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Buying Guide: Polo Shirts

Intro

There are trillions and trillions of polo shirt designs in the world (alright we might be exaggerating slightly!) but this buying guide is designed to help you understand what’s what in the world of golf polo shirts. After all, its pretty important to get the right type of shirt as if you turn up to some ‘fancy’ golf courses in a crop top or smock shirt you might not be allowed on!

After reading this guide you should be able to tell your double-dyed polyesters from your reactive-dyed cottons… again this might be a slight exaggeration! But if you haven’t learnt something interesting about men’s polo shirts after reading this we will be pretty shocked. And importantly you can buy in confidence knowing that what you are buying will be allowed up the golf course. Nice!

Sizes

Traditionally, polo shirt sizes are determined by chest size and seeing as we are traditionalists at heart (albeit bright and jazzy traditionalist) we decided this was how we would size our polos.

To measure your chest all you have to do is get a tape measure, stick one end in your armpit and then measure around the widest part of your chest. It’s also important to ensure the measurement is taken with the measuring tape flat across your back to make sure you get a nice accurate measurement.

Now you have the strenuous measuring part out of the way, you can look at the size guides online and find out what each brands size means to you.

Royal & Awesome polo shirt’s run from Small through to Extra Extra Large, starting at a 40 inch chest and then increasing by 2 inches all the way up to 48 inches for the XXL.

If there is any doubt about what size you are, we would recommend going for the larger size so you can make sure your swing isn’t hindered. So if you have a 45 inch chest we would recommend going for a XL polo shirt (which has a 46 inch chest).

Fit

Depending on personal preference, you may rank fit even higher than looking like a million dollars… In all seriousness, there are so many variations on the market that it can sometimes be easy to get confused and lost as to what a professional tech-fit may be. We chose a classic fit so thankfully its in between super tight and skater boy baggy.

We also decided to use a 3 button collar design which allows you to alter the fit around the neck and decide what style you want to roll with. You can go for a top button done up look if you want to look like an Indie rocker, or if you’ve just sunk a monster putt you can pop your collar and go for ‘that’ Eric Cantona celebration type look.

Patterns

As we mentioned at the beginning of this buying guide, it sometimes feels like there are more shirt patterns in the world than humans. The range is massive and you can get anything from floral to plain, striped to hooped, diamond to diamanté!

We decided to stick with bright block colours which look good with looks of different items of clothing. We understand that having a bright yellow pineapple shirt might look Awesome but when you pair it up with some tartan trews it might look a ‘tad’ busy!

We decided to go for 3 colours – red, white and blue – as these work well with our bottoms and accessories. You can feel comfortable knowing that your red polo shirt will match your King of Diamond shorts and red socks. The only thing we unfortunately can’t guarantee is that your golf will match up to you spectacular look!

Materials

After some serious thought we decided that leather polo shirts might not be the best look and may result in some serious sweat and chafe. There are lots of materials available when it comes to polo shirts but the vast majority are made of either cotton or polyester.

Both materials have their positives and negatives and we were 50/50 on what to produce, but the major advantage polyester has is its moisture wicking properties. The polyester fibers lift moisture away from the skin and we don’t know anybody that wants to play 18 holes feeling wet, sweaty and uncomfortable. Using polyester also means the polo shirts are strong and crease resistant allowing you to spend more time having fun up the golf course as opposed to ironing!

Following our market research we decided that our polo shirts should be 100% polyester and although we may be biased (?!) we think they rock.

Trim

We understand how annoying it is when you get a polo shirt that looks really nice, fits really well & brings you extra luck, but has a big size tag in the collar. We decided to go with a printed size and logo so our polo’s won’t annoy the hell out of you on the course.

Price

The market is full of products and it seems like all of these have a different price. Some polo’s venture upwards of £100 and whilst it might be the same one that Rory McIlroy wore (don’t get us wrong, we think these polo’s do look nice) we wanted to go for a ‘slightly’ lower price point!

We are priced at £24.99 and feel this price point allows us to mix performance, quality and value. However if anybody does fancy paying £100 for one of our polo’s, please do get in touch and we will see what we can do…

Returns

You can return any of your Royal & Awesome purchases for a full refund. We like to think we are Awesome like that!

You can check out more Awesome Buying Guides at the links below:

An Awesome Intro to Buying Guides

A Buying Guide for Golf Trousers