AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jason Day played the first round of the 2025 Masters Tournament wearing an Augusta National–approved outfit, after the golfer was asked a year ago by the club to remove a vest he was wearing.
Because of last year’s controversy, Day and his apparel sponsor, Malbon Golf, had to send his Masters clothing scripting, practice rounds included, to Augusta National ahead of this year’s event. “Yeah, there was a back-and-forth,” Malbon founder Stephen Malbon told Front Office Sports from his rental house a few miles from the course on Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, Day shot a two-under-par 70 wearing a black hat and pants, and a colorful Futura poly performance polo from Malbon Golf’s collaboration collection with the artist formerly known as Futura 2000. The brand wanted Day to wear identical pants, but Malbon said Augusta National requested that the golfer either wear the patterned top or bottoms, not both.
Earlier in the week, Day addressed the issue himself on the Dan on Golf show, and during a media interview at the course said that Malbon “kind of cut everything in half” for The Masters.
Second Act
It’s a much different process than Day’s first Masters with Malbon Golf in 2024, when a vest he wore in the second round that read “Malbon Golf Championship” in extra-large print created the ensuing controversy.
Malbon said he didn’t realize that outfit would be taboo. “It was never our intention to do anything except make people maybe think, ‘Wow, if this dude looks cool, and he looks like me and I could be him, maybe I’ll start picking up golf.’”
The company was founded by Malbon, 42, and his wife Erica in 2017 as a way to shift some long-held trends in golf. “We’re a lifestyle brand inspired by golf, similar to how Ralph Lauren is inspired by polo,” he said. “But, most people who wear Ralph Lauren, historically, have never played polo.”
Several of Day’s outfits since the 2024 Masters have raised some eyebrows, too, like the sweatsuit he wore at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “We got our hands smacked,” Malbon said of the reaction from the PGA Tour, which has a vague dress-code policy that only requires clothing to be “consistent with currently accepted golf fashion.”
Day hasn’t been fined by the PGA Tour, Malbon said, “but it’s probably close to that point,” if he keeps wearing certain things. Day joined Malbon last year after he left longtime sponsor Nike following the 2023 season.
Seeking Change
Malbon’s frustration isn’t aimed at one specific tournament or tour but rather the overall long-held accepted fashions in golf.
“The governing bodies of golf and the traditionalists—they say they want to grow the game,” he said. “They say they want more diversity. They say they want younger people. They say they want more women. They say all of these things, but then they do things like they want different type of people playing, and the first time there’s someone that’s looks a teeny bit different, it’s like, ‘Here we fucking go.’”
Day is Malbon’s only ambassador on the PGA Tour, but the brand expects to add more soon at the end of this year. “There are some people [whose contracts] are up that we’re friends with,” Malbon said. Malbon also sponsors Charley Hull and Jeongeun Lee on the LPGA Tour.
