Golf has an unusual heat problem. The exertion is low, so you do not feel like you are working hard, but you are outdoors for four or five hours with limited shade, often walking, and often in the hottest part of the day. Discomfort builds slowly and then affects your concentration on the back nine, which is where rounds tend to fall apart anyway.
A cooling towel suits this well, mostly because of a coincidence of timing.
The 3-hour window fits a round
Our Comfort Cooling Towel holds its cooling for up to 3 hours per activation. An 18-hole round is typically four to four and a half hours.
That means one activation at the first tee and one re-wet at the turn covers the whole round. There is no other personal cooling option that maps this neatly: an ice pack would be finished by the fourth hole, and a cooling vest is overkill for the exertion level and awkward to swing in.
The halfway house, the clubhouse tap, a drinking fountain or a ball washer’s water supply all work for the re-wet. It does not need to be cold water, since the cooling comes from evaporation rather than from the starting temperature.
Keep it off your clubs
This is the main practical rule.
You already carry a club towel, and it should stay the club towel. A cooling towel dragged across a muddy clubface picks up grit and grass that lodges in the fibre structure, and that structure is exactly what the cooling depends on. Once it is loaded with debris and grease the towel spreads water less effectively and the cooling weakens.
Two towels, clearly separated:
- Club towel: grooves, faces, grips, mud, ball cleaning.
- Cooling towel: neck, face, wrists. Nothing else.
Where to wear it and where to put it during a shot
Between shots, across the back of the neck. That is where cooling has the biggest effect on how cool you feel overall, because blood vessels run close to the surface there.
During a shot, take it off. A towel round the neck interferes with a golf swing at the shoulders and can catch on a follow-through. Hang it on the bag, drape it over the trolley handle, or hook it to a belt loop. Getting into the habit of removing it as part of your pre-shot routine takes a round or two and then becomes automatic.
Keep it somewhere with airflow. A cooling towel sealed inside a bag pocket stops evaporating almost immediately, and evaporation is the entire mechanism. Hanging it on the outside of the bag keeps it working between holes.
Do not use it on your hands
Worth its own section because it is a natural mistake.
The towel is damp by design. Grips need to be dry. Using a cooling towel to wipe your hands before a shot leaves both slightly damp, which is the wrong direction on a hot day when grip is already a challenge.
Carry a small dry towel for hands and grips. The cooling towel keeps you cooler, which reduces how much you sweat in the first place; that is the correct way it contributes to grip.
Carts, buggies and walking
Walking is the best case. You generate your own airflow, and evaporation runs faster with air moving across the fabric.
In a buggy you get airflow while moving between shots, which helps, but you are also often sitting in direct sun with a roof that traps heat. The towel still works; just expect to re-wet a little sooner in that setup.
In humid conditions, be realistic. Evaporative cooling weakens when the surrounding air is close to saturated, so a humid summer afternoon gives a gentler effect than a dry one. It still helps, because damp fabric against skin conducts heat away regardless, but it will not feel dramatic.
Society days, club events and corporate golf
This is where cooling towels turn up in bulk, and they work well as branded kit for a reason: they are useful on the day rather than being another item that goes straight in a drawer, and they carry a logo cleanly.
We supply them for exactly this through our wholesale and private label programme, from 100 units with custom logo printing and branded hang bags, in any of our five colourways or a custom colour at higher volumes.
More: how to use a cooling towel, how to wash one, or the full guide to cooling towels.