Golfers as . . . fashion plates? - Brief Article

Last year, in a national daily newspaper, a veteran sportswriter referred to the PGA Tour as "the polyester pack." I got the joke--but isn't the gag at least 15 years out of date? Golf's era of dorky dressing began in the early '60s (when Arnold Palmer won the Masters wearing pants with belt loops but no belt), crested in the mid-'70s (when Hale Irwin's sideburns dipped below the stems of his glasses) and ended in the mid-'80s (when Levi-Strauss introduced Dockers). Nowadays, a golf correspondent who takes potshots at polyester is like a high-school principal who complains about "hippies." When was the last time you bought a pair of yellow-and-brown plaid double-knit golf pants?

Nobody at my club still wears synthetic fabrics except for a few old guys, who never throw anything away. Their golf shirts--with pointy collars that droop so low they impede a full turn--are even older than their golf balls, which they dredge from the pre-Cambrian silt at the bottom of our pond. All the rest of us, though, look pretty decent, and I'm sure the same is true at your club. The only nice thing my wife has ever said about golf is that it improved my wardrobe. (I work at home, so khakis and polo shirts were a major upgrade for me.)

As a matter of fact, golf's history is mainly one of sartorial honor. In Walter Hagen's day, even the caddies tried to dress like Walter Hagen, and no athlete in action has ever been better attired than Bobby Jones in the '20s or Ben Hogan in the '50s. Nowadays, on the PGA Tour, there's a heck of a lot more cashmere than there is rayon. And most of the guys on the senior tour even wear belts a lot of the time. If anything, golf clothes are in danger of becoming too nice. When Wall Street investment bankers and lawyers hold dress-down days at work, they dress like . . . golfers.

The only clothing category about which modern golfers need to feel ashamed is footwear. (Who invented white wingtips, and why?) Admittedly, the golf-shoe problem is a tough one. Golf is kind of like a sport--yet true sports shoes (like running shoes) look dumb sticking out from under the cuffs of regular trousers. And golf is also kind of not like a sport--yet excessively regular-looking shoes detract from the competitive atmosphere. But we can clearly do better. Even cheerleaders don't wear saddle shoes anymore. Why do we?

COPYRIGHT 2001 New York Times Company Magazine Group, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group