Vol. 1, The Bold Tee Edit, made the case that the golf graphic tee grew up. This is what it looks like a season later: thirty-nine tees from eighteen brands, every one in stock and new to our tee posts. Most come from brands we have only added to the Brand Index since September, which tells you where the energy is. The big apparel names are making polos. The small brands are making tees.
The back is the new front. Twenty-four of these tees are back prints. The chest gets a small logo or nothing, and the back gets the whole idea. It makes sense for golf: nobody sees your chest when you’re over the ball, but everyone behind you on the tee box sees your back, and the joke lands as you walk off the green.
Illustration over logos. The best tees here are drawn, not typeset. Hinotori prints full scenes like old national park posters: a blackbird in the reeds, a trout jumping, an elk in the pines. AXXA draws a camper van at the “Manly Country Club,” Palm Golf does palms and flowers, Walker does a cowboy riding a kangaroo. It’s closer to a band tee or a souvenir shirt than to anything you’d find in a pro shop.
Roadside Americana and racing. Old signs, old engines and old fonts are everywhere. Devereux’s Highway Driving Range tee reads like a sign on a two-lane road. St André made a racing poster called the Nascart 500. Parmore’s Motorsport tee and Dicey’s beer-can parody Ice In My Veins come from the same place: the gas station, the racetrack and the cooler in the back of the truck.
Golf that laughs at itself. “Hitting the stupid little ball into the stupid little hole.” “Play Faster.” “It’s too cold to golf.” “Stay Lazy.” A cartoon golfer with a 1-800 number nobody should call. These brands aren’t selling you a better swing. They’re selling the feeling of a bad round with good friends.
Type that does the talking. At the other end, a few brands have dropped the picture altogether. Puttwell’s Deep Cuts and Know Your Roll and Hidden Links Society’s Play Faster are just two or three words in a heavy serif across the back. It’s the quietest look in the edit, and some of the best.
The outdoors comes to the course. Dicey’s hunting-camo box tee, Hinotori’s fall run of birds, AXXA and Palm Golf mixing golf with surf. Golf brands are borrowing from hunting, fishing and surfing, the way they once borrowed from tennis and prep.
Heavier, washed, boxier. The blanks have changed too. Many of these tees are garment-dyed or faded, cut boxy or oversized, and heavy enough to keep their shape. Golf Gods’ Story tee is a heavy faded black, Mogshade’s is oversized, and Hinotori’s River Run is washed coral.
Hinotori is best known for gloves, but its tees are turning into a seasonal series: the fall pieces are built around birds and the outdoors, and they match the brand’s hats and headcovers. Puttwell, a putter maker, makes tees that are only about putting. Malbon has gone back to licensed icons with the Grateful Dead, and Puttwell has also worked with the Hawaiian designer Sig Zane. Parmore is putting photography on the chest instead of a logo, and Golf Gods turned a golf movie into a hockey jersey with the Gilmore 18. And St André is pricing like a band merch table: two of its tees are $16.
We’ve kept the captions short so the tees can do the work. Hover over a tee (or tap Flip on a phone) to see the graphic laid flat or the other side.
Twenty-four tees where the graphic is on the back. The front stays quiet, and the back does the talking when you walk off the green.
Out on the course
Worn in
Fifteen tees with the graphic on the chest, from a $16 race poster to an $80 sun-faded slub.
In the wild
One more look
A golf polo tells people you play golf. A good graphic tee tells them how you play it: whether you take it seriously, whether you laugh at the bad holes, whether you go home after 18 or stay for the 19th. That is why small brands keep putting their best ideas on a $40 tee. It’s the cheapest way into a brand, and it’s the piece people actually ask about.
If you buy one tee from this page, make it a back print. Start with Hinotori if you want art, Dicey or SAHA if you want a laugh, and St André if you want two tees for less than the price of one sleeve of balls. Then wear it to the course and walk slowly off the 18th green.
