Lowering the bar for jacket fashion

Instead of a trophy, the winners of the Clark County Bar Association’s annual golf tournament take home 1970s polyester blazers whimsically decorated by previous champions.

As two teams have won the tournament almost exclusively since 1999, the jackets have become a battleground for their 14-year rivalry. It’s attorneys Barry Brandenburg, Jim Mayhew and Jim Senescu and Superior Court Judge John Nichols, a team dubbed Dynasty, versus attorneys David Christel, John Holtmann, Stephen Leatham and Randall Printz, who go by their last names.

The winners earn the right to keep the jackets until the next tourney and decorate them with their names, photographs or other embellishments that boast of their victory.

A parody of the green jackets awarded to The Masters champions, the bar association’s vintage blazers get “gaudier and gaudier every year,” said Team Dynasty’s Senescu.

“It really is a major bragging right of the winning team,” he added.

Around Christmastime, the victors have a tradition of sporting the jackets around some part of the Clark County Courthouse and taking a group photograph to celebrate their championship.

Earlier this month, judicial assistant Jennifer Wolfe photographed Dynasty — the 2013 tournament winners — in their trophy jackets in Nichols’ courtroom in the Clark County Courthouse.

“This is their crowning moment,” Wolfe said with a grin.

One of their opponents, Christel, stopped by to watch the festivities, thereby making himself the target of a volley of boastful jokes.

Seeing his rivals in the jackets “is painful,” Christel quipped. “It’s actually humiliating.”

During the frequently interrupted photo shoot, Christel and the Dynasty members argued playfully about which team has won the most.

Christel started to count how many times each team’s name appears on the jacket.

Since the rivalry began, one of the two teams has won every year except for two. Dynasty claimed the championship six times, while Christel’s team has won five times, Christel concluded. The tournament didn’t take place in 2012.

At first, the winners simply embroidered their names on the jackets.

Then, in 2005, Christel’s team added images of their faces to torment their rivals. They enlarged a photograph and placed it on the back of the jackets. The photograph took up most of the space on the back.

In 2007, Dynasty won the tournament and had to wear their opponents’ faces.

“The picture was really kind of snappy,” Brandenburg admitted. “That set another tone.”

The next year, Christel’s

team claimed victory and added yellow wings to the jackets.

“Then the wings,” Senescu said. “We really went crazy.”

While the jackets rarely make public appearances, a couple of them remain on display throughout the year. Senescu keeps his burgundy blazer in a glass case at his downtown Vancouver law office. Brandenburg positions his red one on a coat rack where clients can see it. It’s a conversation starter, Brandenburg said.

Nichols’ brown jacket is hidden in a closet.

“My wife keeps threatening to throw it out,” the judge said.

This year, Dynasty is considering retiring the vintage jackets and buying new ones for the next tournament, Mayhew said.

“That’s why I’m here: To protest that,” Christel retorted.

“If these guys (Christel’s team) hadn’t taken up half of the jacket with pictures, we wouldn’t need new jackets, but since they got greedy, we have to retire the jackets,” Mayhew shot back.

“It’s not going to happen,” Christel said. “It’s on appeal.”