NEW LABEL

Back in 2013 Golf Refugees proposed a new customer information label for all sportswear apparel. Based upon a simple traffic light symbol indicating how your apparel is made, enabling you to compare brands production credentials, quickly at the point of purchase.

Instead of the ‘race to the bottom’ mentality, we believe by informing consumers about how their apparel is made it will provide incentives for brands to start a race to finding safer chemicals, using sub-contracted factories who recycle their toxic dye-water instead of causing widespread pollution in local rivers and paying textiles workers, who are predominantly young and female a living wage.

How does that fit with you? Please let us know if you would like to see this label on your sportswear in 2015?
#sportswearlabel
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STREET GOLF ON TOUR

What would a street golf event do for the PGA (or LPGA) tour?

Bring a new younger urban audience to golf.

Attract sponsors from beyond dubious financial institutions.

Focus on players ability rather than equipment. (competitors would probably all be playin with the same ball)

Put stupid dress codes to bed. (for at least one week)

Increase spectator participation.

No need to use a local river to water the course or spray 'roundup' everywhere.

Associate golf with fun.
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TOO AFRAID TO ASK

The big question sport stars are too afraid to ask 'who made my clothes'?
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REACH OUT

Your typical golf tournament week is a couple of practice days followed by a pro-am then four competitive days with a cut after two rounds played over an 18 hole championship course.

Play is getting slower for pros, 5-6 hours to complete 18 holes of tournament golf. Meanwhile at grass roots level younger golfers are deserting golf in droves. What should be done, if anything?

Is it the responsibility of the pros and major tours to help grass roots golf or are they just above all of that?  Time after time we hear from the governing bodies of golf that we all pay the same game with same equipment. But with work and family commitments, is taking at least fours hours to play golf any kind of solution for the fast-paced-digital-generation?

Change is always resisted and tradition will always be a powerful constraint.

However Golf Refugees believe the tours and governing bodies should reach out and start an open discussion to think about the unthinkable.

So please let us have your thoughts on how the tours could better reflect the needs of the next generation of golfers.
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THE MODERN WAY

They say its the modern way. Synthetic textiles designed by the chemical industry and manufactured for corporate greed.
#golfrefugees #sweatshopmadecarcinogensinside
https://www.facebook.com/golfrefugeespage
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GROOVY

Stripes have always been popular on shirts. But can stripes ever be groovy?
Golf Refugees have literally taken the groove pattern from a golf club face (iron) and applied it to their new 2015 ‘groovy polos’.
‪#‎groovypolo‬ ‪#‎golfrefugees‬
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TO SMOKE OR NOT TO SMOKE

Car smoking ban will be brought in by the UK government.
To help you drive to the golf club here's our smokin polo.
#smokinpolo #golfrefugees 
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TOO MANY BALLS

Are golf tours too similar?

All 18 holed manicured courses, drenched in water and synthetic fertilizers. Where golfers are allowed to use the same number of clubs and new balls on every tee. Are they really the ultimate test of golf?

How about some variety during the season?

The golf media moaned when Rory lost out to Hamilton for Sports Personality of the year. But could golf learn from Formula One? Race cars are restricted to the amount of fuel they can use and the number of engines during the season.

How about events where pros are restricted to only two golf balls per round? If they smash one out of bounds that only leaves another to complete the meaning holes, meaning different strategies would have to be used.
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RORY IS WRONG

Rory McIlroy has called for a faster version of golf in a bid to attract young players to the sport.

Sport England figures show that the number of 16-25-year-olds playing the game regularly almost halved between 2009-10 and 2012-13.

Isn't it amazing just how comfortable the governing body of golf (the R&A) still feel after losing 50% of young golfers in just a few years?

However, McIlroy goes on to say, "I don't think they need to alter tournament play formats, I think they work very well. It's the grass roots - definitely not at our level."

It can’t be working very well if young people are running to other sports as fast as you can say ‘Lewis Hamilton’. This sharp decline in young participation levels also coincides with a number of top professionals winning on tour as teenagers.

Golf Refugees suggest that its no good just changing the grass roots, the tours also have to change and adapt to our faster world. You've seen this in other sports who have brought in shorter, faster formats for professionals.

Sorry Rory you've got to change too. You cannot just carry on as you are and leave it to grass root golfers to change in order to keep young people playing golf.
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LET 2014

Three great stories emerge from final tournament of the 2014 Ladies European Tour in Dubai. British teenager Charley Hull ties for fifth and wins the Order of Merit, the youngest ever winner on the LET. Rookie Georgia Hall scores a hole-in-one on the 15 th and wins herself a 50k Mercedes car, even though she hasn't passed her driving test.
The Emirates Golf Club tournament also marked a return to top form for England’s Melissa Reid.

If you have a daughter, buy her some golf lessons for Christmas. You couldn't have three more inspiring role models for young female golfers.
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HELP GROW GOLF

Our new campaign to help grow the game of golf. Inspired by arguably the best golfer of his generation TW.
‪#‎spitswearthrowgolf‬ ‪#‎golfrefugees‬
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WHO'S THAT

I can't believe this is what Rory wears underneath his sweatshop polos.
‪#‎tigerwhosthat‬
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SHIRT LIFE

When we have spoken to professional golfers about supplying apparel it has been based around 40 polo shirts per year.

This has recently made us think about the possibility of tracking the life of a shirt. From the production of the fibres, to the colour dyeing and then onto which tournaments the shirt has been worn and what happens after that.

Naturally many people follow their favourite sport stars but would they follow the life in pictures of a sport stars shirt?
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THIS IS NOT A RIFLE

The US Trade Mark Association thought this was a rifle. When we explained it was a disposable golf bag they didn't believe us.

#golfrefugees #binbag
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BON APPETIT

It may seem implausible that when you settle down for a lovely fish meal washed down with a bottle of beer, we are also consuming microfibres from modern synthetic textiles.

Here’s the science bit. Each time you wash your polyester sport shirt 1,900 microfibers are rinsed off, eventually making their way into our oceans to be mistaken for plankton by marine creatures that are consumed by the fish we catch and eat. The sheer quantity of these toxic plastic microfibres, which are non-biodegradable and capable of sticking around for hundreds of years have also been found inside your favourite bottles of beer.

Naturally the published research in 2011 was ignored by the leading sportswear brands. Nike were specifically asked to participate and help find a solution to this problem, but it was obviously too big a fish to fry.

Please note golf refugees ‘eat my shirt’ tees are made from biodegradable natural fibres which do not fragment when washed.

Bon appetit.
#eatmyshirt #golfrefugees
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