IN FOCUS: Philip Reid puts on his dark glasses and looks at the style leaderboard and the in-vogue professional golfers who put the rest in the shade

This will sound really, really sad. Years ago - maybe three decades? - I remember seeing Hubert Green on television playing in the British Open, but it wasn't his smooth, silky swing that caught the eye. It was his trousers: a sort of sleek, lime-green pair. I remember calling my mother into the room and informing the poor creature that trousers like that would look pretty cool on her teenage son, or words to that effect, and the only reaction was a quizzical look that questioned her son's sanity, or maybe his sexuality.

Needless to say, the said trousers, or anything like them, never managed to make it into the wardrobe. Now, though, even Mr Green's eye-catching slacks are tame by comparison to the threads appearing on the fairways.

It's not so long ago that collarless shirts and colourful trousers would have led to a player being barred from the course and the clubhouse, but, in a sign of changed times, that's no longer the case and today's new breed of professionals are revamping the fashion stakes.

Everyone's at it, it seems. Darren Clarke, thanks to shedding over 45 lbs in weight with his fitness and dietary regimes, has been sporting collarless shirts and spiffy trousers designed by London-based tailor Tony Q'Aja to showcase his new look, while English golfer Ian Poulter has used Savile Row tailor William Hunt to transform his image, most dramatically with his Union Jack trousers at the recent British Open at Troon, but also by wearing plus-fours in homage to the late Payne Stewart.

They're not the only ones, and are not the trendsetters. The Swedes, normally considered a conservative people, have been to the fore, as it were.

Jesper Parnevik was probably the leader of the pack when he stepped onto the first fairway at the Bob Hope Classic in 1997 with his streamlined, pinstripe trousers and upturned cap.

"The whole movement, the whole modernisation of fashion in golf, started right there," explained Johan Lindeberg, designer of Parnevik's unconventional look. "I always thought Jesper was a great-looking guy, but he just looked terrible in the clothes he was wearing. He looked like Bobby Ewing in Dallas. I took him from Bobby Ewing and turned him into Steve McQueen."

If Parnevik was brave enough to take the first step, others followed in his footsteps - among them Jarmo Sandelin and Fredrik Jacobson - and the result is that bright colours, sleek cuts and bolder lines are the looks that fashion houses such as J Lindeberg, Adidas, Hugo Boss, Lacoste, Prada, Burberry and Polo Ralph Lauren are adopting for the fairways.

Lindeberg has been a keen golfer for 25 years. "Golf fashion got stuck in a 1980s sand trap," he observed.

His mission, it would seem, is to change that. Now based in London, Lindeberg - who in a former profession was the international marketing director who helped develop Diesel into a worldwide brand - never formally trained in fashion but always had a strong interest in clothing and, in 1996, set up his own label to indulge his two favourite passions: rock 'n' roll and golf.

"I'd say that golf always had great style, but, in the mid-80s it became very uniform and lost its expressiveness. I wanted to shake it up a little bit and tie it to reality," said the Swede, who recruited what he described as his "private army", a hand-picked selection of golfers to sponsor.

Parnevik was the first to step out in J Lindeberg golfwear - winning the Byron Nelson Classic when wearing the label's bright pink trousers - and other brand ambassadors these days include Jacobson, Charles Howell and Aaron Baddeley, recently voted "Best Dressed Man of the Tour" on the US Tour by Golf World magazine.

So it is that, these days, the fairways are filled with a cornucopia of styles. Players are daring to be different. Of the new breed on the European Tour, Poulter has been the most demonstrative in his choice of clothing and colours.

"I just like to make it fun for myself and for everybody else," admitted Poulter. "We need a few characters out there, otherwise people would thank it is a bland and boring sport, and that is exactly what it is not."

When he wore his Union Jack trousers at the British Open, the switchboard of the R & A was jammed with television viewers objecting. But Poulter, speaking at last week's Irish Open in Baltray, claimed that the personal reaction to him was one of support.

"I never heard a bad word said. There might have been a few phone calls to the R & A, but I think someone did a (radio) phone-in on them and 95 per cent of people thought they were fantastic."

One of the latest players to join the fashion stakes is Clarke, who created quite a stir at Augusta National earlier in the season when playing in red-and-white pinstripe trousers with the obligatory white belt.

"Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, I don't know," quipped Clarke, "but I do know they don't need as much material to make my trousers now, so maybe I'm a little more comfortable wearing clothes that stand out."

While Poulter and Clarke have high-tailed it to top London designers for their clothes, Sandelin has made himself into a fashion icon over the last decade by wearing self-designed clothes since joining the European Tour in 1995. Crocodile-skin shoes, tight-fitting shirts and sunglasses that hinted more at a film star's looks have been part of his style for almost 10 years and this year he opened his first clothing factory in Taiwan.

"I used to spend so much time finding clothing that I decided it was easier to make my own," said Sandelin. "It means I can wear exactly what I want to wear."

So, times have indeed changed. In the days of Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones in the 1930s, neckties were commonplace and tailored jackets were the norm. Then, in the post-second World War era, ultra-casual was the thing, when Ben Hogan played in a cardigan and Sam Snead wore a straw hat.

Golf fashion has evolved since then. In the 1950s, Esquire magazine ran an article on The Grey Flannel World of Golf, but it was the introduction of colour television in the mid-1960s that changed everything.

Doug Sanders was one of the first to embrace strong colours and earned the nickname "Peacock of the Fairways" while Tony Jacklin became famous for his all-purple outfits, and Gary Player, dressed all in black, earned the nickname the "Black Knight".

It seems the 1980s were the era fashion forgot, with the notable exception perhaps being Payne Stewart, who stepped into a fashion time-machine, wearing plus-fours, shirts, ties and cravats, calling it his "contribution to preserving the history of the game".

So it is now that many professional players have embraced the new fashion trends. "J Lindeberg helps to set me apart from the norm while keeping the traditional look of golf greats such as Arnold Palmer," insisted Charles Howell.

But to stand out on the fashion front means you've got to have the game to get away with it. If you're going to look the part, you've also got to act the part . . . so anyone intending to imitate the golfing stars should bear that in mind.