No, Golf is Not the New Skateboarding.

Golf is cool now. Apparently.

At least, that’s what the headlines are telling us.

Every few months, someone announces that golf is the new skateboarding. The phrase usually arrives with a photo of a golfer in a baggy polo, a bucket hat and an expression suggesting they’ve just discovered a new species of bird.

I understand why the comparison keeps coming back.

There are new brands bringing streetwear into golf. There are collaborations, graphics, looser clothes and people who look like they might have arrived at the course from a skatepark rather than a business park.

That has been good for golf.

Golf has spent a long time wrapped in the image of private clubs, quiet voices and rules nobody thought to explain. Seeing different people bring their own clothes, interests and personalities to the game is a welcome change.

But golf isn’t the new skateboarding.

I was a skate kid at the golf course

I was introduced to golf by my parents when I was 12. At that time, I was also heavily into skateboarding. Like nothing else existed, or was of importance.

However, I liked golf. I was reasonably good at it. But the culture around the game didn’t feel like it had much space for someone like me.

So I left it behind, for a while.

Not because I hated hitting a golf ball. That part was fine. I just didn’t recognize myself in the clothes, the people or the idea of what a golfer was supposed to be.

That distinction stayed with me.

When we started working on Volpe, it wasn’t because we thought golf needed to become another sport. It was because we thought there was room for more people, more references and more ways of approaching it.

Skateboarding is skateboarding

Skateboarding has its own thing going on.

It comes with its own history, its own frustrations and its own strange little rules. It’s built around movement, spots, creativity and a healthy disregard for whatever you’re technically supposed to be doing.

Golf has a different rhythm.

It’s slower. More spread out. More exposed. You spend a lot of time walking, waiting, thinking and pretending the next shot will definitely be better than the last one.

Sometimes it is.

Usually it isn’t.

That doesn’t make golf less interesting. It makes it golf.

What is actually changing?

The more interesting story isn’t that golf is becoming skateboarding. It’s that golf is being allowed to exist outside the narrow image it carried for so long.

People are bringing their own clothes to it. Their own music. Their own friends. Their own reasons for playing.

Some of them come from skateboarding. Some come from surfing. Some just like being outside and hitting a ball badly across a large piece of land.

All of them valid reasons.

The game doesn’t need to lose its character. It just needs to stop pretending there is only one kind of person who can enjoy it.

Where Volpe fits

While we started out as skateboarders, we shifted to snowboarding, and eventually surfing, the latter having been more of a constant in our life. We like to bring some of those approaches to golf, and we actually believe there's a lot more similarities between golf and surfing, than there is to skateboarding. So, our reference points are somewhat different.

We look at the coast around us. The colors, the space, the ease of dressing for a day that might include several completely unrelated plans.

A polo should work for a round of golf. It should also make sense when the clubs are back in the car and you’re sitting somewhere for a drink. That isn’t a complicated idea, but it seems to have been overlooked now and then.

We’re interested in the space between the green and the blue.

Not because golf should become surfing. Not because surfing is somehow more authentic. We just think the two worlds have more in common than people sometimes assume: being outside, reading conditions, trying again after a bad decision and occasionally finding a bit of flow.

That’s enough of a connection for us.

So, is golf the new skateboarding?

No.

Golf is golf.

Skateboarding is skateboarding.

There is room for streetwear brands, surf-inspired brands, heritage brands and brands that are still trying to work out what they are doing. That variety is part of the point.

We’re just happy golf is getting some attention for the right reasons. It’s a good game. A difficult one, occasionally a ridiculous one, but a good game.

It doesn’t need to borrow somebody else’s identity to become more open.

It can just be itself.

And so can you.