Golf is getting a style glow-up | Canada Voices

When the golf season got underway a couple of weeks ago at the hallowed Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga., there were just as many eyes on the pro shop as there were on the green.

The Augusta National merch shop, which allowed customers to enter in staggered waves of roughly 800 at a time, did around US$70-million in business while Rory McIlroy charged his way to a second back-to-back green blazer. Merch haul videos circulated on social media, while the resale market for limited-edition polos and caps is running strong.

Sure, Augusta holds a certain allure, but the hype is indicative of a trend that’s been building for a few years: Fashion has made its way to the fairway.

It makes perfect sense that golf has taken hold with the style set. It is, after all, one of the only sports in the world with a formal dress code – most clubs won’t let you onto a course without a collared shirt or tailored trousers. And although it has largely remained a space for conservative dress, the sport has exhibited small waves of fashion-forward thinking – take Tiger Woods’s iconic mock-neck performance tees, which circumvented traditional dress codes.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s led to the change, but the biggest factor is likely generational. Millennials have finally come of golfing age. The sport’s appeal to the twentysomething crowd has always been fairly limited, but now a generation that grew up with hypebeast culture, menswear blogs and Air Jordan drops on Nike’s SNKRS app is firmly in their 30s and 40s – a prime age to start booking tee times at public courses. Golf – both playing and watching it – also tends to be an inherently social activity, and this is not a generation that shows up for engagements underdressed.

In response, a crop of brands is splitting the difference between traditional golf attire and trendy, millennial-friendly dressing. Malbon Golf, founded in Los Angeles in 2017, has excelled at this, designing clothes that abide by the dress codes enforced by most private courses without sacrificing swagger. Their lookbooks feature traditional polos but also drapey windbreakers, pinstriped performance crewnecks and beefy vests.

It’s a line of golfwear that looks more like it came from streetwear institution the Hundreds than a stuffy catalogue your dad left in the bathroom when you were growing up.

Another brand, Eastside Golf, has set its sights on younger fans-in-waiting and folks who have never so much as watched a single hole of golf. It’s a Black-owned business that’s more concerned with modernizing golf style than appealing to those lucky enough to afford a ticket to the Masters every year.

The label’s presence in the golf world represents another crucial factor in the evolving sartorial spirit of the sport: It’s diversified significantly over the last few decades. The ascent of players such as Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie West has made golf look quite different than it used to. With that comes a more diverse viewership – and a new style wave to follow. Clubs across the country are taking notice, with many public courses loosening their dress codes and a handful of private ones following suit.

Change isn’t on the horizon – it’s already here. The rest of the world finally seems to be catching on. After two attendees in matching Burberry vests went viral at the Masters, we can expect more style moments from the PGA Tour as it ramps up this spring (the PGA Championship, the next major on the schedule, is in mid-May).

Maybe we’re due for golf’s version of the NBA tunnel walk or Instagram accounts clocking everything players wear throughout the season. Either way, it’s clear that fashion fandom has arrived on the green.