Many pros have, over the years, hardly pursued a sober style
themselves: Seve Ballesteros liked a bright pink v-neck, Shingo
Katayama a straw sombreo and studded belt. John Daly
characteristically wore trousers that could prompt a psychedelic
experience. Ian Poulter has turned his love of tartan trousers into
a clothing line. But then what can anyone expect when the Masters
jacket - introduced in 1937, in a lurid green shade somewhere
between shamrock and parakeet, as fashion types might put it, or
mushed cricket and Exorcist vomit as those fortunate enough to in
shades might see it - was designed specifically to make the Augusta
National members wearing it stand out to those members of the
public needing assistance. With an upset stomach perhaps.
This jacket aside, look back to the 1950s and golf style was,
for most, a much more sedate and obviously stylish affair. Sinatra
might have idolised Bing Crosby, but he didn’t follow his lead on
the fairway of fashion. Crosby - crooner supreme and the man who
effectively invented the pro-am game - might have had 75 golf club
memberships to his name, all paid for, but he didn’t let his
sporting obsession cloud his easy weekend style, one typically
capped with pipe and fedora or fishing hat. Look to the golfing
style of Dan Sanders, Jack Nicklaus or, above all, Arnold Palmer -
the sport’s first real superstars - and it was about taking a more
timeless approach too.
Palmer - whose spic-n-span style was something he inherited from
his father - believed that orderly dress meant for an orderly
performance, which is why he favoured an almost militaristic
exactitude in his clothing: a properly pressed straight-collar
shirt, trousers with centre-crease, polished shoes. “All of those
things are, I think, key to dressing with an emphasis on neatness,”
he explained. “Golf is about precision. There’s a relationship
between the player and his dress.”
Not that Palmer thought he had much competition, in panache as
much as in play. “[People have said that] I was a well-dressed
golfer,” he once noted. “I guess that has something to do with the
fact that a lot of people who play golf don’t dress very well”.
Were Palmer around today, he’d be wearing something akin to Onia’s
lightweight terry polo, or Yuri & Yuri serie yarn polo, with a
pair of The Workers Club pleated khaki chinos. Certainly his is a
sobriety that might be coming back into full swing: the resurgent
Tiger Woods has his splashes of colour, but has just as typically
been seen dressed in serious monochrome.
That, historically, golf style has been all over the place -
sometimes at the pin, sometimes in the rough - is, arguably, a
product of the the fact that there hasn’t been any need to dress in
any particular way at all. All anyone needed to wear in order to
play golf was, well, anything they liked. Yes, there were clubhouse
rules - unfathomable, out-of-touch prohibitions against shorts,
t-shirts or denim, for example, which only served to underline the
us-and-them mentality of what still remains one of the most
class-ridden sports. But, essentially, you didn’t have to wear
specialist clothing of the kind that enabled or assisted play, as
most other sports require.
Indeed, it’s only in recent years that textile advances have
seen the advent of golf clothing somewhat designed to help players
up their game - fabrics that stretch or wick moisture, for example,
or clothing the likes of Playbrave’s clever Sebastian polo, cut
broad across the chest to aid movement, or GranSasso’s polo in an
extra-breathable 3D knit.
Such advances, naturally, have eagerly been snapped up by all
those Sunday players who likewise share the mistaken belief that
owning a £10,000 set of carbon fibre clubs will make them play
better, when in fact a Tiger Woods would still be able to outplay
them blindfolded and using a walking stick. But those more honest
about their abilities have rather returned to the wearing of
classic cuts in noble fabrics - the likes of a Stenstroms polo in
linen, or a King & Tuckfield one in merino wool - that do the
same thing, at least for all those who don’t literally run around
the course. And, let’s face it, most Sunday players couldn’t.
Yet much as they might not agree with Samuel Johnson’s famed
dictum that golf is a good walk spoiled, nor should they think of
golf as a good wardrobe spoiled either. Sure, it would be a shame
if the clownish pizzazz of latter day golf style was to be lost
altogether - if only to piss off the blowhards of the clubhouse
committee - but, as pros and amateurs alike are coming to
appreciate, there are limits. Keep in mind the sage words of that
Tiger fella: “Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a
sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like
black pimps”.
Seve Ballesteros, a five-time major champion and captain of
Europe's Ryder Cup team, chips through his legs out of a
bunker.
