The cart zipped round TPC Sawgrass, chauffeuring its VIP alongside fairways and round hordes of followers.
It was the day earlier than the 2025 Gamers Championship, the PGA Tour’s flagship occasion. However for a lot of, the headline attraction was Grant Horvat, a younger YouTuber who has turn into one in all golf’s recognizable and influential characters. On that brief drive final March, followers swarmed for selfies or signatures.
It was a obtrusive illustration of how social media has turned a small assortment of content material creators into millionaire celebrities. How the ties binding YouTube golf {and professional} golf are tightening on a regular basis. ‘We need to be always studying from them,’ PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan informed the Each day Mail final 12 months.
These influencers are credited with bringing new followers to the sport. They’ve turn into so standard that Bryson DeChambeau has contemplated ditching conventional tournaments and turning his social media side-hustle right into a full-time job. They’ve been indulged by prime gamers and massive manufacturers and the PGA Tour. In current days, nevertheless, we’ve seen the immense harm they will do, too.
Callaway, one in all golf’s blue-chip giants, and Good Good – a channel with practically 4 million social media followers that has morphed right into a enterprise empire – sparked outrage after releasing an commercial depicting Good Good’s co-founder, Garrett Clark, shoving a lady as she reaches for his bag. ‘Don’t contact my new driver!’ Clark shouts.
It’s crass. It’s offensive. It’s unbelievable, actually, that the thought ever made it off the slicing room ground. And it’s the very last thing golf wants. This week in Atlanta, the PGA’s Tour Championship is about to carry the curtain down on the 2026 season.
Garrett Clark is seen sprinting in the direction of a feminine golfer at the beginning of the Callaway advert. He then shoves the girl – fellow Good Good creator Alexis Miestowski – to the bottom
Good Good Golf has come below fireplace following the controversial commercialÂ
Thirty of the world’s prime gamers will battle over a $40million purse, with Scottie Scheffler seeking to cement his legend with a 3rd win of the season. As an alternative? The golf is taking part in second fiddle to exterior noise and unwelcome headlines. But once more.
LIV Golf is gasping for air after Saudi Arabia determined to tug the plug on its $5billion pet undertaking. Subsequent month, in the meantime, Tiger Woods is due in courtroom after one other automotive crash and one other off-course scandal.
Final 12 months’s Ryder Cup was marred by vile, vicious heckling of European stars comparable to Rory McIlroy. This 12 months’s US Open noticed house winner Wyndham Clark abused by rowdy followers, too. Now golf, that gentleman’s sport, is dealing with a sexism storm.
Horvat left Good Good in 2022. He determined to go it alone and what a smart transfer that now appears. As a result of his former enterprise companions are scrambling to place out the fireplace they began.
The advert has been deleted and the groveling apologies have began.
‘We bought this mistaken. We’ll be taught from it, we’ll be higher due to it, and we’ll proceed doing every part we will to make Good Good a optimistic pressure in golf for ladies and men,’ wrote Matt Kendrick, the model’s CEO.
The video, Good Good added, ‘depicted actions that aren’t aligned with our values as a model.’ The corporate vowed to ‘donate all proceeds from the driving force gross sales related to this marketing campaign to a corporation supporting girls.’
Callaway Golf CEO Chip Brewer also released a statement, admitting that his firm gave the video the inexperienced mild. ‘That approval ought to by no means have occurred,’ he mentioned. ‘Errors had been made, and we’re taking the matter very critically.’
Good Good, co-founded by Clark, has turn into one of many greatest YouTube channels in golf
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp mentioned he was ‘upset’ with Good Good’s instant response to the backlash
Two-time main champion Jon Rahm (left) has filmed content material with the favored channel
Brewer added: ‘We sincerely apologize… we’re unequivocally towards discrimination, home violence, or threatening habits of any type.’
Oh, that noise? It is the steady door closing because the horse gallops out of sight. It’s all properly and good good preaching about firm values and inner investigations and charitable donations.
However forgive these cynics who may surprise if Good Good’s major concern is limiting the harm to its model. Certainly, the masks seems to have slipped contained in the opening sentence of an inner memo, sent by Kendrick earlier this week.
‘As you might be all conscious, Good Good has been within the information,’ it reads. Put your Callaway drivers away and fetch the violins.
The issue? This has turn into greater than Good Good. Greater than their partnership with Callaway. What began as a YouTube channel providing enjoyable, viral content material has spiraled right into a enterprise behemoth whose tentacles stretch to the very prime of this sport.
No surprise the PGA Tour is not glad. Throughout a press convention on Tuesday, CEO Brian Rolapp mentioned he was ‘upset’ with Good Good’s instant response to the backlash.
‘I feel what we noticed was regarding (and) is clearly not aligned with PGA Tour values,’ he mentioned. ‘We take it very critically. I feel their preliminary response was disappointing. It was a bit defensive and late.’
Agreed, however this saga poses critical questions on how YouTube golf has turn into so entangled with the PGA Tour and what the game’s bosses will do subsequent.
Golf Channel has already postponed the premiere of its ‘Massive Break’ reboot amid the scandal engulfing Good Good, its associate for the truth sequence, after ‘a request from one of many present’s sponsors to take away to take away its branding from the sequence.’
‘We bought this mistaken. We’ll be taught from it,’ Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick mentioned amid the backlash
A Golf Channel assertion revealed that Good Good’s TV present has been pushed again every week
However in 11 weeks’ time, a brand new PGA Tour occasion – the Good Good Championship – is meant to kick off in Austin, Texas. How will this have an effect on that match? ‘It’s kind of of a fluid state of affairs,’ Rolapp mentioned.
Good Good’s roots in skilled golf stretch far deeper than one match, nevertheless. The corporate sponsors a number of PGA Tour gamers and invests in TGL, the revolutionary league fashioned by Woods and Rory McIlroy; Clark has beforehand performed within the PGA Tour’s ‘Creator Basic’ tournaments; celebrity gamers have appeared on their channel; final 12 months, Good Good introduced $45million in funding from backers together with Peyton Manning; Clark has filmed with Kai Trump and Kendrick wrote to the president over the impression of his tariffs on enterprise. They don’t seem to be struggling too badly.
Good Good merchandise is in all places at main occasions, normally sitting atop the pinnacle of boisterous males below the age of 30.Â
The galleries at golf occasions at the moment are much less sleepy than earlier than and, after the surprising scenes at Bethpage and Shinnecock Hills, issues had been already swelling a few poisonous, troubling streak of masculinity exterior the ropes. About how bro tradition was seeping into golf.Â
This video will not have carried out something to allay these fears.
Over current years, golf’s energy brokers have been glad to hitch a experience as YouTubers racked up tens of millions of views and tapped into new audiences. Now they’ve a duty to restore the harm.
