Merino wool for golf: warmth without weight

Long before performance fabrics carried acronyms, golfers stayed warm in wool. There was a reason for that, and it still holds. Merino is one of the oldest technical fibres we have, and for a game played through a British spring, autumn and the cooler edges of summer, little has bettered it.

Oscar Jacobson has made knitwear since 1903. Wool is not nostalgia for us. It is the fibre that does the most, asks the least, and looks right doing it. Here is why it belongs in your golf bag.

What merino actually does

Merino comes from a breed of sheep with an unusually fine, soft fleece. The fineness is the point. Where coarse wool scratches, merino sits soft against the skin, and its structure does something synthetics still struggle to copy: it regulates temperature in both directions.

On a cold first tee it traps warm air and holds it close. As you walk and warm up, it lets heat and moisture escape rather than sealing them in. You are not too warm on the fairway or too cold standing over a putt. The fibre is doing the thinking, so you do not have to keep adding and removing layers.

Warm even when it is damp

This is the quality that matters most on a British course. Merino can absorb a good deal of moisture before it feels wet to the touch, and it keeps insulating while it does. A sudden shower or a heavy dew will not leave you cold and clammy for the back nine. Cotton, by contrast, gives up the moment it gets damp: it holds the water, loses its shape and pulls the heat straight out of you.

For a game played outdoors in changeable weather, a fibre that keeps working when it is wet is not a luxury. It is the difference between finishing the round comfortable and finishing it counting the holes.

It does not hold odour

Merino resists the bacteria that cause fabric to smell, which is why it can be worn again and again between washes and still feel fresh. For anyone who plays several times a week, or throws a sweater in the bag for the whole season, that matters. It also means fewer washes, which is the single best thing you can do to make good knitwear last.

Weight, and where it sits

Modern merino is spun fine enough to be genuinely light. A merino zip-neck gives you real warmth without the bulk of an old lambswool jumper, so it moves with your swing rather than fighting it. That makes it the ideal middle piece: worn over a polo on its own, or under a shell when the weather turns properly. For the coldest mornings, a thin base layer underneath completes the system without adding a scrap of visible bulk.

The OJ knitwear

Our knitwear collection is built around this thinking. The Warwick merino zip-neck sweater is the piece we would point most golfers to first: fine-gauge merino, a clean zip-neck that layers over a collar, and a colour palette that stays quiet. The Anders lined sweater adds a little more shelter for the shoulder seasons, and the Rumsey sweater is there when you want the weight and hand of a proper piece of knitwear.

None of them shout. That is deliberate. Good knitwear should read as texture and cut, not colour, and it should look as correct in the clubhouse as it does on the tenth tee.

Caring for merino

Merino rewards being left alone. Wash it far less than you think you need to. Air it after a round and most of the time that is all it wants. When it does need washing, turn it inside out, use a wool or delicates cycle at 30 degrees with a wool-safe detergent, and skip the fabric softener, which coats the fibres and dulls their performance.

Never wring it. Reshape it flat and dry it away from direct heat and sunlight. A radiator will felt and shrink a good sweater faster than years of play. Treated this way, a merino piece will hold its shape and see you through many seasons, which is rather the point of buying well in the first place.

The old fibre, still the best

Golf has no shortage of new fabrics, and some of them are very good. But for warmth that regulates itself, comfort when the weather turns, and a look that has never dated, wool remains hard to beat. It is why we have kept making it for more than a century, and why a merino sweater is still one of the most useful things a golfer can own.