You tee off at eight, collar zipped to the chin, hands pulled up inside the sleeves. By the fourth the sun clears the trees and you start to warm up. You take hold of the zip, pull it down ten centimetres, and carry on. The sweater stayed on you, and that is the entire point of the garment.
A golf quarter zip is a high-necked sweater whose zip stops around the top of the chest. It is there to regulate temperature, not to open the garment right up. You pull it on over your head, then adjust the collar.
A zip from the collar to the top of the chest
The name comes from the proportion: the zip covers roughly the top quarter of the front. Roughly, because nobody gets a tape measure out in the shop.
What matters is below it. The zip stops, so the body of the garment stays in one piece, and that is the whole difference from a jacket. A full zip opens the garment from collar to hem: handy for taking it off, but with a fastening to check along its whole length as your arms cross your chest. A quarter zip stays a sweater. What you open is the collar, nothing else.
A crew neck cannot be adjusted: when the wind gets up on the way back you have nothing to close, and when the sun returns it is all or nothing. The zip lets you stop halfway. Between the two, we take the zip almost every time.
Quarter zip, half zip, zip neck: which is which
The vocabulary is a mess, and that is not your fault. Quarter zip is the English term; shops elsewhere write 1/4 zip, or zip neck when they would rather not commit. All of it means the same thing.
A half zip is supposed to come down further, towards the middle of the chest. That is a commercial habit, not a standard. The same garment changes name from one brand to the next.
The function does not change from one label to another: a collar that closes and opens.
The layer you do not take off to swing
A round lasts hours, and the temperature does not wait for you. Cool on the tee, warm at the turn, windy on the way in.
A quarter zip is not a garment you put on or take off, it is a setting. Collar closed, the throat is covered. That is the first thing we protect when the wind gets up. Collar open, the heat leaves without you taking anything out of the bag.
It is also the piece we least regret carrying for nothing. In autumn it simply lives in the bag.
You do still have to be able to play with it on. That is checked in the fitting room in thirty seconds: arms raised to the horizontal, then a slow backswing. If the hem rides up or the fabric pulls across the upper back, check the size and the armhole. A quarter zip that gets in the way of the swing ends up over your arm at the 3rd.
The quarter zip goes over the polo. You can wear the polo collar out or tucked in, whichever stays comfortable, without trapping it in the zip.
The Dogleg quarter zip
There is a children’s version in the same Links Edition, navy as well, up to age 16.