Be careful, tennis, golf wants to steal your quiet luxury

While the tennis season is navigating through minor tournaments around the world, waiting to finally reach the season of the major Slams on clay and grass, the most snobbish anticipation among those who love exclusive sports is now all focused on Augusta, where on Monday, April 7th, the Masters Tournament began. The first and most important golf tournament in North America, which every year becomes the perfect stage for brands and sponsors to launch their products in anticipation of the new season. This year, however, the tournament that awards the winner the right to wear the iconic green jacket seems to have gained even more importance, demonstrating how golf is the next sport to keep an eye on when it comes to the conjunction with fashion and lifestyle. If last year tennis dominated the collections, strategies, and mood boards of brands, it is reasonable to expect a slight change in the balance that regulates the fashion seasons. And since the rule is always to change - but not too much - the simplest and most effective solution is to move laterally in relation to tennis.

So here we are on the green of Augusta, where Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, and Tiger Woods have written their personal mythology, to discover which direction luxury sport will take, whether it will continue to dominate the quiet or the push towards a new technicality made of natural materials and modern forms. A path that tennis has already taken in recent years, thanks to the introduction into a rather stereotyped world of unexpected brands like Gucci and C.P. Company, sponsors respectively of Jannik Sinner and Mattia Bellucci, who have given vitality to a landscape often flattened on the idea of inaccessible luxury. So even golf is discovering a new aesthetic three-dimensionality, which would like to intercept a more diversified audience than the one that crowds the 18 holes of the PGA Tour. Therefore, Nike launches a pair of AirMax Plus or Tn specifically made for the green, not exactly the model one would expect to see on a Golf Club. After losing its great ambassador in Tiger Woods, Nike is now recalibrating its strategy by focusing on the hybridization of its lifestyle lines in performance and vice versa, as it has also done with the Nike Zoom Mercurial Superfly IX Elite.

The opposite direction, however, was chosen by adidas, which launched the Originals Golf line with the Treefoil and vintage vibes dominating the collection. The German brand has certainly not made a secret of its love for its archive, and of being able to tailor the sense of nostalgia for its customers. And even more than in soccer, where the obsession with the past is at a point of no return, in golf a certain aesthetic has never really gone away, in fact. That way of living golf, with a cardigan tied around the shoulders and shoes polished to a mirror shine, the slow life of the green between a ride in a cart and a professional iron shot, is still present in every mood board that respects itself when it comes to luxury and exclusivity. Dior knows this well, having launched its golf capsule within the Pre-Fall collection designed by Kim Jones, where the Parisian and New York aesthetics of the early '80s meet contemporary sportswear influences. So, if Gucci has chosen tennis, with Jannik Sinner's iconic monogram bag, should we expect Dior to invest in golf after football, perhaps with some promising new French players?

In addition, there are obviously brands specialized in golf attire, which fill the niche in every direction and depth, both through collaborations with profiles outside the industry like that of Hypergolf with Post Fashion Archive, and with nostalgic collections like Quiet Golf and Redan every season. Or Bogey Boys, the brand founded by Macklemore and that had already collaborated with adidas, or Whim Golf, with its classic style and performance wool jerseys. Black and white photos, Michael Jordan with a cigar in his mouth, sweatshirts and sun-washed chinos, golf has and continues to fascinate a certain slice of consumers. The challenge now is to present itself as an accessible and influential sport without losing its aura of exclusivity and tradition. Will golf be able to wrest the scepter of sport for the elite from tennis in the common perception, or will its elitist position keep it in its comfort zone? We will find out at the last hole.