Leading all-weather glove brand MacWet is celebrating after brand ambassador Aaron Rai outplayed a host of major champions to win the 2026 PGA Championship in dramatic style.
One of Rai’s signature traits has long been the pair of black gloves he pulls on before every full shot. In a sport where convention dictates a single glove on the lead hand, removed for putting and often for short pitches, his preference for two has been a source of curiosity for spectators and commentators alike.
For Rai, it is not a quirk. It is a foundation. He has explained the origin many times, most recently in conversation with Golf Monthly.
“It started when I was eight years old. I just happened to be given these two gloves, the guy who actually makes them sent a pair over, and I got into the habit of wearing them. Then, a few weeks down the line, my dad forgot to put the two gloves in the bag, so I had to play with one. It was terrible. I couldn’t play, I couldn’t feel the grip, so I’ve always stuck with the two gloves ever since.”
He does make exceptions. Like most professionals, Rai removes both gloves on the greens to feel the speed of the putter. For bunker shots, he typically wears just one. Everywhere else, from tee to fairway to rough to pine straw, the pair remains in place.
Rai is a long-standing ambassador for MacWet, the British brand whose Aquatec micro-fibre gloves were originally developed for equestrian sport before finding a natural home in golf. The technology was designed to do something most golf gloves cannot. Hold a firm grip in the presence of moisture rather than slip away from it.
Aronimink in mid-May offered the full menu of conditions a major can throw at a player. Humid mornings, warm afternoons, and the kind of perspiration that turns a traditional leather glove from an asset into a hazard. Rai’s MacWets did exactly what they were built to do.
This is not a new story for him. His maiden DP World Tour win at the 2018 Hong Kong Open came in tropical humidity. His Scottish Open victory in October 2020 came during the lash of Storm Alex at The Renaissance Club. His maiden PGA Tour win at the 2024 Wyndham Championship came in the heavy, sweat-soaked air of North Carolina in August. Now a major has been added to the list, and the gloves have been there for every one of them.
MacWet’s Aquatec fabric is engineered from yarn roughly 3,000 times finer than a human hair. When the material meets moisture, whether from rain, perspiration or humidity, its grip improves rather than deteriorates. Touch and feel are retained, which matters enormously to a player like Rai who relies on a low ball flight, precise shaping, and an intimate sense of the clubhead through impact. That kind of precision asks a great deal of the connection between hand and grip, which is precisely the connection a MacWet glove is built to preserve.
Rai changes glove models depending on conditions, and the MacWet range is built around exactly that decision. In warmer, drier weather, he reaches for the MacWet Original Micromesh, a lightweight glove with mesh panels for breathability and a soft Aquatec palm for grip. It is the model he tends to favour for American summer events.
When the temperature drops or the rain arrives, as it so often does at Open Championships, Scottish Opens and European autumn fixtures, Rai switches to the MacWet Winter Climatec. The Climatec adds thermal insulation without compromising the grip technology that defines the brand.
Both come as a pair. Both arrive ready to give the club golfer something close to the same advantage a major champion now relies upon.
For more details, visit www.glenmuir.com/macwet