Jason Day has revealed that he was ordered to remove a gaudy sweater by Augusta National officials prior to the second round of the Masters, with the Green Jackets deeply unimpressed by a sleeveless top promoting the fictitious “Malbon Golf Championship”.
The Australian had raised eyebrows when he emerged on Friday morning with a jumper that clearly flouted Augusta’s restrained dress code. He wore the top – a riot of red, black and white – for only the last five holes of his rain-delayed first round, but by the time he teed off for his second an hour later it had disappeared under strict instructions from his hosts.
“They asked me to take it off, the busy one,” said Day, formerly a Nike athlete, who signed a clothing deal with quirky Los Angeles-based brand Malbon at the start of this year. “Respectfully, you do that, because it’s all about the tournament here, and I understand that. I respect the tournament. That’s what we’re to do, to play and try to win the Green Jacket. They said, ‘Can you take it off?’ I said, ‘Yeah, no worries’. I took it off.”
Day, the 2015 US PGA champion, insisted he had not been deliberately provocative and that Malbon had simply “scripted” his sweater designs for him. “They sent me the scripting and I was wearing it,” he explained. “They told me, ‘This is what we want you to wear Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday’, and I said, ‘OK’.
In a tense, sometimes downright bizarre exchange with reporters, Day, 36, was also pressed on how he is wearing trousers so baggy at this year’s Masters that they resemble fishing waders.
“If it’s down breeze, these things puff up pretty quick,” he smiled. “But Tiger Woods had baggier stuff on in the early 2000s, and he did pretty well. I think it’s fine.”
Verne Lundquist, the veteran CBS broadcaster who calls his last Augusta round on Sunday, joined Augusta in emphatic disapproval of Day’s sartorial choices. “Folks, over the past 40 years I’ve seen some bad outfits here at the Masters, but Jason Day’s today might just be the worst,” he scolded.
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