Golf is the only place left where a grown man still gets dressed in a collar for fun, and almost nobody has thought about it since the last time somebody handed them a tournament shirt at a member guest. So the average golf polo out there is one size too big, one wash away from a droopy collar, and doing absolutely nothing for the guy inside it.
The good news is that a polo is a simple garment with about four places it has to fit correctly, and if you get those four right the shirt looks expensive whether it cost sixty dollars or six. Here is the honest version, with no talk of drape or silhouette, because this is a golf shirt and not a wedding.
The Shoulder Seam Decides Your Size
Start here, because the shoulder is the one measurement you cannot fix later. Put the shirt on and find the seam where the sleeve joins the body. It should land right at the outside corner of your shoulder, the bony bit at the end. Not halfway down your arm, not up on top of the muscle.
If that seam is hanging down your bicep, the shirt is too big, and the whole thing reads as borrowed no matter how good the chest feels. If the seam is sitting inside your shoulder and you can feel it pulling when you take the club back, it is too small. Everything else on a polo can be a matter of taste. This one is just right or wrong.
Most golfers who think they are a large because they have always been a large find out they have been wearing the shoulder of an extra large for about fifteen years.
The Chest Is A Pinch Test, Not A Feeling
Stand up straight, arms down, and pinch the fabric at the side of your chest, just under the armpit. You want to be able to grab somewhere around an inch and a half to two inches of loose material on each side. That is the sweet spot.
Grab four inches and you are wearing a tent. The shirt will billow every time there is wind on an exposed tee box, which on most courses is every tee box. Grab nothing at all and you are in a compression shirt with buttons, which is a look, but it is a look that shows every single thing you ate at the turn.
The reason the pinch test beats going by feel is that a slightly too big polo feels great in the mirror on Saturday morning. Comfort is not the test. Comfort is what makes people size up twice.
Sleeves End Mid Bicep, And They Should Not Flap
A golf polo sleeve should end somewhere around the middle of your upper arm, give or take an inch depending on how you feel about it. The modern cut runs a touch shorter, the classic cut a touch longer, and both are completely fine.
What you are actually checking for is the opening. You want a little room, not a lot. A sleeve that clings all the way around is uncomfortable on a hot day, and a sleeve wide enough to see daylight through is the thing that flaps around on a windy Sunday and shows up in every photo somebody takes of your backswing.
Quick test that costs nothing. Make a full backswing in front of a mirror. If the sleeve digs in across the top of your arm, or the whole shirt hikes up off your belt, the fit is fighting your swing. That is a real problem and not a vanity one.
Length Is About The Tuck, Not The Hem
Here is the rule that actually matters. A golf polo needs to be long enough to stay tucked through eighteen holes, and that is a taller order than it sounds, because you are bending over about forty times a round to pick a ball out of a hole.
Untucked, the hem should finish somewhere around the middle of your fly and cover your belt. If it hangs to the bottom of your pockets, it is too long and it is going to bunch up the second you tuck it. If it barely reaches your waistband, it is coming out on the third hole and you are going to spend the round fixing it.
Our polos run from twenty nine inches long at a small to thirty three and a half at a three extra large, which is cut for staying put. If you are on the taller side and this has always been your problem, that length is the number to pay attention to, more than the chest.
The Collar Is The Part Everyone Forgets
You can nail all four measurements and still look sloppy, because the collar went soft in the third wash and now lies flat against your neck like a wilted lettuce leaf.
What you want is a flat knit collar, which is a collar knit as its own piece rather than cut out of the same jersey as the body. It stands up on its own, it survives the dryer, and it is the difference between a golf shirt and a shirt with a collar sewn on it. Ours are flat knit for exactly this reason. It is an unglamorous detail that decides how the shirt looks in month six.
While we are here, the collar is also the reason the polo exists in your closet at all. Nearly every course in the country wants a collar on the first tee, which is why our graphic tees are off course shirts, the ones you change into afterward at the bar or the tailgate. The polo is the one you actually play in.
Slim Fit Versus Classic Fit, Honestly
The apparel industry would like you to believe this is a big decision. It is not. It is about two inches of fabric through the waist.
Classic fit hangs straight from the chest down. It works on everybody, it is what most golfers have always worn, and it never looks wrong. Slim fit tapers in through the middle, which looks sharp on a straight up and down build and looks like a sausage casing on anybody carrying a few pounds around the middle, which is most of us at this point in life.
Our polos are cut straight, not tapered, on purpose. Almost everyone we sell to is playing four hours in the heat and then sitting down to eat, and nobody in that situation has ever wished their shirt were tighter.
The Fabric Changes The Whole Calculation
This is the part that catches people who learned to buy shirts in the cotton era. A cotton polo shrinks. So the old advice was to buy it a size big and let the dryer sort it out, which is how an entire generation ended up in shirts that never actually fit on day one.
Performance polyester does not do that. Our polos are a micropique polyester, the same family of fabric as the shirts behind the pro shop counter, and they come out of the wash the exact size they went in. Wash it hot, dry it hot, ignore the tag entirely. It does not move.
So buy the fit you want the day it arrives. There is no shrinking to plan around and no breaking in period. The fabric also pulls sweat off you instead of holding it, and it has UPF 50 sun protection built into the yarn, which matters more than it sounds when you are standing in the open for four hours with a hat that covers exactly your head.
The Two Minute Method If You Hate Guessing
Skip the mirror entirely and do this instead. Find the shirt in your closet that fits you best, any brand, any style. Lay it flat on a bed. Measure straight across from armpit to armpit with a tape measure, and write that number down.
That number is the one every size chart worth reading is built on, including ours. A small measures twenty inches across, a medium twenty one and a half, a large twenty three, an extra large twenty four and a half, a two extra large twenty six, and a three extra large twenty eight. Pick the one closest to the shirt you already love and you will be right basically every time.
Between two sizes? Size up. On a shirt you are swinging in, the larger one is always the smaller mistake.
So Do You Tuck It In
On the course, yes, almost always. Plenty of clubs put it in writing, and even the ones that do not have an opinion about it. Tucked is the safe answer and it always has been.
Off the course, do whatever you want, which is the entire reason the length rule above matters. A polo cut to the right length looks deliberate untucked at dinner and looks correct tucked in on the first tee. A polo cut too long only works one of those two ways, and you will resent it in the other.
Where To Start
All of ours run $59.99 and come in five colors from small through three extra large, cut straight, flat knit collar, no shrinking. Get In Loser is the one that outsells everything else we make in this category, which tells you what people actually want on a collared shirt. Back Nine is the quiet one that works at the club and at the office. Bushwood CC plays it completely straight as a club logo, which remains the funniest way to wear a Caddyshack joke, and Shank Week is for the golfer whose group already knows exactly what he is like.
The rest of them live in Polos, and if you are shopping for the after round half of the wardrobe instead, that is The Tee Box.
We have been making golf shirts since 2025, and the single most common thing we hear from a first order is that the fit surprised somebody. Usually because it is the first polo they have owned that was chosen on purpose instead of handed to them in a goodie bag with a sponsor logo on the sleeve.
Check the shoulder seam. Do the pinch test. Everything else is preference.
See you tomorrow.
Dan
Shanked Right
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