Golfers at all levels will try just about anything if it’ll help their games.

Cross-handed chipping grip? Sure. Closed-eye putting? You betcha. Flying to Germany for a back-relief treatment not approved in the U.S.? Looking at you, Fred Couples.

In the first round of the Travelers Championship, Collin Morikawa did something that might not sound all that radical to non-golfers, but by über-controlling and particular Tour-pro standards was the equivalent of free-soloing without chalk.

He shed his golf glove.

“Very, very weird,” Morikawa said of his gloveless play, which was a career-first for him.

The world No. 4 didn’t hit every shot sans mitten but enough of them that he was asked about the decision after his opening three-under 67. He said he went barehanded on most of his approaches but kept the glove on for wedge shots.  

Morikawa said that during his early-week practice at TPC River Highlands he was “putting good swings” on his irons but his shots were consistently missing 30 feet left. At some point he discovered that when he removed his glove, his accuracy improved.  

“When it comes down to it, our hands are what makes us such good athletes and such good golfers [because] we have so much feel,” he said Thursday. “For some reason when I’ve taken the glove off this week, it’s kind of worked.”

That is, when his grips haven’t been too slick.

“Problem is,” he said, “it’s really hot and it’s sweaty.”

Morikawa said his glove-be-gone strategy came to him as he was banging balls on the range Monday. As he was grooving his swing, he felt like he needed something, anything, to get himself on track.    

“I’ve done bare feet, so no shoes, and that normally works, but I don’t think I’m going to do that,” he said. “It’s just trying a bunch of things. Look, we’re crazy. Honestly, we’re crazy because we try a lot of things, but that’s what makes us really good is we’re trying to find the little things.”

What’s wild is, Morikawa is one of the game’s elite ball-strikers. He ranks 4th on Tour this season in SG: Approach to Green and at the U.S. Open at Oakmont last week tied for second in greens in regulation, with a dazzling 75% success rate. Of course, here’s another thing about golfers, even the world’s best: they’re always searching. “I know I can get better and feel more comfortable,” Morikawa said.

Whether the tactic paid dividends for Morikawa in the opening round is hard to say — it’s impossible to conduct a statistical deep dive without knowing exactly which shots he hit without a glove — but at least one gloveless swing resonated with him: his tee shot on the par-3 16th (see video above), a high, arcing fade that landed about 5 feet left of the hole and stayed there, leading to his fourth birdie of the round. “Exactly how I am used to seeing shots,” he said later. “Obviously, it doesn’t have to be 5 feet, but just the curvature of the shot is what I was really, really happy to see.”

No word yet on whether Morikawa continued his glove-free play in the second round, but in tough, windy conditions he shot 71 and, as of this writing, is tied for 24th.

While rare, gloveless play on Tour isn’t unprecedented. Fred Couples has played his whole career with naked hands, a habit he developed as a kid when his parents didn’t want to buck up for gloves.

Ben Hogan and Moe Norman also didn’t wear gloves. Same went for three U.S. Open winners in Lee Janzen, Corey Pavin and Scott Simpson. Among the contemporary set of gloveless Tour pros, Lucas Glover — yep, also a U.S. Open winner — is the best known.

“Never ever wore one,” he said on a 2021 appearance on GOLF’s Subpar. “Years ago, [teaching pro] Dick Harmon, in Houston, he’d cut the fingers out for me, hitting a bunch of balls when I was a kid. He said, well you gotta try it, your hands are gonna hurt, bleed or whatever. I said, well, I can’t really feel the club. He goes, well, if that’s the case, let’s not do that when it matters. So we kinda of stayed away from it. Just never got into it. I’m a solid 10-handicap with a glove.”

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