Why PGA Championship Winner Aaron Rai Uses Covers on His Irons

This week, Aaron Rai announced himself to the greater golf world. While he’s far from an unknown—he entered the week as the 44th ranked men’s player in the world—he still wasn’t exactly a household name, but that changed when his brilliant back nine on Sunday at Aronimink Golf Club secured him the Wanamaker trophy and the first major win of his career.

For those just being introduced to Rai, he has some quirks. He wears gloves on both hands when he plays, and uses covers for the irons in his bag, with his caddie Jason Timmis dutifully returning each iron to its cover throughout the round.

Players across pro tours use covers for their clubs where precision is everything—drivers, woods and putters whose cleanliness is a necessity to hitting shots the way you need them to move. But most players let their irons hang out, rather than casing each one up for protection.

Rai has a good reason for this process though. As he explained in an interview with SiriusXM in 2021, Rai started covering his irons from his very first set of clubs, and has no plans on stopping.

“I grew up in very much a working class family, and golf has always been a very expensive game,” Rai said. “I started from the age of four years old, and my dad used to pay for my equipment, pay for my membership, pay my entry fees, and it wasn’t money that we really had, to be honest. But he’d always buy me the best clubs.

”I think when I was about seven or eight years old, he bought me a set of Titleist 690 MBs, they were like £800 or £1,000, just for a kid. And I cherished them. When we used to go out and practice, he used to clean every single groove out afterwards with a pin and baby oil, and to protect the golf clubs, he thought it’d be good to put iron covers on it, and I’ve pretty much had iron covers on all of my sets ever since, just to kind of appreciate the value of what I had.

“Although I’m on the PGA Tour, we get given equipment, we get given anything that we need. It’s more out of principle. It’s more out of just the value of not losing perspective of what I have, and where I am.”

Aaron Rai, who has won multiple times on @EuropeanTour, plays with iron covers. Surprising, right? The PGA TOUR rookie gave Jason and Michael the incredible story on how it all started.@JasonSobelTAN | @ESPNCaddie | @PGATOUR | pic.twitter.com/BGOgXRqFUz
— PGA Championship Radio (@SiriusXMPGATOUR) September 15, 2021

Rai treats his irons well every round, and this week, they returned the favor. On Sunday, he gained 1.32 strokes on the field on his approach shots, good for 11th among all rounds on the course.

From there, his putter finished the job.