Apparel

Editor’s Picks: The 5 best high-performance golf shorts for the heat

By: James Colgan

August 29, 2021

I’m lucky. My summer has consisted of one thing, and one thing only: golf. I’ve thought about it, wrote about it, struggled with it, and most recently, traveled to play it.

Life is good for a golf writer in the summer. Really good when that golf writer’s August travel plans feature trips to play golf at Pinehurst and Sandals Emerald Bay in the Bahamas, as mine did. I’ve teed it up at a handful of brilliant, gorgeous courses in the span of the last several months, and in that time, I’ve learned a few lessons.

1. It’s important to hydrate. Like, critically important.
2. There’s nowhere more humid than North Carolina in August. Except for the Caribbean.
3. It is possible to soak every portion of your clothes in sweat. If your clothes aren’t moisture-wicking, it’s actually likely you’ll do that.

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That final lesson — the one about clothing — has come under even further scrutiny in the time since returning from those trips. Most of what I own could be considered “golf performance clothing,” the sort of stuff made from “performance fabrics” with the goal of keeping you cool and at your very best.

But I’ve quickly learned that “performance clothing” can very easily be “poor performance clothing” — items that drag you down, make you itchy and uncomfortable, and that look terrible when inundated with sweat. Fortunately, not all of my clothes are poor performance clothing. While some items have struggled in the August sun, others have shone.

Shorts, in particular, have come under my watchful eye, and below, find five pairs I’ll be taking on all my road trips from the Sahara to Sandals.