ATLANTA — As the Tour Championship begins Thursday, the hottest topic of discussion this week at East Lake Golf Club has been the Good Good Golf driver ad controversy.
With fallout from the situation continuing, Good Good’s three biggest partners impacted most—Callaway, the PGA Tour, and Golf Channel—have added damage control to their list of duties at the $40 million FedExCup playoffs finale.
Good Good cofounder Garrett Clark; the content creator group’s CEO, Matt Kendrick; and Callaway president and CEO Chip Brewer have all issued various statements and apologies following initial dispatches from the brands Saturday that many people perceived as lacking accountability. As the negative feedback poured in Friday night and Saturday, there was disagreement between Good Good and Callaway over who would take responsibility for the ad, multiple sources with knowledge of the companies’ thinking told Front Office Sports.
Now, major questions still remain for Good Good, its Callaway partnership, and its upcoming Golf Channel show and PGA Tour event.
Callaway
Amid ongoing efforts to put out the Good Good fire since the ad was removed Saturday, Callaway has a strong contingent of equipment endorsers teeing it up at the 30-player Tour Championship: Xander Schauffele, Sam Burns, Akshay Bhatia, Min Woo Lee, and Si Woo Kim. Top Callaway executives are not on-site this week in Atlanta, but the brand has a strong presence, like it does at all tour events, with various equipment reps supporting its players.
Callaway is conducting internal and external investigations into the ad creation and approval process, Brewer said Tuesday. Callaway began its official partnership with Good Good in 2023, working together on content, products, and brand campaigns throughout the past three and a half years. Severing ties with Good Good would be a major blow for Callaway’s bottom line, but at this point is not out of the question, some golf industry sources believe.
Good Good products are being removed from major retailers including Golf Galaxy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, PGA Tour Superstore, and Target—but standalone Callaway products are remaining. Callaway is a publicly traded company; its stock price has remained relatively flat since closing at $15.78 on Aug. 21, before the ad controversy hit over the last weekend. Callaway opened at $15.68 on Thursday.
PGA Tour
The inaugural Good Good Championship is scheduled for Nov. 12–15 at Omni Barton Creek in Austin. Good Good signed a multiyear contract with the PGA Tour to launch and sponsor the new tournament, agreeing to pay at least $6 million annually to back the event.
But now the event’s status is in question, with many golf industry sources believing it’s not viable to play the tournament as planned this fall. “It’s a bit of a fluid situation,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said Tuesday when asked about the Good Good Championship at his pre-tournament press conference. “We were disappointed at first. It sounds like in the last 24 hours they’ve made some progress. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and see how it develops.”
The PGA Tour could fund the event without a primary sponsor if it were to remove Good Good, or not play the tournament at all. Adding Good Good to its tournament lineup was likely to bring in swells of younger fans that would not typically be interested in fall PGA Tour golf.
Golf Channel
As Golf Channel carries coverage of the Tour Championship during all four rounds this weekend, the network postponed the premiere of Big Break x Good Good—a revamp of its reality competition series that was popular in the 2000s—from Tuesday to Sept. 1, due to the show’s presenting sponsor Golf Galaxy dropping out.
Like the Good Good Championship, the status of Big Break x Good Good is also uncertain. The show was filmed earlier this year at Omni Barton Creek, so canceling it would be a major financial blow for Golf Channel.
The show’s eventual winner is set to earn a spot in November’s Good Good Championship. Good Good members Brad Dalke and Sean Walsh are two of the show’s twelve competitors, while Clark and fellow member Bubbie Broders are non-playing team captains.
