Why Does Modern Golf Wear Suck?
Elegy for a once-great style
I owe tennis apparel companies an apology. A few months back, while revisiting William Klein’s documentary The French, I knocked modern tennis wear for not living up to its heritage of brilliant athletic design. And though I still maintain that tennis brands could stand to do a lot better to honor their iconic styles of the past, I now see that I unfairly ragged on the Wilsons and Princes of the sporting world. I was in naive bliss, unaware how good tennis still had it, for I had yet to check in on the current world of golf attire. And after taking stock of its latest offerings, I’m here to admit that I had no idea how dire things could get.
Tennis, while it has largely fallen victim to textureless synthetic fibers and plasticky apparel, has at least retained a sense of design history. Wilson, for example, has released incredible retro kits over the past few years, merging the moisture wicking technology of today with the vintage styling of yesteryear.
But why is it that Wilson can sell tennis clothing reminiscent of a Bjorn Borg or Jimmy Connors kit, while Ralph Lauren (??) hawks golf attire perfect for scolding your child in a Chili’s?
I don’t mean to talk down to the uncles and stepdads of the world—the average consumer is only going to purchase what’s made available to them, and what’s made available to them falls within the polar extremes of The Gaudy and The Dreadful. On one end you’re stuck with garish florals and critter patterns dreamed up during a fraternity brother’s bad acid trip; on the other end you’re left with dull, ill-fitting gray quarter-zips whose primary utility is a zip-up Zyn pocket.
For as dire as the situation is, though, I don’t want to linger on horrific style so much as celebrate some of the greatest golf outfits ever assembled in hopes some budding menswear designer at an athletic brand may catch wind of these classics and right the ship. So let’s clean our eyes out together, shall we?
The Classic
If we’re going to understand how golf style arrived at its current state, we’re going to have to acknowledge what made it once great. These photos of Arnold Palmer, Lee Elder, and Gerald Ford are all prime examples of classic, vintage style. What resonates with me here are the textures and the use of layering. Cable knits, cashmere, twill—there are those who might argue that Arnie pulled off a wool cardigan simply because he was a quintessential twentieth century sex symbol, but I counter that by arguing there were few men less sexy than Gerald Ford, who is wearing the absolute shit outta that sweater.
The Subversive
I get the impression that practitioners of The Gaudy think they belong to The Subversive. I hate to break the news to them, but dressing like a three year old who just learned to assemble an outfit isn’t subversive, it’s just lazy. Tradition can be subverted without blinding your cart passenger with neon spandex.
This image of Hunter S. Thompson might be my favorite golf photo ever taken, and where it shines is in the details. The long sleeve Breton-stripe polo is a home run off the bat. Add in canvas shorts with a 5” inseam and fatigue pockets (!) and suddenly you’re elevating the outfit. Low-top Nikes with calf-length socks are going to work in any context, but juxtaposed against a tropical visor? Incredible. None of these items would ever have been sold as golf clothing and yet styled in tandem they’re perfect, effortless. One glance and you know the man rolled out of bed at three in the afternoon for his tee time and assembled a prime look without even trying.
A long-documented story about the 1992 Summer Olympics alleges that Michael Jordan only agreed to play if he could have time for golf on his days off. It seems to me an almost wasted effort to tell you how perfect his style is in this photo. He retains something practitioners of The Gaudy don’t: a perspective. There’s the casual, oversized Nike tee, tucked in. The pattern on the shorts is extravagant but not distracting. The bucket hat is the only thing here pointing to this being a golf outfit, and that’s enough.
While we’re at it, zoom in on Rod Thorn, cropped in the left side background. NBC Sports mid-crown cap, t-shirt he probably pulled out of his suitcase’s underwear pocket, pleated (!) shorts with a comfortable, flowing drape? Unreal. This is what I’m talking about when I say that today’s parade of hideous polos and stretch chinos is fully the fault of designers and manufacturers—I promise you Rod Thorn never once thought about his clothes. He wore what was available.
The Modern
We’ve arrived at the few and proud of today who are mixing tradition with modern comfort, subversion with heritage. This conversation would be incomplete without first addressing Keith Mitchell, who GQ claims is the man “saving golf fashion”:
This is almost a great outfit, but it’s lacking in personal style—nothing in the layering differentiates the pieces in quite the same way Palmer or Elder used to. That said, it’s composed of natural fibers and varied in texture, which gives it plenty of points in my book. Cashmere sweater, twill pants, each item fitting like a glove—loose enough for an athlete’s range of motion, but not frumpy or baggy like a 1930s gangster. It’s astonishing how simple it is to look pretty good out there on the greens, yet Mitchell’s an exception in pro golf’s premier tour.
Here, however, is where I start to gain interest. Erik Anders Lang, the Anthony Bourdain of the golf scene—a baritone-voiced documentarian whose “Adventures in Golf” series has brought me hours of joy at 35,000 feet on the seat-backs of United Airline flights—is my platonic ideal for the current scene and potential future for the sport’s style.
Is this because he and his occasional cohort, founder of L.A.B. Putters Sam Hahn, read as people who would agonize over ranking their favorite Pavement albums, and as such I feel a parasocial kinship for these dudes who stand out in a sport whose entertainment landscape is otherwise littered with country music fans and hard-right-wingers? Yeah, maybe. But it’s also clear that Random Golf Club—Lang’s clothing line that takes cues from vintage golf looks as much as it does contemporary streetwear—gives a shit about marrying the past and the future in the same vein as Wilson’s recent tennis collections. Earlier this summer, RGC dropped a collaboration with Abercrombie & Fitch (who are… kinda great again…?) and the results were no less than stellar. Slot any of the lookbook’s outfits side-by-side with whatever dreck that The Gaudy are trying to sell these days and it’s clear where the sport’s style should aim in a just world.
At the end of the day, clothing is a story. If every garment is a narrative that reveals something about its wearer, isn’t it better if the story’s well-told? If it understands what made the stories that came before so great? I can only hope The Gaudy and The Dreadfuls of the design world come to figure that out.