Good Good Golf's Bad Week Keeps Getting Worse

Joseph LaMagna: Since Wednesday morning, all has not been quiet on the Good Good front.

On Wednesday evening, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark posted a lengthy video apologizing for the controversial ad posted at the end of last week, which featured Clark tackling and standing over a woman who was about to touch his Callaway driver. The apology was more “I’m sorry you took it that way” than “I’m sorry for what I did,” and, for whatever reason, included a blooper from the commercial shoot (?) — but that’s mostly beside the point.

On Thursday, Callaway announced that it was severing ties with Good Good, a decision that came after days of listening and deep reflection (yadda yadda) on the ad it had collaborated with Good Good on and approved. Then, later in the day, Good Good issued a statement that it would be stepping away from its sponsorship of the PGA Tour event in Austin, Texas, scheduled for later this fall. Golf Channel also announced that this season of Big Break x Good Good will not air and will instead return to television in 2027.

The story has broken containment, with people both inside and outside of golf fixated on what’s quickly become the biggest story in the sport.

So, Garrett (Morrison, not Clark), the situation continues to evolve, but are you surprised by how many people care about this? Do you care about this?

Garrett Morrison: Most aspects of this story are unsurprising.

It’s unsurprising that many people would object to a depiction of violence against women in an advertisement for a golf driver. Yes, the intention was to spoof a popular horror movie. And yes, that was a bad idea.

It’s also unsurprising that a YouTube golf crew would be ill-equipped to handle the fallout from a major controversy. Good Good’s initial statement was anemic, and Garrett Clark’s follow-up video was clumsy and directionless — not to mention a bit too invested in throwing his own company’s marketing department under the bus. Clark wasn’t ready for this moment. (Nor would most of us have been, to be clear.)

Finally, it’s unsurprising that this whole thing immediately got hoovered up into the ongoing culture war on social media. That’s what the algorithms are designed to do, and man, they’ve overperformed in this instance.

So: do I care? When the ad first came out, I cared that women in the golf world got to share their perspectives. I give huge credit to Skratch Golf’s Claire Rogers specifically for speaking up, knowing that she would receive a torrent of distressing replies and DMs.

But now that Golf Galaxy, Callaway, and the PGA Tour have moved on from Good Good, the story has reached its natural conclusion. What’s left is people shouting at each other on X, helplessly caught up in the perpetual-motion machine of an algorithmically favored topic. I’ll go ahead and opt out of that.

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Joseph: The most absurd part of all of this is that a Good Good controversy is the biggest story of the week during the Tour Championship, the PGA Tour’s Super Bowl. That’s both a testament to how quickly this story has blown up and how little anybody cares about the Tour Championship, which will pay out $40 million this weekend.

I doubt Brian Rolapp is super pleased about that.

But like you, Garrett, I am ready to move on from this story. Do I think there is a case to be made that there have been some massive overreactions, particularly on social media, to a spoof of a horror movie gone wrong? Yes, I do. And I think it’s possible to make that point without condoning or diminishing the seriousness of violence against women. Obviously.

But at least as far as sponsorship of a PGA Tour event is concerned, it’s very easy to understand why Rolapp would want to distance the Tour from a brand that has suddenly become objectionable to many. Culture wars have overwhelmed and overshadowed the actual on-field product across sports leagues. You don’t have to look any further than the WNBA, where an incompetent commissioner has completely lost control of the wheel and social issues dominate far, far more of the discourse than which team is leading the standings.

Rolapp doesn’t need that circus. He doesn’t need people showing up to a PGA Tour event in November to protest — or to protest the protest. If he can snap his fingers and make a potential controversy disappear, he’s going to do that.

I’m just disappointed Callaway cut ties with Good Good before we got another commercial. Maybe a spoof on “The Exorcist?” Exorcising the driver yips? The possibilities were endless.

Garrett: Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to see much genre experimentation in equipment ads going forward. Not exactly a tragedy.

I want to follow up quickly, Don Rea-style, about “massive overreactions” on social media. It’s obviously true that the discourse has spiraled, as discourses of this nature always do these days.

But if we can tune out the chaos of our feeds for a second, there’s a simple, relatively calm way to understand what happened in the real world here. Good Good made a mistake. Its partners — larger, more established, more risk-averse golf corporations and organizations — didn’t want the stink on them, so they stepped away. But life is long, and Good Good will have plenty of time to redeem itself.

Meanwhile, instead of doom-scrolling tonight, watch "Listers." It’s a really wonderful documentary about birdwatching, and it’s just sitting there on YouTube. See? The internet isn’t all bad bad.