Désarmes I don’t like the belts that tour players wear nowadays—the ones with gigantic rectangular buckles:
I don’t like them even though they remind me a little of my beloved Mattel Shootin’ Shell Buckle Gun, featuring “exciting secret ‘no hands’ firing,” which I wore when I was a kid until I broke it. It had a built-in derringer mounted on a hinge, and the derringer swung out and fired a real projectile when you pushed your stomach against the back of the buckle — something that was harder for me then than it would be now.
A belt like that could be problematic for golf, because it might go off when you leaned over to line up a putt. But my favorite grown-up belts are perfect, because their buckle is also a beer opener:
They’re made by Bison Designs, and they aren’t expensive. (Prices range from 18 to 27 dollars, plus shipping, depending on what sort of pattern you choose.) We gave them as tee gifts at our men’s member-guest last year, and most of the guys actually still wear them, unlike some of the other crap we’ve handed out over the years. I just bought two more, bringing my collection to three:
The two on the ends in the photo look the same, but they’re not. (The one on the right is for formal occasions.) The buckles really work, too. My brother visited over the weekend, and between golf days we took my wife out to dinner at a Thai restaurant that doesn’t have a liquor license yet. We remembered to bring beer but forgot an opener, so I took off my belt and handed it across the table. Problem solved.