Carnoustie Sportswear is Looking Good

When the housing market became fairly stagnant in the late 1980s, trained lawyer and real estate agent Marshall Mancillas looked for opportunities elsewhere. Three factors pushed him toward golf attire.

First he was a core golfer, a member at Big Canyon CC in Newport Beach, CA. Second, his family had a long history in apparel. And third, for the first time in a long time, he began seeing golf shirts he really liked, made specifically by the Bobby Jones brand which had begun trading in 1989. “They bought a new elegance to the game,” he says.

Mancillas founded his own clothing company in 1992, but didn’t know what to call it. A combination of his sons’ names was under consideration, but Mancillas decided against it after talking with a trademark layer. Then, one morning in the mid-90s, he was watching a replay of the 1975 Open Championship at Carnoustie on ESPN. Tom Watson defeated Jack Newton in a playoff, but it wasn’t a flat-capped Watson winning the first of his five Claret Jugs that got Mancillas’s attention so much as the flags being buffeted by the strong winds.

“About two hours later, I still had the picture of the flags in my mind,” says Mancillas. “And obviously the word ‘Carnoustie’ was prominent. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.”

Mancillas drove down to Big Canyon and spent some time in the club’s library reading whatever he could find about the course. “It obviously had such an amazing history,” he says. “Tommy Armour won the Open there in ‘31, Sir Henry Cotton in ’37, Gary Player in ’68, and of course it was where Ben Hogan played his one and only Open Championship, winning the title in 1953.”

Spalding had filed an application to use the name some years previously but had long since abandoned it, allowing Mancillas to make his own move. His request was granted at the end of 1996. “It was one of the best Christmas presents I can remember,” he says.

Right from the start, Mancillas knew what sort of clothes he wanted to make. Carnoustie Sportswear would produce top-quality garments made with the finest fabrics, but they would sell for reasonable prices. “We’ve never compromised on quality,” Mancillas insists, “but we’ve never been crazily-priced either. I always knew we were going to be a niche firm, not a subsidiary of some multi-national, so we’ve always had to maintain very high standards to remain in business. I never wanted to make a medium product for the middle of the market.”

Around 2012/13, Mancillas modified his philosophy a little, taking the company in a slightly different direction. “I’d been holding out on performance fabrics for a long time, perhaps too long,” he admits. “But it was becoming clear these fabrics were here to stay, so we began experimenting with how to combine them with Carnoustie elegance.”

The Spring 2014 collection was a huge success, and marked a significant moment in the company’s history. “I’d been watching from the sidelines for years,” says Mancillas. “But I finally became convinced we could use performance fabrics and retain the style we had spent years establishing. I jumped in with the Spring 2014 collection, and it proved a good decision.”

Carnoustie Sportswear enjoyed one of its proudest moments in May of this year when Rocco Mediate won the Senior PGA Championship wearing the company’s clothing. Other players that have worn Carnoustie include Vijay Singh, Hale Irwin, and 2003 PGA Champion Shaun Micheel.

The Fall 2016 performance apparel line comprises three collections – Classic, Desert, and Resort, each featuring a variety of polos, lightweight cotton interlock outerwear, cotton suede outerwear, belts and trousers in appropriate colors. Mancillas was good enough to send me a blue quarter-zip cotton pullover from the Classic Collection, and no joking, it might be my favorite item of golf clothing (besides the grey, round-neck, 2000 Open Championship sweater I purchased in St. Andrews) – very comfortable and stylish. And, dare I say it, it looks rather good on me.

Quarter-zip cotton pullover – $95-$115
carnoustiesportswearonline.com

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