The PGA Championship is not only a golf tournament. It's a fashion show. And guess who's driving the trends as well as he's driving the ball?

Tiger Woods wore a white, multi-striped shirt Friday on the golf course. Over in the massive Hazeltine merchandise tent, 50 Nike shirts of the same pattern sold out in five minutes at $90 a shot. Hundreds more pieces of Tigerwear have flown off the tables this week.

"It was like a tsunami in here once we got them in," said Joe Westby, a regional sales manager for Nike. "We had people lining up and grabbing 'em. I know there's a recession going on, but this guy is a one-man stimulus package."

Woods actually picked out what he was going to wear this week a year ago. Nike officials spread 100 options in front of him and he picked the four he likes best.

He's already made his fashion statements for next year's Masters and U.S. Open -- allowing Nike's apparel subsidiaries the lead time to get cranking. And, in case you wondered, Tiger never wears solids or stripes back-to-back, he always alternates.

"I'm not sure if he's superstitious or what," Westby said. "But he can be as idiosyncratic as he wants."

All four days of this week's outfits are displayed on mannequins in the airplane hangar-sized merchandise tent in Chaska. The stock of today's choice of Tiger shirt -- "old royal blue" -- was down to two by noon. And forget about Thursday's first-round selection, which looked like lavender but is officially "thistle." Sold out.

Kou Lee, of Minneapolis, and Enrico Bastianelli, of Pesaro, Italy, wanted nothing to do with those blue shirts, however dashing they look on Tiger. They were among the shoppers grabbing Sunday's red-striped selection. Tiger always wears red on Sundays when he's out for blood.

"It's the color of victory," said Lee, 46, who took the day off from work at General Mills to shop and gawk. "Every time I play, I think: I can be like Tiger."

Lee said he starting golfing a few years ago after watching Woods on TV.

"I missed the ball the first three times, but now I'm shooting in the low 80s and I'm addicted to the game," Lee said. "Tiger inspires me. If I dress like him, maybe I will play like him."

Bastianelli and his wife, Nicoletta, made Chaska a stop on their month-long U.S. vacation from Italy. They weren't sure which size to get, but they knew it would be red.

"Because of Tiger," Nicoletta said.

And because of Tiger, Nike's golf line is the No. 1 sports apparel monster with more than $300 million in annual global sales. The shirts in the tent and the one on his back aren't exactly the same. Tiger's shirt has the official "tournament swoosh" over his heart. The ones that fans are buying this week have the PGA Championship logo in that spot.

Tiger also has his initials stitched in the neck of the shirt, something missing from the $90 varieties. Both the real Tiger shirt and the ones for sale have a distinctive platinum icon shining on the sleeve. No one is sure why, but for $90, nobody asks.

"This will look nice on my Dad, don't you think?" asked Stacey Rowe, who came up from Harlingen, Texas. "I got my brother a first-day Tiger shirt yesterday and they promised they'd have the Friday shirt by noon, so here I am."

Oops and an apology

Between 2,000 and 3,000 shoppers at the PGA merchandise tent were erroneously and temporarily double-billed on Tuesday, according to Bob Jeffrey, the operations manager of PGA merchandise. He said all the affected credit card accounts have been credited back, but it took a few days to remedy to glitch. "We apologize," he said.

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767