Keep your irons and woods cean: The 7 best golf brushes

It happens to the worst of us — a bad swing and our nice club head is in the dirt. Letting your golf clubs get and stay dirty is a great way for your golf bag to slowly deteriorate and an excellent way to discourage your partner from joining you in the game. Nobody wants to play with a slob, after all. And forget about shipping golf clubs around the world while dirty. That’s just not going to cut it. The best golf brushes are here to give you the ability to get the mud and grime off your clubs and put you one step forward into getting them back nice and shiny again. But there are also mid-game advantages to using a golf brush. Keeping the grooves of your golf clubs open and free will improve their contact with the ball and make all your efforts to get golf fit worthwhile.

The following golf brushes will have components that make them look like oversized toothbrushes and they often have bits that are highly comparable to the brushes used when you clean sneakers. This being said, they will all also have parts to them that that make them highly versatile cleaners for your golf clubs or carrying them with you to keep your grooves cleaned out and ready at all times.

Callaway Club Cleaning Brush

Best for most golfers

This standard Callaway golf club brush is likely what you had in mind when you were looking for a golf brush in the first place. It features a contoured grip this reminiscent of a standard plastic toothbrush and a dual-sided head, one side with heavy bristles and one side with soft, so you can tailor your approach to what you want to do. This golf club brush does not feature metal bristles the way that some do, so it might feel on the soft side if you’re used to those. That being said, if you’ve just got your first set of golf clubs for beginners, these golf club brush is a highly recommended place to start with cleaning your clubs as you go. You won’t need to worry too much about over-scrubbing and scratching up your clubs, either.

The Callaway Club Cleaning Brush comes with a lanyard-style zinger that you can attach to your club bag. When you’re ready to use it, you can easily pull it out, then when you’re done it will automatically retract back to the bag. This is a feature we’ll see again and again for golf club brushes, but it is worthy noting that it is done particularly well here and in a quite stylish manner. The dark color of the brush accented by a bright white Callaway logo will legitimately look nice alongside your bag and mark you as a serious golfer intent on taking care of their clubs.

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Frogger Brushpro

Best premium

The Frogger Brushpro is a specialized tool with a wide, easy-to-grasp handle and a unique brush head. For one, the sharp metal retractable groove cleaner — not an unusual feature in and of itself — is offset about 45 degrees from the head. These are often aligned to come straight out of the end of the shaft. While fine, that arrangement can be awkward to use effectively. Do you need to hold it palm-fisted or like a pencil? This 45 degree arrangement allows a more natural grip and powerful application of the groove-clearing point.

Then there’s the brush, the main thing those of us looking for the best golf club brushes are after, and the Frogger Brushpro does things differently than the competition. A ring of standard nylon bristles surrounds the outside of the brush head, while interior bristles are made of a patented phosphorous bronze. Metal experts describe the phosphor bronze alloy as having a unique combination of traits that include resilience, a springy elasticity, and resistance to corrosion. The result is a long-lasting brush that can take care of the worst that gets on your club.

No golf club brush is what you would call “expensive” but you should note that the Frogger Brushpro is a few dollars more than similarly styled competition. And that makes sense, given the unique properties of the brush. Overall, we expect you to greatly enjoy using this brush. And since when it comes to golf club brushes, the premium tier is only a few dollars over what you’re used to, it likely makes sense to go for premium on just about any golfer’s budget.

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Callaway Premium Club Brush

Best upgrade

The Callaway Premium Club Brush is very similar to their standard model, but serves as a good upgrade. It still has the nylon bristles, with one side being stiffer than the other, that will keep your clubs from getting scratchy over time. The main difference here is the handle, which is more heavy duty and wider. This will allow you to more comfortably push with extra power as you scrub, giving you the maximum advantage of the less abrasive bristles.

Another slight difference here is the inclusion of the solid, sturdy carabiner. It’s a small change, but many people like the less flimsy feel of a solid connector versus thin retraction wires. Ultimately, there are minimal changes between the original Callaway club brush and this premium version (which is just a few dollars more) but some prefer it for its more solid feel. You’ll likely prefer this version if you like handles on the thicker side and tend to brush with greater strength applied to the handle.

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The Grooveit Wet Club Scrub

Best wet

Even the best golf resorts have the occasional muddy hole or patch of clay, especially if you live in a wet or high precipitation environment. It just takes more to get that extra cakey mess off than what a traditional brush can handle. That’s why we recommend the Grooveit Wet Club Scrub for these situations. It has a leak-proof design with a reservoir. Within the reservoir, you can put clean water or a cleaning solution to take care of your golf clubs properly after contact with the worst of the worst. Remember, you won’t always have a water trap handy to rinse off your clubs and, if that water is slimy or dirty, you may not want to anyways.

The Grooveit Wet Club Scrub has a wide array of bristle patches with a slight curvature to cover the entirety of your club surface in an ergonomic manner. It uses a pump-action fluid dispensary system, similar to that of what you find on dish scrubbers. When you pump it, your cleaning fluid of choice sprays directly through the bristles and onto the club. This mechanism and tank naturally makes the Grooveit Wet Club Scrub somewhat more bulky that competitors, but it shouldn’t be too noticeable.

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Callaway Clean N’ Cut Groove Cleaner

Best small

The Callaway Clean N’ Cut Groove Cleaner (sometimes called the “Callaway CNC”) is a small tool that has many different cleaning mechanisms. Most noticeable are the brush end and the solid groove cleaner end. For the brush, you’ll see a single row of hard contact surfaces that don’t add any width to the slim profile of the Callaway CNC’s body. Rotating the Callaway Clean N’ Cut Groove Cleaner around reveals the solid metal bar that can be placed down individual grooves of your iron. On one side is a squeegee to remove liquids from your wet club before beginning cleaning. In the image above, under the man’s thumb, you’ll see the last component of the Callaway CNC, a golf ball marker. Just slide out the circular Callaway “V” logo and plop it down on the fairway for a bright and easily recognizable marker of your location.

One thing to keep in mind with this tool is that it is small, so it might be easy to lose in the bottom of your bag or even get left out on the side of the bunker if you aren’t careful. Luckily, there is a small hole in it that allows you to loop it into your keychain. This hole is decently into the meat of the Callaway CNC’s hard plastic body. As a result, you won’t need to worry about it snapping off as it jostles about in your pockets. Of course, if you’re wearing premium golf clothes from the best golf clothing brands, you won’t want to get your pants dirty. So, don’t forget that you can also attach this to a loop and carabiner like other golf brush cleaners on this list.

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Champkey Pro Retractable Golf Club Brush

A great budget choice

For a versatile golf club brush at a fantastic price point, check out the Champkey Pro Retractable Golf Club Brush. It has a fine grip with nice contour bumps to hold firmly in the hand, both nylon and wire bristles, and a retractable point out of the top for cleaning out grooves. In other words, exactly what you would expect from a golf club brush.

To hang on your golf bag, the Champkey Pro Retractable Golf Club Brush has a nice carabiner and pulls out with a retractable cord. That means it’ll be convenient to use when necessary. Eventually, this product will wear out on you (of course, all brushes eventually wear out) as you might lose bristle here and there, which will slowly add up. Still, for a golf club brush under $10, you can’t go wrong with this one from Champkey.

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Prowithlin Golf Club Brush

Budget alternative

As much as we’d like every product to have a very unique selling point, this is just another customer approved option for a budget golf club brush from a consistently beloved brand. It’s got a solid grip, both nylon and wire bristles, and a retractable point on the top for groove clearing. The included carabiner has a two-foot retractable zip-line for easy storage on your bag.

Pricewise, this model and the Champkey Pro Retractable Golf Club Brush only differ by a few cents MSRP. Our advice? Choose the one that you find more visually appealing or support your favorite brand of the two. Alternatively, check the price of both at this time to see if either one is on sale.

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How we chose these golf club brushes

Golf club brushes play a vital part in both keeping your clubs clean and making sure the grooves on the contact surface stay viable to increase the consistency of your shots. Here’s what we look at again and again to figure out which are the best golf club brushes.

Bristles

It should go without saying that the bristles on a golf club brush are very important for its success. The two standard bristle types that you’ll see again and again are nylon and metal.

Nylon bristles are typically softer and are much less likely to scratch the surface of your clubs. However, their relative softness are disliked by some golfers.

Metal bristles are naturally tougher and get things cleaner easier, but increase the likelihood of scratching the surface of your club if you don’t apply a careful hand to what you’re doing. Remember that you can always use a groove cleaner (a common “extra” on golf club brushes) to get the worst out of your grooves.

It should go without saying that bristle types vary greatly. Sometimes you’ll see golf brushes with varying nylon stiffness levels or special types of metal used. When there is something unique about the bristles of a given brush, we’ve detailed it in the product guides above.

Attachment style

In an ideal world, you would brush off your clubs after any contact with soil or sand, including from dirty golf balls. As a result, carabiners and retractable zip-lines are common on golf club brushes and most of the above include them.

When these are used, you want something of quality. A snapped cord or broken carabiner can quickly turn into a lost golf club brush. The golf club brushes above are considered to have acceptable attachment mechanisms that are customer approved in the long run.

Groove cleaners

While you don’t need a Swiss Army Knife for a golf club brush, the best golf club brushes will have some extras included to help you fully clean your clubs. The most common of these is the groove cleaner, usually in the form of a sharp point made of metal.

The functionality of the groove cleaner is to go through each groove with a small, sharp point and clear it. This takes a lot of the work off of your bristles. Think of it like the floss for your clubs.

When choosing a golf club brush with a groove cleaner, there are two primary things to look at. The first is safety, as most groove cleaners are a single sharp point, you’ll want that point to be retractable and not too easy to have accidentally coming out. The second is what angle the groove cleaner comes out of the brush. Most come directly out of the end of the shaft, which can make applying leverage a tad awkward. A slight angle to your groove cleaner may very well be more comfortable to you, prove to be more ergonomic, and gives you the chance to apply more even pressure with a natural grip. This groove cleaner positioning is rare, however.