That tradition unlike any other

By Dan Covell

Now that Rory McIlroy has – after ten tries – finally earned his career Grand Slam by winning the 2025 Masters Tournament, and the PGA caravan has moved on, it seems like an opportune moment to take a look at the Ivy Style impact of that annual men’s golf Woodstock that emerges each spring Brigadoon-like, with access to it across the Hogan Bridge that spans Rae’s Creek, and then, as a sotto voce piano tinkles a calming tune, dissolves into the East Georgia mists again until next April.

McIlroy’s rollercoaster ride of duffer double-bogeys and miraculous bailout shots, topped off with a one-hole playoff triumph over Justin Rose, made for wonderful television, especially during the final round on Sunday, April 13 (as the viewership ratings reflected with 13 million tuning in, a seven-year high for the event). That said, the Masters is, for many reasons, a better experience in person. That can’t always be said for pro sporting events, as a combination of cost, venue quality, fan behavior and team performance make attending most events an entertainment crapshoot.

A few years back I attended the Masters for the tournament’s final two rounds. While I play golf occasionally and not particularly well – owning an index score of 20 – I am not much of a golf fan. I have no favorite player, and I watch rounds in only two tour events each season – the Masters and the Open Championship (a.k.a., the British Open). I have also played golf in Scotland, including at the de facto “home of golf,” the Old Course at St. Andrews, where my lifetime personal golf highlight occurred when I parred the 18^th hole, and tipped my cap to the politely applauding gathering of a hundred or so tourists and passers-by looking from the adjacent streetside vantage point. I should have quit the game right there on that high note, because with my skill level it will be hard to top it.

Attending the Masters as a “patron,” as they are so coined by the club, whereas the rest of the world calls them “fans” or “supporters,” is the bucket list dream of nearly every golf aficionado with whom I’ve ever spoken. In fact, the day after I attended, a random guy noticed the green needlepoint Masters belt I was wearing and got downright pissed when I told him I had been at the final round. “Well, you’re just a lucky asshole, aren’t you?” he said. Although the asshole remark was a tad harsh, I couldn’t really argue the lucky part. Masters gear is only available during the week of the tournament, and only for purchase on-site from a retail store that would be the envy of any large college bookstore. And oh, do the patrons love the stuff. I went in twice during the two days I was there, and found the inventory well-stocked with both clothing and novelties (a Masters garden gnome is for some reason especially popular) with prices pretty much in line with merchandise at other pro sports venues. On my second visit, I went through to pick up a few trinkets for souvenirs for family and friends, and the tab came to about $100. Noticing this, I asked the cashier, “Is this the smallest bill you’ve rung up today?” “You know, I think it is,” she replied.

The group with whom I attended included me – an extremely casual golf fan – two moderate fans, and one completely hardcore devotee. In fact, once we passed through the security checkpoint and surrendered our cell phones (yes, attending the event is so valued – and Augusta National is so all-powerful – that fans willingly part ways with their devices so that they may then enter the hallowed space), I didn’t see our hardcore friend until the end of the day, so anxious was he to see and to experience the tournaments big moments and the course’s legendary features. The rest of us were happy to wander around the course for a while, purchase the incredibly low-priced concessions food items (Augusta National chooses not to mark up prices here, so one can buy a famous pimento-and-cheese sandwich and a “soft drink” – no brand identified but it has to be Coca-Cola, as the company’s HQ is just 150 miles to the west – for $3.50, or splurge on a “domestic” or “imported” beer – again no brand identified – for $6), then make our way back to one of the course-side “cabins,” in reality two-floor houses fitted to serve as luxury hospitality sites for sponsors and others, and enjoy free food and beverage and watch the event unfold on TV.

“This is the most rule-following place on earth,” comedian Nate Bargatze once said of a generic golf course experience when his wife was making them late for their 1:56 p.m. tee time. Augusta National is all that times infinity, which you might think would be a turn the Masters into a totalitarian doomscape. It does not. Without their oxymoronically named smart phones, fans actually watch the action in front of them, and the tension and anticipation grow when a roar from across the course occurs, then fans have to wait to see what happened until one of the course’s old-school manual scoreboards slides the score panels into place to show the hole-by-hole progress. And if fans act up, yell repeatedly, or otherwise make a public spectacle of themselves, they are ushered out and banned for life. No chance for appeal. So, people watch, cheer, buy merch, enjoy the cut-rate food and drink, and mind their P’s and Q’s.

The rules of golf impact clothing as well. Most private courses have strict dress codes on what can be worn when and where, and some even choose to monitor how one changes clothes, such as banning changing from street shoes to golf shoes in the club parking lot. Augusta National has clothing rules as well. The winner of the Masters gets a trophy and a pretty good payday ($4.2 million for McIlroy this year), and, most notably, a three-button crested blazer known as “the Green Jacket.” The winner gets to keep the item for 12 months and then it must be returned to the clubhouse at Augusta National and then can only be worn while on the grounds (the winner gets a replica to keep). This prized garment was so cherished by 2017 recipient Sergio Garcia that he wore his in public constantly, including to a Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer match, the Open Championship and Wimbledon.

No other major sporting event I know bestows an article of clothing to its winner – save for the logoed hats and t-shirts thrown to teams during the immediate postgame celebrations, but that’s mostly to gin up merch sales from fans. The idea for the Green Jacket, as with much of the antecedents for both golf apparel and Ivy Style, came from England, when Augusta National founder Bobby Jones saw the captains at the Royal Liverpool club wearing red jackets. Jones and cofounder Clifford Roberts opted for green for Augusta National and since 1937, club members wear them during Masters week, and in 1947 began to award winners the jacket, along with an honorary club membership.

The Green Jacket, really a crested blazer, is indeed green – neither kelly nor hunter – my Pantone search puts the color at something close to 18-6032 TSX (titled “Putting Green,” perhaps not coincidentally). It has been described by one critic as “a boxy thing that will win no style awards,” and as noted is a three-button number, with two on the cuffs, the buttons gold and embossed with the Masters logo (an outline of the United States sans Alaska and Hawaii, with a hole and flagstick planted in Georgia). The lapels are notched and are neither narrow nor wide. The fabric appears to be a cotton/synthetic blend. The lining is a darker green and may be silk; in past years it looked more kelly. The Masters logo patch is on the left chest, and there are flaps over the front pockets.

While the composite of look and materials might indeed rate the Green Jacket nondescript and unworthy of style awards (e.g., my spouse describes it as “boring old man Southern preppy”), it is a far sight better than the current style state of apparel worn by today’s tour pros. For years golf apparel was synonymous with bad taste, and then staid and boring (think oversized khakis and white polo shirts everywhere). In the 2010s, more PGA pros adopted what The Official Preppy Handbook coined “go-to-hell” pants.

These are appropriate around preppy country clubs, wrote Dame Birnbaum et al., because “it is considered very spirited, very fun-loving to wear one offbeat, loud item … The favored color is lime green, but go-to-hell pants may come in other similarly shocking colors.” This connection to both the traditional and the fun-loving led designers like Ralph Lauren to push the players wearing their product to don bright pink pants (actually termed “Bubblicious” by the maker), paired with pastel striped shirts, as clothing companies often script the outfits for their golfers at major tournaments. “They tell me, ‘Look, we sell more pink pants whenever you wear the pink pants,’” said one tour pro. “Frankly, I’m not a fan of yellow or pink pants, but if they give them to me – and they do – I wear them. I figure they know better than me.” Dustin Johnson, however, drew the line at wearing orange. Why? “I don’t like orange,” he explained. When Rickie Fowler (outfitted by Puma), who made orange his signature color – an homage to his collegiate alma mater, Oklahoma State University – heard Johnson’s remark, he said: “I’ve got to talk to him about that. Everybody needs some orange, man.” A writer for Golf Digest magazine defended the approach this way: “People have to dress their personality … and there’s nothing wrong with that.” British golfer Ian Poulter, who once wore pants with the Union Jack British flag design summed up his sartorial choices this way: “I wanted to liven up golf … What I always say is, ‘Look good, feel good, play good.’”

But in the intervening decade or so, the blahs have returned. Christan Chensvold writes that “it’s a general principal that changes in fashion is a one-way street hurling headlong toward the casual … Golf shoes have undergone tremendous transformations in the past few years” and it has been a trip that has been the sartorial equivalent of crashing a golf cart into a bunker. While the athleisure clothing explosion has allowed for better fabrics and slimmer fits, the same trends have made golf shoes look terrible, a step above the clunky leather Velcro numbers favored by some a decade or so ago. Writer Gerald Flores states that “sneakers have always been an overarching part of the millennial generation’s fashion choices,” and that’s really what current golf shoes are – sneakers, since the days of hard metal spiked shoes is long past. The “go-to-hell” approach to clothing is equally defunct, as evidenced by the outfits of leaders during the final round at Augusta. Navy, tan, gray, white, some black. Mostly solid colors, some faint striping. Interesting belts? Hardly. Although team sports, with their necessity for formalized similarity in uniforms, have seen a burst of athlete self-expression with shoes and other accessories, the tour sports have always allowed for self-determination and expression with clothing and, as outlined above, a much more powerful personal branding opportunity, something especially important since sponsor logos have long been part of pro golfer attire. Apparently, the choice to be dull worked for Rory this time around, but it was visually lackluster, to say the least.

Of course, the Green Jacket stands for achievement, but perhaps it is something more now. When compared to this fallow period of golf style, the Green Jacket stands out as something close to “go to hell.” A trophy sits in a case somewhere, while the Green Jacket has a live action quality. It has some basic Ivy Style elements that define it, and it has a degree of power that no trophy could ever approach. And just think of the reaction should Augusta National fully embrace the “go to hell” ethos and change the Green Jacket to pink, or to orange? Maybe the club will float it as an April Fool’s joke next year. Believe me, heads would explode, both for and against. I’d be o.k. with it, just don’t switch to tan, navy or gray.