Stand by for a very dubious fashion parade

Golf has a tradition of valuing style – but it does not take much to invite ridicule, says Rob Bagchi

For a game whose traditions are so embedded in etiquette and protocol, golf fashion ought to be an oxymoron. And yet right from the beginning of its golden age in the 1920s, the opportunity to dress up snazzily was part of its charm – and one of the reasons style magazines as well as the sports pages will be keeping a close eye on Hazeltine this weekend.

Read any of P G Wodehouse’s imperishable short stories and clothes are a constant theme, from arresting, gleaming “heathermixture” trousers in The Heart of a

Goof, any number of hats Jeeves disapproves of and the marvellous “vivid pink” main motif of The

Magic Plus Fours “that had so much variety in the way of chessboard squares of white, yellow, violet and green that the eye swam as it looked upon them”.

That classic look – argyle socks, tweed plus fours, four-in-hands, fair isle tank tops and baker boy caps – has influenced all manner of youngish fogeys from Dexys Midnight Runners to the late Payne Stewart.

Indeed Stewart’s revival of the knickerbocker earned him the sobriquet ‘knickers’ which might have made less self-assured souls quail and conform. Not Stewart, though, who held his nerve and became one of the most distinctive people in sport. The comedian Max Miller with his floral suits, long socks and rakishly-tilted, white hat would not have had to teach the golfer anything about dressing for impact.

Flamboyance is the commonest path to prominence. Jesper Parnevik, who was runner-up at the Open twice and was a member of two European Ryder Cupwinning teams, would often change one preposterous outfit for another midway through a round. Where most of us would reach the halfway hut in relief, ravenous for a sausage sandwich, Parnevik saw it as an opportunity to unclip his dazzling, white leather belt and swap his lavender trousers for a pair in plum, adhering faithfully to his purple palette.

Add on the flipped-bill cap, like a pre-helmet cycling casquette, and Parnevik became far more recognisable in the Nineties than serial Major winners. Ian Poulter has benefited too from bold taste by embodying the attitude of the

Golf Punk crowd who wanted to proselytise that golf was not a middle-class pursuit but one enjoyed by the young and dapper who would not be inhibited by a conservative sartorial code.

Poulter’s designs – kaleidoscopic plaids that would give the Scottish Tartans’ Authority a fit of the vapours, harlequin patterns straight out of Rentaghost and Union Flag prints – have made him one of the most marketable men in golf and it is clear that audacity with one’s wardrobe and a certain shamelessness can boost the profile potential of the very good golfer to put it on a par with their consistently excellent peers.

Swank works, then, but so does understatement. Perhaps the most significant advice Gary Player ever received from his father was to establish a look for himself. Watching the western serial Have Gun Will Travel one night in the early Sixties, inspiration struck when Jack Paladin strutted on to the screen, dressed from head to toe in black, twirling silver six-shooters. Player adopted the colour immediately and spent the rest of his professional career as a singular presence, the Johnny Cash of the links, long after the monochrome sets on which he caught the eye so compellingly became obsolete. Seve Ballesteros became famous for a sober choice, the navy blue Slazenger sweaters he wore for his final rounds when he won the Open in 1979, 1984 and 1988. So popular were they and versions by Lyle and Scott during the Eighties that they became staples of the casual scene alongside tennis brands sported by Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. If you went to a football match in the middle of that decade you may well have thought at some grounds that Alex and his droogs from A Clockwork Orange had raided Lillywhites en route.

At the Ryder Cup in 2012, the captain José María Olazábal invoked ‘the spirit of Seve’ by sending his players out for the singles in navy cashmere and they pulled off ‘the miracle of Medinah’ with an extraordinary comeback.

Similarly the US’s two most impassioned victories of the past 25 years – at Kiawah in 1991 and Brookline in 1999 – came in caps with the Marine Corps logo and shirts with portraits of victorious American teams respectively to galvanise them.

Whether either side will be as adventurous this weekend remains to be seen but what is more important for Hazeltine in the early autumn is that all garments are practical even if they have to be worn by peacocks.

Mats Lundqvist, creative director of Galvin Green, the official rainwear supplier to the European team, says how “excited, honoured, exhilarated, proud and a little bit scared” he was when his company earned the commission. His company, brand leaders for golf outerwear, will keep the team dry in Minnesota for the biennial competition where the classical confines of a uniform cover up the fashion crimes of some players who normally look as if they dress in the dark.

Style journals as well as sports pages will be watching Hazeltine