It has been less than two weeks since Patrick Reed won the Masters, and already all the other sport coats in his closet are green with jealousy. Just not green enough.
In case you didn’t know it, Reed outlasted Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth at Augusta National. It was in all the papers. But need further proof? Just check out Reed about any time he leaves the house. Chances are he’ll be wearing the distinctive green jacket of a Masters champion.
He has a year to show it off, and at the pace he’s wearing it, it may be all worn out by next April. Completely threadbare, with a patch on at least one elbow and missing multiple buttons.
A few out there on social media have gigged Reed for an excessive display of pride in the newest addition to his wardrobe. Why? Maybe just because it’s Patrick Reed, and he is such an easy target. Of course, on many of those same platforms, you could find critics of feeding starving children.
Reed has worn his Masters jacket to at least two NBA games (in New York and Houston), all the talk shows on the circuit, a Houston Astros game, atop the Empire State Building and even while picking up an order at a Chick-fil-A back home in Texas.
You know you’d do exactly the same thing if you won the Masters. You’d wear the green jacket to bed. You’d wear it to get the mail. You’d finally attend a PTA meeting at your kid’s school, just so you could wear it there. You’d wear it to the movies, the grocery store, the mall, the beach. There’d be no day too hot, no thunderstorm so soaking that the jacket would be out of play.
Were it me, they’d basically have to cut the thing off by the time I had to turn it back to the club a year later.
As an unpaid fashion consultant to Masters winners everywhere, I’d suggest only a few events where you shouldn’t model the wearable trophy. A short list:
A funeral.
An arraignment.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona.
An audit.
Front row at a monster-truck rally or a UFC fight.
Greg Norman’s house.
Otherwise, anything else pretty much goes. The Masters champion need be bound by little etiquette in this matter. One should wear the green jacket – and we suspect Reed will – with the same defiant attitude old champion Doug Ford once displayed when he was asked why he kept coming back to Augusta, only to shoot something stratospheric. “Because I won the (expletive) thing,” he explained.
That’s the same reason this jacket is always in fashion. Reed won the thing.
Displaying the jacket in various real-life venues is about the only non-stuffy thing about the Masters. It is fun. It is real. It is the one act that could be considered slightly populist connected to an elite club and a tournament that takes itself oh, so seriously.
Reed only is furthering a proud, growing tradition here. Sergio Garcia wore his green jacket to his wedding reception (choosing something more traditional for the actual ceremony). Jordan Speith wore his to a Texas-Rice football game. Phil Mickelson wore his through the drive-thru at a Krispy Kreme. Bubba Watson made Waffle House his first stop after winning both his Masters.
What we have here is the ultimate letterman’s jacket. Only it never looks silly on the wearer, regardless how old he may be.
So, wear on, Mr. Reed. That color brings out the champion in your eyes.
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