Meet the Arnold Palmer Invitational's Red Cardigan Sweater, the Second-Best Winner's Garment in Golf

One month before the green jacket at Augusta comes the red cardigan sweater at Bay Hill, like Arnie wore and turned into a fashion icon.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Indiana Jones can take the day off. We don’t need his help to find the Holy Grail of golf prizes.

There is only one green jacket, the garment annually awarded to the newly deified Masters champion upon his entrance to Augusta’s Elysian Fields.

However, we have a new clubhouse leader for the runner-up position, whatever it should be called. Golf’s Holy Grail Junior? Chief Assistant Holy Grail? (Don’t worry, the marketing folks will come up with something snappier.)

Sunday evening, the Arnold Palmer Invitational champion will accept a hard-earned trophy, enough money to purchase a small island in the Greater Antilles and don The Red Cardigan Sweater. The latter will allow us to temporarily travel back in time to a more romantic era. You know—post-Jurassic but still pre-Tom Brady.

Gary Van Sickle/SI, Reinhold Matay/USA TODAY Sports

Tiger Woods has his Sunday red golf shirt and its fading magic. The red cardigan was Arnold Palmer’s power garment. Palmer wore cardigans in navy blue, foam green, gray, yellow and other flavors but that red cardigan, woven from the finest Peruvian alpaca wool, meant business.

Those were the days of Arnie’s Army, back-nine charges and golf with Ike (President Eisenhower).

Any other clothing nominees are a distant third, with apologies to the plaid jackets at Colonial and Harbour Town, the WM Phoenix Open’s blue blazer and the late, great Conquistador helmet handed out in Tucson.

Arnold Palmer's iconic umbrella logo is on the patch of the winner's red cardigan sweater :: Gary Van Sickle/SI

The Red Cardigan Sweater has quickly become almost Stanley Cup-like (at least to us golf nerds) since first being awarded in 2017 after Palmer, the tournament host, passed away.

For starters, it is rare. The only winners so far are Marc Leishman, Tyrrell Hatton, Rory McIlroy, Francesco Molinari, Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler.

For once, Tiger Woods was off on his timing. He won eight times at Bay Hill but too soon to get a red cardigan. If you’re wondering why nobody thought of this brilliant tribute to Palmer sooner, you’re also probably wondering how Captain Obvious got his name.

A red cardigan sweater is not in style with current fashion trend. But Palmer’s red cardigan sweater never goes out of style.

“Arnie could wear that thing and it was cool,” said longtime NBC-Golf Channel broadcaster Jimmy Roberts. “There won’t be a single winner here who puts that on and doesn’t think, ‘look at me.’ It’s not the trophy or the intrinsic value of it, it’s what it represents—Arnold Palmer.

“Today’s players already have so much stuff. Can you imagine them using anything they get for winning? It all goes straight into a trophy case. Isn’t the question, What would really mean something? The answer is Arnold’s red cardigan. If I had one and was sitting at home at the end of the day, damn straight I’d put it on. The red cardigan is as close as you can get to a green jacket.”

Cardigan Rules?

Zach Johnson, your 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, is the proud owner of a Masters green jacket. He’s 47 and he made the cut this weekend at the API. He probably isn’t going to win his own red cardigan at this point (but don’t tell him that). He understands the importance of the icon.

“There’s a spectrum as far as garments go, the green jacket is at the top,” Johnson said. “I feel like the hallowed grounds of where we are this week and what it stands for, the red cardigan gets more and more special.”

Johnson wondered if there were rules about the cardigan, like the Masters rules that the champion’s green jacket isn’t supposed to leave the Augusta National grounds after he keeps it for the first year. There are no red cardigan rules.

If he had one, Johnson said with a laugh, “I’d turn down the a.c. really low and sleep in it some nights. Why not, right? Not many could say they’ve done it.”

The Man With Both

Reigning Masters champion Scottie Scheffler is the only player with a green jacket and an Arnold Palmer Invitational red cardigan among his tournament prizes.

Scheffler did make some appearances in his green jacket during his first tour as Masters champion, notably throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Texas Rangers game while wearing the green jacket, a white shirt and a yellow tie. He also wore it to drop the ceremonial puck before a Dallas Stars National Hockey League game.

He admitted to putting it on around the house a few times, just to prank his wife, Meredith.

“When she tries to get me to clean the dishes or something like that,” Scheffler said, “ I’ll put the jacket on and be like, ‘Really, I still have to do this?’ I’ve had some fun with that.”

His red cardigan apparently hasn’t seen that kind of excitement. It is hanging in a closet in Scheffler’s golf room next to his green jacket. He was asked if the two iconic garments ever touch. “Maybe if there’s ghosts in there,” he said. “They’re only a few inches apart.”

They Can Be Itchy, Though

Pierceson Coody is the grandson of 1971 Masters champion Charles Coody. So he grew up being familiar with the aura of the Masters green jacket.

Pierceson played college golf at the University of Texas and is making a strong start in professional golf. He’s already won one Korn Ferry Tour event and Saturday, after just barely making the cut at the API, posted seven birdies en route to a scintillating 66 at Bay Hill.

He played twice in the 2020 and 2021 Palmer Cups, events similar to the Ryder Cup only for college players on each side of the Atlantic. To fire up the American team, the players were given cardigans straight out of the Arnold Palmer playbook.

“We wore them for a couple of days,” Coody said. “So I know what it feels like to wear them to play golf in. It’s an old-school thing and it was big and heavy. But it looks really good on him (Palmer).”

Coody hasn’t pulled it out of the closet since. “It’s a little itchy, rough baggy—not what we’re used to,” he said with a grin.

If he were to win an API red cardigan, he figured he would frame it. How about wear it through a fast-food drive-through window? “I might,” he joked. “It would be good to get one, first. Then I’d see what I would do with it after that.”

The Keeper of the Cardigan

Leslie Glover is the official Keeper of the Red Cardigan. She is also the merchandising manager and buyer for Bay Hill’s golf shop, which is regularly named to the list of America’s Top 100 Golf Shops and frequently ranks among the top 10.

The red cardigans are kept downstairs below the golf shop during tournament week. Wait, cardigans as in plural? Yes, Bay Hill has a stash of five, each one a different size.

Bay Hill Club merchandising manager Leslie Glover is the keeper of the cardigans :: Gary Van Sickle/SI

Don’t let this ruin the red cardigan mystique for you but … Glover steams them during tournament week to make sure they’re wrinkle-free and clean. She makes sure the large Arnold Palmer Invitational cloth badge is securely attached to the lapel—it is removable, by the way. Late Sunday, she passes them off to a member of the public relations team, who carries them across the street to a tent behind the 18th green.

Once the winner is determined and he signs his scorecard and does a few other duties, he meets with the red cardigan carrier to determine his size. In the tent, safe from prying eyes, the winner tries on a Red Cardigan or two to get the right fit. When a bulked-up Bryson DeChambeau won in 2020, he waffled between an XL and an XXL before deciding on the more form-fitting and attractive XL.

The presentation of the tournament trophy by Mastercard happens minutes later on the green. The winner says a few words to the fans in the stands, receives the red cardigan from Amy Saunders, Arnold’s daughter, and puts on the sweater for the first time (as far as onlookers know).

Every ceremony has so far gone off without a hitch.

“In 2017, we started something very special,” said Drew Donovan, API tournament director. “We wanted each winner to feel connected to Mr. Palmer in an impactful way. The red cardigan is now unique to our tournament and we are pleased we can honor Mr. Palmer in this special way.”

Keeping It Cool

Fans attending the API can tour the Arnie’s Army Legacy Experience—basically a walk-through mini-museum with images and artifacts. It ends in a shopping area where fans can purchase, among some Arnie’s Army-logoed items, a gray or dark gray cardigan (this year’s colors) for $299.

A quick look online found plenty of used red cardigans for sale. But at Poshmark.com, one listing referred to it as an “Arnold Palmer Men’s Vintage Bright Pink Golf Grandpa Style Sweater Size Large.” Sure, Palmer was a grandfather but c’mon, have a little respect for $39.

Noted golf instructor Kay McMahon, who is based in Orlando, is a former LPGA player who knew Palmer well. She appreciated Palmer’s style.

“I noticed he always wore three different colors,” McMahon said. “He’d have a red sweater, a yellow shirt and blue pants or some combination. Everything wasn’t match-match. His cardigan sweater was so famous that one year, I went to a store in Minneapolis to buy my father a cardigan. I think it was a red one.

“Arnold really was The King. I remember being at a range with him one time when I was giving a lesson. He was having trouble trying to practice. I went over and said, ‘I’m so sorry so many people are coming over and interrupting your practice.’ He smiled and said, ‘I’m not. The reason I’m here is because of them.’ He meant it. He was always so sincere and authentic.”

There are a million Arnold Palmer stories in the naked city. Here’s one of them, according to Rory McIlroy, regarding his first dining experience with Palmer, which took place in the Bay Hill grill room, after Palmer got the fish dinner he ordered …

Palmer to server: “Can I get some A1 sauce?”

Server: “For your fish, Mr. Palmer?”

Palmer: “No, for me.”

Hilarity and laughter all around.

Palmer is unlikely to be forgotten at Bay Hill. After Palmer passed away, Rickie Fowler showed up at the tournament in a special-edition pink Puma cardigan with white trim in tribute.

“There’s a reason we keep coming back here to Bay Hill and a reason why we have a PGA Tour,” Zach Johnson said. “It’s because of who donned that garment.”

Arnold Palmer made that clothing item cool. And golf, by the way, too.