The youth movement in women’s golf isn’t confined to the age of top players on the tour. It extends to the clothing worn on the links.
Trendy slim-legged Bermuda shorts, bold retro-print skorts, preppy polos and capris are among the styles sported by women on the pro tour this summer and on public and private courses from coast to coast.
Denverites will get their fill of golf style this week when the U.S. Women’s Open is played at Cherry Hills Country Club.
Many of the younger players, like 15-year-old amateur Michelle Wie, inject the tour with a youthfulness and sense of style that is making the game fun to follow. Just as such men on the tour as Tiger Woods influence fashion with his mock-neck shirts, so do players like Wie and Paula Creamer, 18, who has been dubbed “The Pink Panther” for her signature color and her competitive spirit.
Fans enjoy watching the players and emulate their style, say those in the business.
Kristen Rodriguez wore small sizes of men’s golf clothing when she was in high school because there weren’t enough women’s styles to go around.
“I remember going to pro shops when I was playing in high school and college (at San Diego State and University of Denver) and the women’s section was tiny. The clothes looked ridiculous and old-fashioned,” says Rodriguez, 26, director of operations at The Canterberry Club in Parker, which this weekend is opening a new Daisy Sports golfwear store.
“It has evolved a lot,” Rodriguez says of women’s golf wear. “Designers are creating more feminine, girly cuts, in much better patterns and colors. They’re making great crossover items that you can wear on the golf course and then to eat dinner or go and do other things in.”
Among the lines Daisy Sports is carrying is Lija, created by Linda Hipp. The Vancouver-
based Hipp got into the golf apparel business in 1997 with a line called Hyp when she couldn’t find fashionable styles to wear on the links.
“I was seeing this huge influx of women taking up the game and was thinking that there had to be a market,” Hipp recalls. “The lines that were out there really catered to an older, more conservative golfer with things like wide-cut, pleated shorts with elastic waistbands. With so many younger women playing there was a need for clothes to appeal to a more physically fit woman. And the color stories were traditional – there wasn’t any punch when you walked into a golf shop.”
But Hyp wasn’t an immediate success. “The first couple of years were
really difficult because, although the buyers felt change was inevitable, they weren’t ready to make the switch,” she says.
Having such endorsees as 6-foot, Colorado-based LPGA player Jill McGill helped show how fashionable the sport could be. “She wears our clothes exclusively and looks fantastic in them,” Hipp says.
The line was rebranded as Lija this spring, to reflect its crossover appeal.
As golf is one sport in which a player can get away with wearing a range of sportswear that might already be in their closet, why do clothes matter?
“Women who take up the game want to make sure they fit in properly,” Hipp says, “and that means they want the right shoes and clothes.”
Staff writer Suzanne S. Brown can be reached at 303-820-1697 or sbrown@denverpost.com.
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Female golfers, by the numbers
Some 775,000 girls age 12-17 are playing golf, compared with 328,000 in 1998, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Among the 2.5 million core female golfers, those who play eight or more rounds a year, the average age is 51 and they started playing at age 32.
While the number of core female golfers has remained stable the past few years, the number of occasionals, those playing 1-7 rounds a year, is up to 4.4 million, significantly higher than 1998’s 2.9 million.
Source: National Golf Foundation
