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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Patrick Reed isn’t playing in this Ryder Cup, but the former U.S. star had a small but significant influence on this week’s team on the fashion side.
The U.S. Ryder Cup team has a new look at Bethpage Black Golf Course, using Swag Golf staff bags for the first time. It’s a somewhat odd pairing of an outside-the-box, influencer-driven brand and the storied golf event.
Swag’s most famous endorser is golf personality Paige Spiranac, whose 4 million Instagram followers have been a boon for Swag, with its mere 145,000 followers.
The Ryder Cup’s relationship with Swag dates back to 2021, when then–U.S. captain Steve Stricker reached out to the company just a few weeks before the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits to inquire about Swag creating a captain’s gift for the players.
“We had no relationship with him prior,” Swag CEO Nick Venson told Front Office Sports. “It just came out of nowhere.”
Venson and his team quickly made custom Team USA–themed headcovers and delivered them to Stricker’s wife, Nicki, at a Wisconsin gas station the week of the Ryder Cup. “We didn’t really hear anything, and then, all the players came walking out, and, I think, 95% of them had all of our covers on the bag,” Venson said.
So how does Reed, whose last Ryder Cup appearance came in 2018, fit into all of this? His caddie (and brother-in-law) Kessler Karain was one of Swag’s “biggest supporters,” Venson said. “I know that he had shown stuff to Nicki and Steve as well. So I think that’s really how it all kind of started rolling—that was the first viewing of it, probably in their eyes.”
After a 19–9 blowout win for the U.S. at Whistling Straits, Swag made headcovers and accessories for the team at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome in an unofficial capacity, before replacing Z Customization as the official bagmaker of the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
“Loud” would be an understatement for the look of Swag gear, not unlike the vibrant threads made by Malbon, which has butted heads with Augusta National. So even after securing the Ryder Cup deal, Venson said there was “a lot of back-and-forth” with the PGA of America about what the bags would look like. After all, this week Swag will share the same stage as more prim-and-proper brands like official U.S. team outfitter Ralph Lauren. “It was supposed to be making sure that it had this Americana vibe that everybody wanted,” Venson said.
Swag will make the U.S. team’s Ryder Cup bags again in 2027 as part of the multiyear deal.
