After the controversy came the eventual contrition, but by then it was too late. A 15-second advertisement released last week by Good Good Golf, one of the sport’s most influential online platforms, had grasped for engagement with its brand partner Callaway and instead found only trouble.
“Do not touch my new driver,” Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark menacingly warns his female colleague Alexis Miestowski in the ad, which has since been deleted from Good Good’s social channels, after barging her to the ground with a forearm to the back.
The backlash has been intense, with Good Good accused of normalising aggression against women in its ill-conceived promotional video. Callaway, which has subsequently accepted it approved the advert prior to its release, has also come under fire.
Both have issued apologies, but the reputational damage has been vast. It is also starting to have commercial implications: a sponsor (widely reported to be retailer Golf Galaxy) has requested its branding be removed from the Golf Channel’s planned premiere of Big Break x Good Good — a reboot of the reality TV show that last aired in 2015 — which has been postponed to September 1.
In addition, Golf Galaxy and its parent company, Dick’s Sporting Goods, have withdrawn Good Good merchandise from its online retail platforms, with reports also claiming merchandise is being pulled from the shelves of its stores. The Athletic contacted Good Good and Dick’s Sporting Goods for comment.
The PGA Tour is also surveying the damage. Good Good was last year named as the title sponsor of an event set to be played in November at Omni Barton Creek in Austin, Texas, but the PGA Tour has been noncommittal on the future of the partnership. “It’s a bit of a fluid situation,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp told a news conference ahead of this week’s Tour Championship.
The disappointment in Good Good’s actions, though, was obvious. “I think what we saw was concerning (and) is clearly not aligned with PGA Tour values,” Rolapp said. “We take it very seriously.”
The “fluid situation” referenced by Rolapp amounts to crisis management for Good Good. A platform that was at the vanguard of golf’s YouTube era — on which a wave of young, brash and often male influencers sought to overhaul the coverage of a sport previously considered stuffy and conservative — has grown into an independent company capable of raising $45million in a funding round last year. The self-inflicted wound is deep.
“The ad feels like a very public version of the ‘locker-room talk’ or ‘golf-course talk’ women have been subjected to for decades,” says Ellen Hyslop, co-founder of The GIST, a sports media startup with the mission of providing equal coverage to women’s and men’s sports.
“For women who have spent years pushing for greater visibility and respect in sports, seeing a female athlete used as the punchline of a violent joke can reinforce exactly the culture the industry has been trying to move away from.
Alexis Miestowski is shoved over in the controversial Good Good advert (Good Good Golf)
“What makes this particularly damaging is that Good Good represents the new generation of golf. The company’s entire rise has been built around making golf feel younger, more accessible and more culturally relevant. And that’s why so many traditional golf brands have turned to Good Good as a partner.”
Good Good has plenty at stake. It’s built a subscriber base of more than 2.1m on YouTube since it was founded in 2020, with some of golf’s biggest names, including Bryson DeChambeau and Rickie Fowler, among its guests. Initially, at least, the content veered towards frat-boy boisterousness. But more recently, Good Good has been pitching itself towards a more family-friendly audience. Some of Good Good’s videos have been watched as many as 11million times, and on the back of that rise has been the launch of a clothing range.
An attempt to justify the ad’s content was made by Good Good’s chief executive Matt Kendrick earlier this week, with a post on LinkedIn claiming its intention was to “parody a scene from the (horror) movie Obsession”.
“The execution missed the mark,” he added. “I understand why people found it insensitive, and I want to be clear that neither I nor anyone at Good Good condones violence of any kind.”
There was a promise to “be better” and to change their approval process for output from the company’s marketing teams. An internal memo sent by Kendrick and obtained by Front Office Sports — but not verified by The Athletic — added that it was the company’s plan to donate all proceeds from the driver’s sale to “an organisation supporting women in our local community”.
Callaway, one of golf’s biggest brands, has also worked with Good Good since 2023, with the release of a branded driver promoted in the now-infamous video, the latest step in their union. “The approval should never have happened,” said Callaway Golf CEO Chip Brewer in a company statement. “Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously. I want to make it clear that we sincerely apologize for the video.“
Brian Rolapp, CEO of the PGA TOUR, was critical of Good Good’s advert (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The stock response from those who saw the advert has been a sense of bafflement that it was ever signed off in the first place, although some industry experts were not so shocked.
“Knowing how content creation like this happens, you can understand to a certain degree how these people make those missteps,” says Owen Laverty, chief brand officer at the UK-based sports marketing agency Ear to the Ground.
“They’re under pressure to create things that they think will get cut-through and get attention. And to me it reeks of something that’s not been properly tested. It reeks of something that’s trying to go viral. So (you have) something that wants to go viral versus something that will actually resonate with audiences. That doesn’t feel like where Good Good have been in the past.”
There is no disputing the damage caused by the scandal. The question now is: Can these brands recover? And, if so, how?
Laverty makes the point that “the past is littered with individuals and organisations who have made missteps and moved on” but there is no doubt that many have lost faith in Good Good, and it will take time to rebuild. For Callaway, one of the biggest names in golf equipment with annual revenues of more than $2bn, the damage could be even worse.
“A mistake like this is exceptionally damaging for the future of Callaway,” says Hyslop. “There’s enough reputational damage that consumers, athletes, creators, and business partners are going to be asking themselves whether they want to be associated with Callaway, or Good Good for that matter.
“From a business perspective, we’re already seeing it in action: the Golf Channel is postponing Big Break. This is no longer confined to social media backlash; it’s becoming a business and partnership issue.
“Trust won’t be rebuilt through another campaign telling women the brand values them. It’s rebuilt over time, and maybe lots of time in this case, and through actions. At some point, consumers and partners will decide whether those actions are enough. And in the meantime, women can continue showing up for the sport while deciding that their money, attention, and loyalty are better spent elsewhere. That’s the power brands need to understand.”
Good Good Golf co-founder Garrett Clark is under pressure (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Alienating part of their audience might turn out to be Good Good and Callaway’s greatest mistake. Participation numbers of female golfers have spiked in recent years, with the sport shedding its image as a purely male domain.
“I went to both the men’s and women’s Open (Championship) last month and saw a number of women wearing Good Good merchandise and products,” says Laverty. “They won’t have chosen to alienate that audience, but this has been a massive blind spot in the process of chasing something that’ll go big.
“I imagine there will be brands and individuals who might want to take a step back from Good Good because it’s the nature of the subject that they’ve unintentionally leaned into. If Good Good and Calloway are going to move forward, they need to be really clear on what they want to do together long term. Taking time to make sense of that will be important.”
Good Good, at the time of writing, had not published any video content to its YouTube channel since the advertisement was released on Friday. It remains unclear where they will go from here as they look to bounce back from their misstep.
“Good Good have certainly been very brand safe,” says Rich Johnson, a sports marketing expert based in the UK. “It’s a puzzling advert because it’s so disconnected from their brand and the story they’ve built.
“For Good Good, it’s damaging but I’d be surprised if this finishes them. I don’t see that happening.
“It’ll be interesting to see how other brands respond and if the backlash goes on. The lack of a strong response quickly seems to have exacerbated the situation but Good Good’s saving grace might be that there didn’t seem to be any real ill-intent or malice behind it. It was just incredibly ill-judged.”
