Down in Augusta, Georgia, the Master’s golf tournament just got underway. While it’s one of the world’s leading venues for any golfer, this year it’s all about Tiger Woods.
I’ll bypass the obvious storyline here because I want to point out something else: what Tiger’s wearing and why. To the surprise of many, Nike, a keystone sponsor that stuck with the embattled golfer, scripts its athlete’s wardrobes.
While the practice of a sponsor dictating athlete’s uniforms is standard in team sports like football, soccer and baseball, golf is a purely individual sport. Sure, apparel brands like Nike, Callaway and Ping all sponsor players, but who knew that for Trevor Immelman Saturday is lyon blue body mapping graphic polo day?
No surprise that Nike has this down to a color coordinating science.
About a week ago, Nike sent me a detailed wardrobe schematic, complete with product SKUs, outlining in detail what each of Nike’s 11 sponsored athletes will be wearing every day of the tourny. There is a certain amount of leeway when it comes to mixing and matching pieces. But for the most part, the golfers are locked in by contract to wear the desired combo – or at least choose only from an approved apparel grouping.
For example, I knew with a high degree of confidence that today Tiger would be wearing a dark grey DRI-Fit open stripe polo (style# 359363-021), black pants and a black hat. As it turns out, he appears to be sporting tomorrow’s white hat and Saturday’s lilac frost textured strip polo (#359361-505).
Well, after all, he is still Tiger.