Palace x Adidas Golf Is Here to Wreck Your Country Club Dress Code

Over the weekend, several of Adidas’s top golfers, including Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, and John Rahm, made a splash at The Genesis Open, held annually at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, California. And I don’t mean they rinsed their tee shots. Instead, I’m referring to their outfits—lime green, orange, and white Adidas gear that happened to be emblazoned with the logo of one of London’s coolest streetwear brands, Palace Skateboards. Streetwear, having conquered nearly everything else in its path, is coming for golf, too: a full Palace x Adidas Golf collection drops on Friday.

On paper, this collaboration might seem like it was born out of some Adidas Golf focus group where the words “millennial engagement” were uttered no fewer than 50 times. But Palace founder Lev Tanju explains that the collection comes from something a little more prosaic: the skater caught the golf bug. He says he grew up admiring legends like Seve Ballesteros on TV, but didn’t start playing until just a few years ago. “I was at a wedding, and they had a roof driving range where you could hit balls,” he tells me over the phone. “I hit a couple well, and thought, ‘I’m gonna get some clubs and try it out.’” He kept going. That youthful spirit—the idea that golf can be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere, even on a roof—runs through the collection. And it’s an energy that Adidas marketing exec Shaun Madigan is hoping will help expand the reach of the game—and of Adidas’s apparel moving forward—beyond your average middle-aged weekend warrior. “We want this game to be welcoming to a wide variety of athletes. We want to grow it, and this collection shows how we can have fun,” he says.

To Tanju, golf and skating actually aren’t as disparate as they seem. “In both, you need to have patience, and just how hard it is really,” he says. “You need to be delicate, yet powerful at certain times.” Tanju kept those similarities in mind while designing the collection: it’s not an accident that the gear most resembles Palace classics, complete with references to British streetwear culture and soccer. The collection's T-shirt, which was modified into a henley for Adidas’s golfers this week, looks essentially like the kind of ‘90s soccer jersey Palace loves to tweak. The shoes, if you didn’t know better, look like a regular pair of Adidas street sneakers, complete with Boost technology in the soles. The cargo pants look straight out of a Palace video, down to their baggy fit, but are made of waterproof material for days when the weather on course is more St. Andrews than Riviera.

The pieces that are the most traditionally golf-y are the polos—but even they have athletic paneling on the back in addition to their front-facing Palace chest logos. Then there’s the gloves—plural. While it’s considered a novice move to double up on golf gloves, Tanju is a two-glove partisan for pretty much exactly the reason you’d guess: “They kind of have that driving glove look, which I like, and in winter it’s kind of cool to wear two gloves.” That said, he acknowledges that there’s nothing stopping someone from just leaving one in their bag on sunnier days, as he does.

This is the latest chapter in an ongoing partnership between the two companies that’s existed since 2014, but the first time their teaming up has included apparel for golf. The collab isn’t quite as out of nowhere as it seems—as I wrote last year, golf style is in the middle of a major transformation. On muni courses everywhere (and probably a few country clubs, too) a tug of war is playing out between the game’s stiff traditions and some fans’ and players’ desire to appeal to a younger, more style-focused crowd. Today, there are a handful of independent labels creating on-course styles you wouldn’t feel odd wearing in your everyday life. With Adidas Golf x Palace, we have the first major sportswear label—and one of the largest golf apparel manufacturers on the planet—dipping its toes into the world of buzz. (Nike, Adidas’s biggest competition no matter what the sport, makes versions of classic sneakers like the Air Max 97 with golf spikes, and created a one-of-one Air Max 90 x Off White golf shoe for Brooks Koepka. But they’ve yet to release, for example, a full Nike Golf x Off-White collection.)

So how did Adidas’s athletes, none of whom are known for risk-taking style, react to the idea of wearing a skate logo on their clothes this week? “At first, they were a little more curious. But someone like Collin Morikawa, his face just lit up when he saw it,” says Madigan, referring to the 23 year-old who represents the newest new guard in the sport. Of course, golf has become ever more athletic and more youthful ever since Tiger Woods first pumped his fists at Augusta in 1997. That said, Woods’s god-like status has always meant he’s appealed to everyone and their grandfather, even when he was a fresh-faced 21-year-old. Palace x Adidas, with its bright colors and big logos, is not something I’d expect my own dad to understand. But the generational line in the sand the collection creates is also part of its appeal.

The promo clip for the collection might sum up the vibe best. In it, six-time major winner and commentator Sir Nick Faldo calls a shot played by the veteran 35-year-old Dustin Johnson—an athlete who shook up the game in his own right a decade ago, both with what was perceived to be a playboy persona and his 350-yard drives. In the video, DJ wears the collection from the neck down, then proceeds to hit a drive that we follow through the air, Happy Gilmore style, as it travels around the globe, lands on the green, and rolls into the hole. But a world-spanning drive isn’t even the strangest part of the clip. That honor belongs to Johnson’s untucked shirt. For a collection that was built precisely to skirt expectations of what golfers look like, this styling move might be the most anti-establishment—and skate-inspired—of all.

Originally Appeared on GQ