Today's Highlights

• Fashion hits and misses from Accenture
• Tigers Back...
• A whole lotta bling

NEWS

Sligo Wear bulks up its playing staff

Apparel company Sligo Wear signs Nationwide Tour player Justin Hicks to its staff lineup.

Briefly

Puma appoints Klaus Bauer as a member of the board of management, effective Aug. 1, and will assume the newly-created position of chief operating officer. Chief financial officer Dieter Bock, who has been with Puma, will resign from the board for personal reasons. ... Bobby Jones introduces the short sleeve pique polo shirt with ruffled collar and white enamel buttons. Available at Bobby Jones stores, the polo retails for $145. ... Quagmire Golf re-signs Canadian Open winner Chez Reavie to and endorsement agreement, along with signing Nationwide Tour players Brennan Webb and Dustin Risdon.

FEATURE

Fashion hits and misses from Accenture

By Janice Ferguson
GPA Writer

The two golfers who emerged for Sunday's final of the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship not only played well, they looked really good too.

Geoff Ogilvy's and Paul Casey's attire was as sharp as their ball striking. Perhaps the fact most of us watched the championship being played in the warm Arizona sunshine from our sofas in cities blanketed by a late winter blizzard made us notice more what was being worn than normal - longing to join them in short sleeve shirts and crisp white pants.

Ogilvy and Casey were fashion fairway hits, and then there was the question every one asked - what was with all the white belts? Some of the players pulled it off while others turned the current trend in to a big miss.

Let's look at the hits first - Casey rocked in his vertical stripe shirt with white pants on Sunday. The quarter-zip front shirt was Nike's SP Tour graphic polo in classic charcoal and is made with its Dri-FIT body mapping technology created using a burnout technique.

"The shirt is a mix of polyester and rayon," said Jason Miskovic, senior merchandiser for Nike Golf apparel. "The rayon is put where we want the mesh and breathability. Once the shirt is complete, it goes through a wash and removes the rayon from the garment to make the breathable holes that make up Dri-FIT body mapping.

"This season we were trying to take a new approach to color-blocking. Instead of the bold fields of color we have had in the past, we focused on smaller and refined lines with more attention to detail. This shirt is a perfect example of what we were trying to accomplish in the spring 2009 apparel line."

Ogilvy could wear a hefty trash bag and still look dapper. Puma is lucky to have the tall, lean stature of Ogilvy wearing its brand. And when he holds that fluid swing after a long drive, the entire world can see the cluster of dots on his upper right shoulder.

Those dots form Puma's 18-hole graphic that was launched with its spring 2006 line. The graphic's 18 dots, arranged in a hexagonal shape represent golf's 18 holes.

"Puma's 18-hole graphic was something we created as an iconic treatment to represent our golf collection," said Bob Philion, global business unit manager for Puma Golf. "Our intent in designing the graphic was to distinguish our golf product from the other Puma collections. We use the 18 hole graphic creatively in our designs, often dialing it up or applying it more subtlety - in unexpected ways - depending on our consumer target."

"We also use the graphic for additional branding. Placing it on the back right shoulder makes it visible on the player's follow-through. It all goes back to Puma Golf's overall directive - to always strive to be inclusive, stylish, colorful and fun."

Now for the big miss - white belts, and there were a lot of them. The look is distinctly 1970s, and while there is nothing fashionably wrong with this retro trend, if you do not wear the accessory properly, you run the risk of looking more like a clown than a hip, cool dude.

Without naming names, wearing a white belt with black or dark shirts and pants is a huge fashion no-no, and by no means a new rule. The white belt syndrome has been dubbed specifically as a "golf thing." But that doesn't change the fact that it cuts your silhouette in half, and draws the eye directly to your mid section - the place most of us would rather not highlight especially on national television. The rule is, just don't do it.

Seeing white articles of clothing this time of year is very resort driven, so for those places with year-round warmth like Arizona, Florida and Palm Desert, wearing white and bright colors is cross seasonal. The rest of us are stuck in our dark, gloomy color-ways for a little while longer.

Those golfers at Accenture, like Casey, who wore a white belt with white pants, elongated the look of their physiques. Casey got an extra visual boost from the vertical stripe shirt. The same applies when light colored, pastel, print or plaid bottoms are worn - a white belt compliments the ensemble and creates a slimming appearance.

The only fashion faux pas worse than the white belts with dark colors may have been the woman standing in the camera's background during Ogilvy's trophy presentation. You could only rub your eyes and hope the turquoise tube was gone when you looked up again.

That was a fashion blast from the '70s that should remain archived.