These are finger-wagging, tut-tutting times of constant judgement. Switch on the television, flick through a magazine or boot up the computer and what are you confronted with? That’s right, some hand-wringing harridan hissing that ‘you are what you eat’ or ‘what not to wear’ as you sit there shovelling fistfuls of microwaveable swill down your thrapple while displaying all the sartorial elegance of Worzel Gummidge after a night in a ploughed field.
Back in a more simple age, clothing was pretty straightforward. Any old animal hide that was kicking about could be fashioned into some primitive tunic or loin cloth and would be fit for a variety of social purposes, whether it was slaying a woolly mammoth with a flint spear or popping into the cave next door for an evening of convivial grunting.
Here in 2016, of course, the rules and regulations regarding items of clothing are abundant and nowhere are there more dos and don’ts than in the world of golf. A tie here, a blazer there, some mustard cords everywhere. It’s always been something of a minefield. Indeed some of the garish combinations that you see being sported by certain gentlemen in the more fustier establishments of this Royal & Ancient game look like the end result of an explosion in said minefield. Last week in Abu Dhabi, the European Tour, now under the stewardship of the excitable Keith Pelley, ripped up the code of attire and allowed players to wear shorts during practice and in the pre-tournament Pro-Am with the obvious path of progression being for them to be permitted in actual tournament play itself, like the females on the various women’s circuits. Pelley is a self-confessed moderniser. He wears bright blue rimmed spectacles for a start. In this game that doesn’t do change very quickly, that’s akin to having Dame Edna Everage sitting on the rules committee. In the wider world of sport, the relaxing of the laws regarding shorts is hardly revolutionary but the welter of coverage this fairly modest bare-legged step commanded simply highlighted golf’s on-going image problem. Hamstrung by the wide-spread perception that golf and those involved with it are stuffier than a taxidermist with a bad cold, the fact a fundamental change still managed to generate such earth-shudderings is mystifying. And to a younger generation thinking about getting into the pursuit, the hoopla over something as hum-drum as an item of clothing must leave them asking ‘just what the heck are we getting ourselves in to?’
We are constantly being told that golfers these days are ‘professional athletes’ and what do most professional athletes wear? Yip, shorts. Brian Barnes, the flamboyant Scot who was always rubbing golfing officialdom up the wrong way with various antics during his hey-day, was probably the first one to applaud the decision. He was handed numerous fines for wearing shorts and finally ended his mini-revolution. Perhaps the tour can reimburse him?
Of course, the sturdy traditionalists – and there is nothing wrong with good honest traditions in this bamboozling world – will say that standards are continuing to drop, those cherished traditions are being eroded and it’s all simply a lack of professionalism. It is only shorts that we are talking about here, though, but the fact we are talking about it at all illustrates the stifling sense of pomposity that still surrounds the sport. It was only in 1999, that the PGA Tour allowed caddies to wear shorts and that came after one bagman, Garland Dempsey, collapsed with a cardiac arrest in the searing heat of a Western Open.
I hope so.. It's 2016 not 1990. Get rid of the stuffy old rules that hold golf back. Make it more fun everyone. https://t.co/ekMFQJQwkD
— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) January 20, 2016
From Doug Sanders, the ‘peacock of the fairways’, to the late Payne Stewart, who would wear the liveries of a variety of American football teams along with his plus fours and bunnet, golf has a curious history of colour and conservative head-shaking. It’s a funny old game. We hope to bring youngsters to the sport but some folk would still rather dress the game’s brightest stars, these ‘professional athletes’, like retired librarians. On Sunday, Rickie Fowler triumphed in Abu Dhabi during a quite spell-binding conclusion to an event that highlighted everything that is good about golf in this exciting, youthful age. Rory McIlroy was magnificent, Jordan Spieth was on the leaderboard and the emerging Belgian, Thomas Pieters, revelled in the exalted company as he harried Fowler all the way. It was captivating, colourful, charismatic and classy. This triumvirate of Fowler, McIlroy and Spieth play the game the way it should be played and their mutual, open respect for one another adds another layer of polish to this blossoming rivalry. Did it matter that Fowler was wearing high-top shoes and jogging pants when he was chipping in and holing bunker shots during a swashbuckling surge? He could have been wearing shorts for all I cared. And let’s face it, golf can ill afford to be, well, short-sighted.
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