament and was forced to play the traditional way, it only cemented his two-glove quirk into a lifelong staple.
“It was terrible,” he said of his one-glove experience. “I couldn’t play. I couldn’t feel the grip, so I’ve always stuck with the two gloves ever since.”
But the habit that makes most golfers – and especially caddies – cringe is that every one of the TaylorMade woods and irons in Rai’s bag has a head cover on it. It’s an easily mockable offense, yet Rai’s reasons for it are not only defensible but endearing.
It started with his first new set of Titleist 690 MBs that his father bought him when he was 7 years old.
“I cherished them,” Rai said of his childhood clubs when he spoke with Jason Sobel and Michael Collins on their SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio show. “It started from the age of 4 years old, when my dad used to pay for my equipment. He paid for my membership, paid for my entry fees. It wasn’t money that we really had, to be honest, but he’d always buy me the best clubs.
“When we used to go out and practice, he used to clean every single groove afterward with a pin and baby oil, and, to protect the golf clubs, he thought it would be good to put iron covers on them. And I’ve pretty much had iron covers on all my sets ever since, just to kind of appreciate the value of what I have.”
Rai has made $4.2 million on the PGA Tour this season and doesn’t have to pay for his TaylorMade P7TW irons, but he treats them with the same kid gloves he did those cherished 690 MBs as a kid. (His Vokey Design SM9 wedges are uncovered, probably because Titleist doesn’t make covers for wedges.)
“So, although on the PGA Tour we get given equipment, given anything that we need, it’s more out of principle and it’s more out of just the value of not losing perspective of what I have and where I am,” Rai said. “So, the covers are going to stay. I’m sorry.”
Scott Michaux