AUGUSTA, Ga. – Sometimes controversial but always memorable, Jason Day was out on the course at Augusta National Golf Club in a vest with birds printed on it.
With a nod to the home of Augusta National, the print featured the birds of Georgia.
Day was actually supposed to wear matching pants, but Augusta National nixed that idea.
It’s not the first time Day’s fashion plans have gone a step too far for Augusta National.
In 2024, he was asked to remove a vest with bold letters across the belly reading, “Malbon Golf Championship.”
“It looks like he’s wearing a billboard,” one patron quipped while watching from the shade.
Day, from Australia is known for wearing offbeat streetwear from the Malbon brand.
The 2024 vest still sticks in people’s memory.
He recalled wearing a rain suit on the 14th tee as he resumed a rain-delayed first round alongside Tiger Woods and Max Homa.
“Max and Tiger said, ‘That’s kind of boring,’” Day said. He already had been turning heads with his Malbon Golf attire the past four months, most of it baggy, a throwback look in golf.
“I said, ‘Wait until you see what I have on underneath.’ I take my jacket off, and they didn’t know what to say. As I was playing, it got crazier and crazier on social media.”
Maybe a little too crazy for Augusta National. The club determined the logo was a bit over the top and asked that he not wear it that afternoon.
His agent, Bud Martin at Wasserman Media Group, got word — by then it was the talk of the Masters and points beyond — on his way to the course and dreaded the idea of having this conversation in the 30 minutes before Day teed off for his second round.
“I was getting ready to make this speech and he said it was too hot and he wasn’t going to wear it anyway,” Martin said.
And then there was Stephen Malbon, who founded the company with his wife, Erica, after a creative art career in subcultures from surfing to snowboards, fashion, graffiti and hip-hop. Behind a passion for design and a newfound addiction to golf, Malbon’s brand already was making traction in the golf world. It exploded that day.
Malbon likes to say that “everyone knows who we are, for better or worse.”
This was a little of both.
The worse was something Malbon is determined to change through his streetwear design.
“Golf is intimidating,” he said. “There was a lot of young people who probably looked at Jason that day and said: ‘Wow, golf might be for me. He looks cool.’ And then he gets mocked and ridiculed and teased by all the commentators and then they’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not going out there. If they’re mean to him, they can be mean to me.’
“The Masters is the Super Bowl of golf,” he said. “That was a great opportunity to show golf can be different.”
That was Malbon’s objective when he launched the brand in 2017 from a studio in Los Angeles. The idea was to make golf more appealing to a younger, style-conscious generation.
Day turned out to be a good fit.
He realizes some of the apparel can look “wacky.” Day doesn’t care as long as he likes it. He also doesn’t mind the abuse when a design is rarely seen in golf.
Such was the case on a cold day at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am last year. Day wore what looked like an old-school, gray sweatsuit. It’s called “Lost Luggage” sweatpants. They looked like pajamas. Not everyone was crazy about them.
“I remember somebody sent me a text or a tweet that ‘JDay has come out of bed and gone to the golf course,’” Day said with a laugh.
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