Full Swing Part Deux, golf's lost spirit and mixed reviews for Tiger's new venture
This week in the money and business of golf: Netflix's new season of Full Swing, an alternate view on the new Tiger/TaylorMade venture, and how money is driving a wedge between pros and fans.
On top of the longform essays, which I’ll continue to publish once or twice a month, I’ll be offering a weekly wrap every Tuesday on the stories that have been catching the eye from money and business in the great game of golf.
This week:
What we can expect in Netflix’s new series of Full Swing
Why one golf gear expert believes the Tiger/TaylorMade venture will fail
How one golf pro thinks the pro game’s money focus has alienated the fans
Thank you for being here. The Wedge is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy these articles and would like to support independent media focused on the business, money and mystique of the world’s greatest game, please consider a monthly or annual subscription or gift a subscription to someone who might value this content.
New Netflix golf series bookended by LIV/PGA and Ryder Cup two-parters
The second series of Full Swing will land on Netflix next month.
The accompanying graphic (above) included nine players — Keegan Bradley, Rickie Fowler, Joel Dahmen, Rory McIlroy, Tom Kim, Justin Thomas, brothers Alex and Matt Fitzpatrick and 2023’s maiden Major winner Wyndham Clark — as well as Europe Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald.
While not part of the promo pic, it’s almost certain US Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson will also feature.
It’s no surprise that Rory and JT are featured again, given Rory’s central role both on and off the course last year and Thomas’s struggles for form before being selected as one of Johnson’s picks for the Ryder Cup.
Joel Dahmen also returns having been the star of Series 1 for many viewers — although that newfound fame has not coincided with success on the course.
As Dahmen says at one point in the Season 2:
“Me being famous and playing the worst golf of my career, it sucks.”
The streamer released a (very) short teaser trailer — interestingly, only via the PGATour.com website — last week.
It reveals the make-up of what looks like eight episodes, to be bookended by two two-parters:
The Game Has Changed (2-parter, probably featuring PGA Tour-LIV upheaval)
Mind Game (featuring Dahmen)
Prove It (featuring Kim)
In The Shadows (the Fitzpatricks)
Pick Six (Thomas)
All Roads Lead to Rome (2-parter on the Ryder Cup)
You can watch Full Swing on Netflix from March 6th.
Mixed feelings on Tiger’s new apparel venture
As I reported in last week’s longer newsletter, the new venture from Tiger Woods and TaylorMade Golf, titled Sun Day Red, saw the light of day for the first time before the Genesis Invitational.
My view was that the alliance, coming after the end of Tiger’s 27-year association with Nike, could be a match made in heaven.
Why?
Because it brings together, in one new specialist entity, an iconic golf brand with an iconic and now mostly former golfer.
And it’s Tiger’s status as a former golfer, someone who is well into the twilight days of a legendary career, that makes this brand perfect for him now.
He’s 48 years old.
He can’t compete on the course any more.
But he can compete off it.
This brand gives Tiger the opportunity to win in golf business in exactly the same way he won in golf tournaments.
As I wrote last week, I felt the brand had succeeded in the first part of the equation — the promise — and now has to succeed in the second — the reality.
When marketing works, it’s always by making a promise that the product, service or event must then strive to meet.
When it doesn’t, it’s often because of the final tragic realization that the promise and the reality are, and will forever be, chasms apart.
So will the marketing drive for Sun Day Red be successful?
Who knows, time will tell, the proof of the pudding will be… yadda yadda yadda.
But to offer one judgment from this juncture, within 24 hours of the initial launch and almost three months before the May 1st date when product starts shipping, the marketers behind Sun Day Red have done an exceptional job on the promise part of the equation. Whether the reality part of the equation delivers on that is what we’re all about to find out.
This optimistic view is not shared by everyone, though.
In a well-thought-out example of a mostly negative take on all things Sun Day Red, MyGolfSpy’s Connor Lindeman outlined his reasons for believing two things:
First, that the execution so far has not been good
Second, that the Sun Day Red idea will not work — and that Tiger himself is part of that problem
As Lindeman wrote on MyGolfSpy (my emphasis throughout):
I think Sun Day Red has more of a marketing problem than an actual product problem. For the last few months, we’ve been led to believe (quoting from the website again) that Tiger’s new apparel will “redefine what golfers expect from their attire.”
Will it, though?
When the marketing boffins make big promises, the product had better deliver. Based on initial looks and reactions, Sun Day Red just isn’t stepping up to fill the Swoosh-laden shoes that Woods once wore.
And later:
While Woods undoubtedly moves the needle for professional golf viewership and conversation (we have the PIP to thank for this data), I don’t know that Woods has the innate ability to sell gear in a way that someone like Michael Jordan does.
At the time of this writing, NIKE’s online shelves are full of Tiger Woods gear that just isn’t moving. Heck, in an attempt to drum up excitement, they retroed his most popular shoe ever, the TW ‘13. Even still, that hasn’t moved the needle enough to stop NIKE from heavily discounting them.
If nostalgia doesn’t move the needle, what will? Woods’ popularity is undeniable but who is making golf gear buying decisions based on what he wears?
Of course, while I respect Connor’s perspective, I disagree with him here.
But as someone once said, that’s the big problem with opinions — everybody’s got one.
I know for a fact that Connor has a lot more knowledge of golf clothing, footwear and equipment than me — only one of us is a “resident sneakerhead” for a golf gear website!
But that’s the beauty of branding.
Nobody actually knows what will happen.
It will be fun to find out. (And if I’m wrong, and Sun Day Red tanks, I won’t be looking for any hiding places!)
“Fans are just generally a little bit fed up with it.”
The whole PGA-LIV melée since 2022 has prompted a complete re-engineering of the professional golf identity.
The evolution of the top level of pro golf into an environment characterized almost completely by cash has happened quickly.
Of course, we had LIV’s big-money signing-on fees for some of the game’s biggest icons and rising stars (as well as some who were never a member of either of those categories).
The LIV A-bomb was sandwiched by two big-money moves by the PGA Tour:
First, pre-dating the emergence of LIV, the arrival of the PIP (or Player Impact Program) scheme, which split tens of millions of dollars between the biggest names on the PGA Tour each year (complete with some fairly arbitrary criteria to decide who got what)
Second, and largely in response to LIV, the PGA Tour made a big injection into allocated tournament prize-money, making 2023 a cash bonanza for a lot of Tour players
And with all this in mind, PGA Tour player Mackenzie Hughes, a two-time PGA Tour winner having won the RSM Classic in 2016 and the Sanderson Farms Championship two years ago, believes that everything has gone too far, and something vital has been lost in the process.
Speaking to CBS in a fairway walk during the weekend’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera outside Los Angeles, Hughes was downbeat about the direction the game has taken, and especially how it alienates players from fans.
He said:
“It’s kinda unfortunate where we are in the game right now, where it seems that it’s just all about the money, it’s all about how much money can I make.
“It’s kinda lost the spirit of the game in the process.
“It’s just never the reason I played the PGA Tour. It wasn’t because I wanted to make millions of dollars. I wanted to compete against the best players in the world, make an impact in the communities that we platy, and yeah, it’s been a dream since I was a kid.
“It seems that some guys have kind lost a little bit of the sight of that.
“Now we’re in a place where fans are just generally a little bit fed up with it to be honest. Those are the people that drive our sport.
“So I’d love to appeal to the masses a lot more, and certainly the way we’re going right now to me isn’t quite it.”
For more on the spirit of the game, check out this essay from my long series on the PGA/LIV divide in 2022:
Golf’s New World Order, Part 6: Why we watch, why we go, why we play
Welcome to the sixth part of this series. Thank you for reading these essays. Working on them has helped me to understand a little more about what’s going on right now in the world of golf—and in the wider world too. The writing has given me some new insights and perspectives. I hope that reading them has done something similar for you.
Thank you for being here. The Wedge is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy these articles and would like to support independent media focused on the business, money and mystique of the world’s greatest game, please consider a monthly or annual subscription or gift a subscription to someone who might value this content.