A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Dan Parker visits Adidas' HQ in Bavaria to understand how golf has worked its way up the pecking order at this sporting giant...

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What do you think of when you consider Adidas? Is it David Beckham, Jude Bellingham or Lionel Messi in Predator boots? Is it Patrick Mahomes throwing a touchdown? Is it an Arsenal, Bayern Munich or Germany football kit? If you're a Liverpool fan, I suspect you’re wondering what next year’s Adidas kits will look like. Is it Sandy Lyle’s Originals polo being covered by a Green Jacket in 1988? Is it Team GB’s 2012 Olympic tracksuits? Maybe it’s nothing to do with sports at all. Is it an Adidas slider, an Originals tracksuit you had when you were a teenager ora trusty pair of Stan Smiths?

For me, it was - and still is - the Predator football boot. I was never very good at football, but I loved playing it and Hoved playing it in Predators. I was lucky enough to get a new pair every year, and each addition to my collection made me feel like one of my favourite footballers on TV.

It didn’t matter that I was a fairly inept left-back playing for an under-14s division seven team; I was in Predators. I suspect all of us who play sport have a piece of apparel or equipment like this. Chances are, at some point or another, the three stripes of Adidas will have been somewhere on it. This kind of cultural significance is what happens when a brand plies its trade for more than 75 years, maintaining a constant presence across multiple sports, all while influencing the fashion and culture around it.

For golfers, the Tour360 shoes have been mainstays since launching in 2005, and it’s impossible to miss Adidas on tour with the likes of Ludvig Aberg, Rose Zhang and Collin Morikawa donning its latest apparel. But how significant is golf to Europe’s largest sportswear manufacturer?