Criquet makes golf shirts that never announce themselves as golf shirts, which is how the same four-button placket ends up on a Butler tee box and at a South Congress bar three hours later. Billy Nachman and Hobson Brown have known each other since kindergarten in Manhattan, where they grew up in prep-school polos and coat-and-tie dress codes, and they started the company in Austin in 2010. It begins in a closet, with the vintage golf shirt Nachman’s grandfather left behind: four buttons, a long placket, a collar that had opinions. They rebuilt it with a flap chest pocket, removable collar stays so the collar never bacons at the tip, and an organic-cotton pitch that was ahead of its time, and called it the Players Shirt. It runs in 100 per cent Peruvian pima today and still costs ninety-eight dollars.
The name comes from the sound of crickets, by the brand’s own telling: the noise of being comfortably off-course. Criquet has never fully committed to being a golf brand. One half of the catalogue is Range Polos in brrr°, a mineral-infused yarn that moves heat off the skin, and Players Shirts you could tee off in at Butler. The other half runs pearl snaps, fine-wale corduroy in burnt orange and a loop-terry shirt called Midnight Toker, which belongs on a pool deck more than a first tee. The two halves hang in the same closet.
Criquet is an Austin company in a way that shows up in the product. The longtime clubhouse-headquarters on South First had a putting green, an outdoor bar and a Bill Murray mural. The collaboration list reads like a city directory: Zilker Belts from across the river, YETI from fifteen minutes up the road, the home team Austin FC under an official MLS license, and a Willie Nelson “Willie Forever” collection that has since been delisted. Discmania, the Finnish house that supplies most of disc golf, printed the brand’s mascot Carl onto a three-disc set. The store currently carries a belt strap in Save Muny colors and a tee with a Lions badge, which is more Lions Municipal product than some golf labels carry product at all.
The catalogue runs past a thousand SKUs and all of it radiates from that one shirt: six live collabs at $45 to $150, six core staples at $98 to $128, and an Early Fall drop that puts sleeves on the Players Shirt in four colorways.
Six live collabs · $45 to $150Criquet collaborates the way Austin institutions do, which is locally first. Zilker Belts and YETI are neighbors, Austin FC is the home team, and Jones and Discmania make up the out-of-state guest list.
Six staples · $98 to $128The catalogue runs past a thousand SKUs and all of it radiates from one shirt: the four-button, flap-pocketed, collar-stayed Players that started the company. The rest of the core lives on the honky-tonk side of the closet, in pearl snaps and corduroy and terry.
Six fall pieces · $58 to $148The Early Fall drop is live: long-sleeve Players Shirts in four colorways, a garment-washed canvas pant, and a Lions badge tee that belongs in this town’s golf conversation. All of it is built for the fortnight of actual autumn Austin receives.
Billy Nachman and Hobson Brown, friends since kindergarten in Manhattan who grew up in prep-school polos and coat-and-tie dress codes. They founded Criquet in Austin in 2010, after Nachman found his late grandfather's vintage four-button golf shirt in a closet and the pair decided to rebuild it properly.
Austin, Texas — the brand has said it plainly since day one: "We founded Criquet here in 2010." Its longtime clubhouse-headquarters sat at 1603 South 1st Street in Bouldin Creek, complete with a putting green, an outdoor bar and a Bill Murray mural.
The signature: a four-button extended placket, a flap chest pocket, and removable collar stays so the collar lies flat instead of curling. The Classic runs $98 in 100 per cent Peruvian pima cotton, with Performance, Throwback, Terrycloth, Long Sleeve and Indigo Knit versions built on the same body.
That was the founding pitch — the original Players Shirt was built around organic cotton, and early press leaned on it. The current Classic Players Shirt is listed as 100 per cent Peruvian pima; the organic language has largely left the product pages, so check the specific item if that matters to you.
Yes — an officially licensed "Willie Forever" collection sold on both criquetshirts.com and willienelson.com. It has since been delisted from Criquet's store, which makes it a collector's item and arguably the most Texas collab any golf-adjacent brand has done.
A hand-stitched gaucho belt made with fellow Austin company Zilker Belts in a colorway supporting Save Muny, the campaign to preserve Lions Municipal Golf Course. It sells for $125 alongside a dozen other Criquet x Zilker designs, including Texas Exes and Moontowers.
Deliberately half of one. The brrr° cooling Range Polos and Players Shirts are genuine golf pieces — the brand was stocked at PGA Tour Superstore — but the stated thesis has always been "comfortably off-course": one shirt for the round, the office and the bar. The pearl snaps and corduroy are the other half of the argument.
The core runs $98 to $128 — Classic Players at $98, Performance at $104, brrr° Range Polos and pearl snaps at $128. Collabs span $45 for the YETI bottle to $150 for the Jones duffle. Fall pieces top out at $148 for pants and knits.
Yes — officially licensed MLS gear, with the Coaches Players Shirt and Range Polo carrying Austin FC's tree crest and ATX marks in verde, black and white. It is part of a wider MLS x Criquet program that covers most of the league.
Bigger than it plays. The catalogue runs over a thousand products including licensed collegiate and MLS lines, the company raised a $1.4 million Series A led by CircleUp back in 2016, and the press file includes CNBC and Details magazine, which once called the Players Shirt "The Perfect Polo."
