'Guy's a Legend': Stephen Malbon on Jason Day's Style Heater

Most days that there are professional golf tournaments on TV, I get things queued up on the big screen, but before I settle in to watch any shots, I'm usually on the little screen, on the Getty Images app, typing Jason Day's name into the search bar.

I want to see what he's wearing—now during practice rounds, too. And while I know Day to be a pretty tasteful guy in his own right, what I didn't know is how much autonomy he truly had over what he was wearing out there. Turns out, this week at Torrey Pines, a week where he rocked a whole-ass cotton sweatsuit during a practice round and followed it up with a downright flex of a Saturday sweater, that Day was styling himself the whole time.

"We script him sometimes and if we do, it's based off of a product that's coming out. What he's worn all week is stuff that's been out and it's just part of his personal collection of Malbon gear," Stephen Malbon told me over the phone Saturday afternoon. "He dressed himself this week and I think he did it quite well."

On Saturday when I began my routine, I saw the sweater and did the move from that one meme of a guy in his gaming chair leaning forward and locking in. The sweater, a wool-cashmere-poly blend quarter zip with a large wordmark on the chest in an alternate font, and the scene of rolling fairways knitted into a scene, feels more like the kind of garment you see in a lookbook than out in the field. The kind of piece that gives off the vibe of a collection in a hyperbolic enough way to hit you right in the chest.

When it's put into practice, it's like seeing someone in a runway piece on the sidewalk. You do the double take—something here is not like the rest—and suddenly even if you're not a couture head, you know that person means business.

Jason Day's Malbon outerwear is not couture, but it might as well be in the golf ecosystem, and Malbon likens Day's executions of his work to athletes in other sports who pushed boundaries with their fashion and let their play speak for itself along the way.

"Serena wearing catsuits, Agassi wearing denim shorts, Michael Jordan wearing red sneakers. It changed the entire way people dress on tennis, basketball, and now it's golf. It's what [Jason] is comfortable wearing, and he's been out there a long time. The guy's just a legend."

I don't disagree with Malbon. And I think it'll take some more disruption of the traditional uniform on TOUR for it to really take. There are good reasons for the logo guidelines on TOUR, and adhering to them probably stops (or delays) professional golf from going full NASCAR. But logos aren't what are separating Day from the pack, it's how he puts them together.

That's the coolest part of the story. The most stylish golfer in the sport right now gets to dress himself whenever he wants. The guy who's name is on his clothes trusts him to make himself feed good. Not all of his contemporaries can say the same, at least not to the degree that he can. It might be time for the rest of them to take note, cause it sounds pretty good for business.