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Okay, ladies. Seems we've been had. Men have fooled us with the old bad outfit trick. In 1933, when Katharine Hepburn whacked the ball mercilessly at Cary Grant's car in Bringing Up Baby, golf was chic. Grant could wear the heck out of a pair of pants, and they were clean-lined and elegant. And Hepburn worked cardigan and long skirt like she could climb a tree in them.

But over the next several decades, golf became the place where plaid went to die. Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati. Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack (one of the funniest films of all time). Payne Stewart, the guy who wore tams and pantaloons and died in a Lear jet. Golfers were even nerdy buffoons on The Flintstones.

In the late nineties, we started to hear a rumbling from Los Angeles. The Los Feliz Golf Course was suddenly hipster central, and by last year paparazzi vipers were snapping Kiefer Sutherland necking beside Hole 4.

It all comes down to the clothes, of course. If the cool kids are going to play golf, they are going to do it in full gear. In 2001, a young Swedish designer named Johan Lindeberg started making hot pink golf gear. He rocked Europe, then started to infiltrate the Americas via actors and rock musicians who also golf, everyone from Mark Wahlberg to Justin Timberlake.

Soon the female counterparts of the hipsters started to clamour for green time themselves. Lindeberg's wife, Marcella Lindeberg, took up golf and started designing the J. Lindeberg Women's line, and suddenly we have hot chick golf gear.

As Hollywood goes, so doth the rest of us. With visions of cute Madras shorts dancing in our heads, young women are lining up for tee times. Doing mixed doubles with hubbie. Scouring pro shops for hot labels such as Ben Sherman and Lacoste.

The cutest Canadian brand is Vancouver-based Lija, a wordplay on leisure. Designed by Linda Hipp, the line is mainly cotton with some stretch, so more on the fashion side than technical golf gear.

Hipp mostly likes to “golf with boys, as couples or with a gaggle of girlfriends.” In other words, the freshly minted 40-year-old is all about fun golf, not business networking.

Her fun plaid shorts would be great on and off the links. Her ideal customer, she says, would be Halle Berry, a known greens fiend. Other Hollywood drivers like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cheryl Ladd and Heather Locklear joined rock legend Alice Cooper and Michael Douglas at his annual charity golf tourney last week. Ladd has worn Lija before: Hipp hopes to make converts out of her competitors soon.

Ashley Wellbrink, 22, works for the women's J. Lindeberg company in Toronto. Lucky thing, because her boyfriend, hockey player Connor James, 25, is home for the off-season and likes to hit the links.

“We go out pretty decked out, head to toe,” Wellbrink says. “People stop us everywhere we play, because we look so different from what they see in the pro shops. Especially this season, where all the women's stuff is adorned with metallic touches!”

“We did pink pants in 2001,” says Paul Robinson, who runs J. Lindeberg golf in Canada. “The NHL players in particular have been big supporters, they go in and buy our golf gear by the crate!”

The cutting edge is filtering down, says Aaron Rosenberg, a developer in Toronto. He favours tans and blues over high-test patterns. “You need to wear collared shirts, windbreakers. I like the formality of having a separate wardrobe to play.”

Now 32, Rosenberg has a few young friends who golf. But more importantly, he reveals why men have been keen to keep women at home. “Okay, it's about the cart girls.” A dirty little secret, ladies, is that even on public courses, drinks are served from carts. It isn't always females hawking the beverages, but enough that it's become a kind of thing. “The cart girls, especially at the private courses,” says a married friend who runs a large company just outside Toronto, “they are pretty outrageous. They hire little hotties.”

I went golfing myself this past week. My date is all for integrating men and women on the golf course. But he's not about to give up the loud clothes. “If you are a great golfer, or a really terrible golfer,” he says, “you should dress as loud and bright and clashy as possible. If you are mediocre, well you should know your place.”

However, he can make an exception for himself, as I'm happy to let him think he's Cary Grant.