X's Menswear Guy Just Raised a Great Point About Golf Shorts

I've never really subscribed to the whole "New Year, New Me" thing, but just a couple of days into 2025 I found myself empathizing with JD Vance. Something's happening. I must be evolving. New Year, New Me might be real.

This had nothing to do with his new gig, but with a post on X from the platform's all-but-official Menswear Guy, Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) about golf shorts. Guy posted an image of Vance and his boss on the golf course and offered a musing on why men tend to—a point I agree with—look terrible in shorts, especially on the golf course.

"The reason why ppl think men look bad in shorts is bc men wear shorts that resemble slim-fit chinos truncated at the knee and then pair them with business class polos," he posted.

I've always felt similarly. Growing up watching pro golf as a budding clothes enthusiast, I idolized the long-panted players on TOUR, and adopted their dress code anytime I could. Pants instead of shorts on the course became my default, save for scorching days where personal style choices could lead to heat-induced medical situations, and it's held true to this day.

Last year, I moved to Los Angeles, where it's always shorts season, and in the few dozen times I've suited up for a round since coming out here, I can't tell you how many times I watched my face in the mirror fall from excitement to disgust as I slipped into my shorts. Tucking that polo in, looking at my silhouette and my knee caps—suddenly I'm not an adult man headed out for sport, I'm a Kindergartener ready for the first day of school, just need my lunch box.

I've had a hard time figuring out why, and while he goes on in his thread to focus more on what a high waisted trouser and a little embracing of yesteryear style can do for your on-course aesthetic, the context clues in Guy's post helped narrow down his take to a few simple elements: styling and silhouette.

"A lot of modern tech performance clothing is pretty ugly," Guy says in the thread. And he's right. Golf's major fashion conundrum of recent has been the balance of traditional style and modern performance. How can you make something Arnie would wear, but that carries the sweat wicking and stretch that a modern athlete would need? Brands like Criquet and Johnnie-O have done a great job of bridging the gap in borrowing from the golden era of golf style (50s-70s) and using modern material to make it hold up.

But the shorts category has only just begun to experience this sort of harmony. For so long, Guy's point stood that you're better off in a high waisted trouser and braving the heat, if truly sharp style was what you're after. Lately though, brands have begun to relax the template, which brings us to his first message: Silhouette.

If the shorts you're sliding on are hitting right around the middle of your kneecap (or as high as just above them) you're going the right direction. But pay less attention to length here and more to the taper. The best golf shorts you can wear right now don't get closer to your body as you go down—look for straight, clean lines or silhouettes that slightly widen toward the bottom. It's the right first step.

The other thing to pay attention to is belt loops. A lot of the best shorts out there right now, as shown in the first side-by-side in Guy's post, hang and flow nicely but more often than not contain a drawstring over a traditional enclosure with belt loops. Anyone who's been told to tuck their shirt in at a golf course will attest, the next thing they're gonna check is for a belt, because to the generation that populates a majority of America's starter huts, if there's no belt, they're just sweatpants. The modern stylish golfer needs to know their way around this.

The second, and maybe more important point, is styling. The key in putting together the rest of your shorts-centric outfit is how the rest of it hangs together. That means making sure the proportions make sense.

Mr. Vance went as traditional as it gets with what looks like a classic pique polo, but the slim nature of his performance golf shorts lend themselves to more fitted, performance driven polo. The one he's wearing fits him great, but the way it loosely hangs and falls naturally over a fitted pair of shorts is what I'm sure draws our eyes toward them.

But instead of changing the shirt that already works, Vance choosing a pair of shorts of a more cotton-centric blend, with a little bit more of a natural hang that flirts with his knee caps a little more could be useful. Similarly, a higher-waisted short would look much more sophisticated here than the lower-rise that typically comes out of the box.

The moral of the story? Yes, men have a tough time looking as good as they can in shorts. But it's not our genetic disposition—it might just be our choices. In The Right Now, there's no better option for the course, in my opinion, than a high-waisted pair of lightweight, straight fit trousers. But if you must wear shorts, expanding your shopping horizon beyond the household name golf brands opens up a world to a lot more interesting styles is the right first step in proving our friend Derek wrong.

Until then, we're grateful he's pointed out this conundrum, and salute his service to us all looking a little less goofy out there.