Golf has spent the last decade trying desperately to loosen its collar.
Music in the cart. Hoodies on the course. YouTube golfers with bigger audiences than Tour pros. Breakfast balls without a congressional investigation. Women, kids, beginners and people who couldn’t care less what the club champion thinks about their untucked shirt.
We’re here for all of it.
Because most of us didn’t fall in love with golf behind private gates.
We fell in love with it at the muni.
But this week, golf’s new-school culture ran straight into a line it shouldn’t have crossed.
The Good Good Controversy
Good Good Golf, one of the biggest brands in creator golf, produced a video promoting a new Callaway driver that attempted to turn the phrase “crushing drives” into a joke involving violence against women.
It landed about as well as a hosel rocket into the clubhouse patio.
The video was pulled. Callaway apologized. Good Good apologized. Callaway CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged that the company’s approval process failed and that the ad should never have made it through.
And suddenly the larger conversation became about more than one really bad ad.
It became about where golf culture is headed.
That’s a conversation worth having.
Golf Needed Good Good
Before everybody grabs a pitchfork, let’s acknowledge something:
Creator golf has been great for the game.
Good Good and countless other creators have helped make golf entertaining and accessible to an audience the traditional golf establishment spent decades struggling to reach.
They made golf look like something you could do with your buddies instead of something you needed a pedigree to participate in.
They brought personality.
They brought humor.
They brought millions of eyeballs.
And most importantly, they helped make golf feel like fun again.
That matters.
The growth of creator golf is part of a much bigger cultural shift happening around the game. The definition of a “golfer” is expanding.
We think that's a damn good thing.
Irreverence Isn't the Problem
This is where things get interesting for us.
GRIPIT isn't exactly in a position to lecture anyone about behaving properly.
We sell shirts that say I LOVE A GOOD 69.
We tell golfers to WASH YOUR BALLS.
We've celebrated backdoor putts, stiff shafts, questionable scorekeeping, breakfast balls and the occasional mulligan that mysteriously becomes a par.
We're probably not getting invited to design the Masters merchandise anytime soon.
And we're okay with that.
Because golf needs irreverence.
Golf needs people willing to poke fun at a sport that occasionally takes itself way too seriously.
But there's a difference between irreverent and mean-spirited.
There's a difference between making fun of golf and making someone else the punchline.
And there's definitely a difference between pushing a boundary and turning violence against women into the joke.
That isn't edgy.
It just isn't funny.
Break the Right Rules
If golf's new generation is going to rewrite the culture of the game — and we hope it does — then maybe the question isn't whether we should break golf's rules.
It's which rules deserve breaking.
Break the rule that says you need to grow up playing at a country club.
Break the rule that says golfers have to look a certain way.
Break the rule that says women belong on one tee box and men on another.
Break the rule that says beginners should feel embarrassed because they don't know every piece of golf etiquette.
Break the rule that says music, personality and a little trash talk somehow disrespect the game.
Hell, break the rule that says your first tee shot counts.
We won't tell anybody.
But being anti-establishment doesn't require being anti-decency.
That's a pretty easy distinction.
Good Good Deserves a Mulligan
There's another part of golf culture we happen to believe in:
Mulligans.
Good Good screwed this one up.
Badly.
But they've also acknowledged it.
The company apologized, its CEO took responsibility, and changes are reportedly being made to how creative work gets reviewed before it reaches millions of people.
That's what should happen.
People make mistakes. Brands make mistakes. Creative teams make mistakes.
You own it.
You learn from it.
You hit another ball.
We don't think golf gets better by trying to permanently exile everyone who shanks one into the woods.
That's not how the muni works.
The Golf Culture We Want
The future of golf shouldn't look like the past.
It should be louder.
More diverse.
More accessible.
More affordable.
More welcoming to beginners.
More welcoming to women.
More welcoming to kids.
More welcoming to the guy playing a 15-year-old set of irons who just shot 104 and can't wait to come back Saturday.
That's the golf culture worth building.
So turn up the music.
Take the mulligan.
Talk a little shit.
Wear the ridiculous shirt.
Buy your buddy a beer after he rinses two balls on the same hole.
Invite someone to play who doesn't look like the golfers you grew up watching on television.
And for God's sake, stop acting like golf is a sacred ceremony.
Just don't confuse being irreverent with being an asshole.
There's plenty of room between the two.
We'll be somewhere in the middle.
Probably taking a breakfast ball.
Premium gear. Public golf. Good times.
GRIPIT GOLF
See you at the muni.