As Golf Channel Closes In On 30, the Return of Gary Williams Might Be Its Best Birthday Present
The broadcaster was back on Monday, January 6th with his growing media brand, 5 Clubs, slotting in as a live show on the channel's morning schedule.
After four years away, Gary Williams returned to Golf Channel last week.
And while YouTube viewership numbers for 5 Clubs GC segments are not exactly off the charts just yet — we are, all of us, lying prostrate before the judge, jury and executioner of Big Tech’s PANs (Publicly Available Numbers!) — on the evidence of the first few live shows at least, 5 Clubs promises to fast become a staple of the golf industry’s weekday media diet.
In this newsletter:
How the reunion happened — “Can I pull over?”
The 130-year-old origins of the 5 Clubs brand
Gary Williams’s personal battle for the straight and narrow — “All these people in my life who never let go of the rope”
The focus of 5 Clubs on Golf Channel
The 5 Clubs view on money and the pro game
Bucking the trend of independent media
The new goal of all “shows”: Become a media brand
How the reunion happened — “Can I pull over?”
Gary Williams will be a familiar face and voice to longer term Golf Channel viewers — he spent 10 years presenting Morning Drive before the curtain was brought down on that show in 2021.
Later in 2021, 5 Clubs was born, with backing from Signature Sports Group (SSG), a sports media, marketing and events firm based in Williams’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. The first 5 Clubs video, an interview with Phil Mickelson, went live on September 14, 2021.
The brand quickly built a profile in the increasingly fragmented media world with more interviews with some of the game’s biggest names, in many of which a rare honesty and openness seemed to be the order of the day.
Less than four years on from those 5 Clubs origins, the full circle has been completed with Williams, with his new brand in tow, back on Golf Channel with a new one-hour, three-days-a-week live show going out Monday through Wednesday at 8am ET.
Like so many of life’s good things — and many others that aren’t so great at all — it started with a phone call. The caller was Tom Knapp, executive vice president of programming for Golf Channel.
Knapp and Williams went back a bit, having been colleagues at Golf Channel during Williams’s Morning Drive years, when Knapp was a Senior VP of Programming.
Knapp picked up the phone in April 2024. Reason for call: the possibility of 5 Clubs becoming part of Golf Channel’s morning schedule from January 2025.
As Williams recalled in an excellent interview with Bill Hobson on the Michigan Golf Live show:
“He said to me, ‘You can answer this any way you want, but how would you feel about 5 Clubs being the morning show on Golf Channel in January of 2025?’
“And I'm like, ‘Can I pull over!?! Because either you're punking me or…’
“It was overwhelming to think about that being a reality, let alone a possibility.”
Fast forward eight months, and 5 Clubs kicked off on Golf Channel last Monday, January 6. Pairing up live programming from 8-9am Monday through Wednesday, 5 Clubs will regularly post segments of the show to its YouTube channel, @5clubsgolf.
The first week included interviews with women’s number 1 Nelly Korda, double US Open champ and YouTube viral star Bryson DeChambeau, and regular CBS golf (and NFL) announcer Jim Nantz.
The 130-year-old origins of the 5 Clubs brand
The name 5 Clubs carries a deeper meaning than it might seem at first glance.
It’s a tribute to the five founding clubs of the USGA in 1894 — Shinnecock Hills, Chicago Golf Club, The Country Club at Brookline, Newport Country Club, and St. Andrews on the Hudson.
These clubs laid the foundation for the game in America, a nod to golf’s potential for growth in uncertain times.
As Williams said recently,
“We chose the name because, modestly, we were like, ‘Well, THEY had no idea what they were doing! Golf was so new in this country, but they had this belief that we have to start somewhere.”
For Williams, the name also avoids the pitfalls of modern branding, adding:
“We didn't want a name that could be shortened. Everything is acronym-ed to death [these days], everything is shortened. I get it for convenience or to sound slick. But 5 Clubs is 5 Clubs. From a branding standpoint, we felt that it was something that would not be shortened, but on a much more significant scale, it is a tribute and an homage to those five clubs who said ‘Golf might be something in this country. Let’s figure out a way to get it started and contribute and let’s see if it grows’.”
“All these people in my life who never let go of the rope” — Williams’s personal battle for the straight and narrow
It’s always a wrench when something to which you’ve given a decade of your life comes to an end.
For Gary Williams and his time at Golf Channel, though, wrench does not go nearly far enough.
In that Michigan Golf Live conversation, he spoke about the darkness of those dying days of Morning Drive before the decision to cut the show was taken:
“It makes me very emotional because it wasn't just a bad day — I was not healthy … I am the architect of the consequences that came in my direction when I lost my job. And I have been somebody who's been living a life of recovery, and understanding the challenges of being an alcoholic, and the things that go with that on a day-to-day basis.
[Even] if that aspect of my life didn't exist, I know that I would still feel an immense level of humility that this [opportunity] has happened again.
…
[Back then it was] a time where a lot of people in my life were at a loss because I was not well. And to be here with a clear mind and a full heart and to be impacted by the realization of what is getting ready to start for me again, with the unwavering support of all these people in my life who never let go of the rope, it’s overwhelming.
“When you lose something you love — I didn't need to lose it to know I loved it — but to have a chance to do it again… Again, I didn't anticipate this, but it is the term, ‘it's darkest before the dawn’.”
Indeed, Williams wrote at length about his struggles in a long and heartfelt blog post, titled “It’s The Time, Not The Score”, on the 5 Clubs website in 2023.
There, he reflected on his start in golf, including the time he spent out on course playing with his father, and the very many deep friendships he was able to forge all over America.
To quote just one particularly moving section, he wrote:
“One of the tell-tale signs and behaviors of an alcoholic is the seeking and the pursuit of isolation. For me, it was the growing shame over being in the grips of alcohol, but it was also the simple need to be alone to drink the way only an alcoholic does. For all the years of joy and fond memories the game had given me with new and old friends, I had gotten to the point several years ago that I was willing to abandon and sacrifice all of them because the disease had taken hold of me.
“My job presented me with a fair amount of travel and there wasn’t a town in America that didn’t have a good golf course, and many were close to friends I made in and out of the game. Less and less did I make plans to meet friends, play golf, catch up on life and deposit valuable memories into my well-being. Instead, I consistently chose the loneliness and isolation of hotel rooms where I fed my disease and a growing strand of depression.”
It seems fair to say that in 2021, the Gary Williams life story had come to a T-junction. He could turn left, to oblivion, or take a right and the hard course to recovery.
Williams took a right.
The 5 Clubs Focus
With everything from Barstool Sports to No Laying Up to the ever-expanding content and media experiences sponsored by gambling companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings — plus the still-24-hour coverage of Golf Channel — the seemingly insatiable demand for takes on the pro game would appear to be well catered for.
The intention is for the focus of 5 Clubs to be sideways to that.
In an interview published on the Awful Announcing sports media site, Williams said (emphasis mine):
“Naturally, so much of the focus is on the professional sport of golf. And that is the most important foundational piece. But unlike these other sports, this is a participatory sport where people’s interest in the game extend far beyond [the pros].
“They have interest in the design of golf courses, and the administration of the game, and the business of the game, and equipment.
“So the ambition, and the greater kind of ethos of what we want it to be is: this is an industry show. This will not just be a professional golf recap show. And that includes people who cover the game.
“I want this to be a platform and a community where people feel like, ‘My god, everybody’s on that show.’ Not just everybody who plays the game but everybody who is in the game.”
The 5 Clubs view on money and the pro game
That industry focus notwithstanding, the pro game is far from off-limits.
Especially in this present moment that has been ongoing since the summer of 2022, when LIV Golf first saw the light of day and golf’s professional unity was shattered.
While there has been lots of talk on a merger, or at least a detente, between the PGA TOUR and LIV, no major move in that direction has yet been finalized.
And, as Williams declared in a Golf Channel interview ahead of the 5 Clubs network go-live, the division between the public and the pros leaves the sport in a “precarious and dangerous” position.
(Emphasis mine):
“It’s very dangerous when you struggle with what your identity is, and I think that men's professional golf has occupied a very affluent but yet very narrow space in the public consciousness. And I think that the money — and I don't begrudge anybody for getting as much as you can — but there is a fine line between leveraging something and executing greed.
“And I think that we're at that point. And I think that if they don't look around at the overall landscape of sports and the consumption level of people, and what it is, of their product right now, that they're going to hurdle more towards a place that's not irrevocable, but it is dangerous, it's precarious.”
Bucking the trend of independent media
What makes 5 Clubs unique, in a way, isn’t just its subject matter — it’s how it got here. This reverse trajectory — from niche digital content to mainstream network — bucks the trend in media today, where some of the most famous media personalities, including everyone from Tucker Carlson to Piers Morgan to Bari Weiss, have gone from mainstream to streaming.
Nevertheless, 5 Clubs will remain true to its independent roots.
The show — which will also go out on radio via Sirius XM PGA TOUR Radio — is a collaboration between 5 Clubs and its owners SSG on the one hand and Golf Channel on the other.
Williams is the Executive Producer of the show, and can be expected to have plenty of editorial independence. There was never a question of relocating to the Golf Channel locale of Connecticut, with Williams and SSG constructing an impressive remote studio and almost all interviews expected to be conducted over video-conference.
Still, on the admittedly limited evidence of Week 1’s programming, and the social media feedback 5 Clubs on Golf Channel has generated, it certainly appears to be a win-win for all sides.
The new goal of all “shows”: Become a media brand
Golf Channel’s move to pick up 5 Clubs is the part of the story that’s got the attention in recent weeks, but it is just one part of the story.
Williams and his partners at Signature Sports Group are engaged in the longer term objective of building a broader media portfolio under the 5 Clubs brand.
This includes contributions such as Wagyu and Filet, a show presented by former PGA TOUR players Johnson Wagner and Brendon de Jonge which debuted on the 5 Clubs YouTube channel in 2024 and is expected to have more content, and an even higher profile, given the new Golf Channel connection, in 2025.
And that’s just one exploration among several that 5 Clubs will embark upon in the coming months.
From that Michigan Golf Live interview again (emphasis again mine), Williams said:
“The five-year vision of things, that's the most exciting part. We look at the Golf Channel show as being home base. Beyond that, you will hopefully start to see the augmenting of what we're doing, with other voices like Johnson Wagner and Brendon de Jonge … They will contribute to the Golf Channel show, they'll be in studio with me every other week, and they will also be producing their own show called Wagyu and Filet, which will originate on our YouTube channel.
“Other contributors that are part of our roster, we are working on vehicles for each of them. They will also be on the Golf Channel show periodically, but we want to build out a whole portfolio of offerings for the people who are part of our team, so that you're not only getting the live show … It will be like an a la carte that you can go and choose to watch.
“It's up to us to obviously have the kind of sponsor support that the cadence is as regular as it can be. But that's what the five-year plan is, [to be] kind of a clearing house of people who are part of the team, but have their own autonomy to do what they want with their own programs.”
All this sounds massively exciting for everyone involved, but it does present a possible logistical challenge.
Can a team with limited resources keep up with the demands of live TV and still invest enough attention, energy and, of course, money to deliver the necessary experiments and evolutions constantly required by the never-ending maze of possibilities, formats and avenues presented within the wide expanse of media, encompassing traditional, new and whatever the future brings?
To find out, let’s all watch this space!
Thanks for reading.
Till next time.
Shane
Shane, will be a golf broadcast person in the future, very good.
They keep changing the line up and as far as I am concerned, Gary (the whiner) Williams was a terrible host then, and now. Thanks for ruining my drive to work.