Golf's $3.5B apparel revolution

“As you walk down the fairway of life you must stop to smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.”

Ben Hogan

Min Woo staying put, YouTube golf is taking over – just ask LeBron, golf joggers showing too much ankle, The Rory McIlroy Award, Caitlin & Kai teeing it up, how much is too much for a new putter, The Golf Channel’s exciting shake up for ’26, what a season for Ben Griffin.

South Street snaps up Sawgrass Marriott for $148M

Why it matters: South Street Partners and Dream Finders Homes acquired the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa for $148 million, securing control of access to America's most valuable golf real estate. The 66-acre property sits adjacent to TPC Sawgrass's Stadium Course and minutes from the new PGA Tour Global Home. With 351 rooms, 163 villas, and 114,000 square feet of meeting space, this becomes the inaugural investment for South Street's SSP GP Fund II. Financing came from BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank that backs transformational deals for family offices, not standard hotel loans. South Street now controls the Southeast's premier golf destinations: Kiawah Island, PGA National, Naples Grande. For context, Brookfield bought this as part of Watermark Lodging Trust in 2022 and flipped it three years later.

Our Take: The Dream Finders involvement is the real story. Golf's official homebuilder partnering with private equity real estate to buy the resort next to Tour headquarters signals integrated development. Expect the Kiawah strategy, residential communities with preferred resort access where real estate drives hospitality. The comprehensive renovation translates to repricing the market entirely, targeting corporate retreats and premium players hospitality, not the aspirational golfer saving for one Sawgrass trip. This deal is about controlling access to the TPC ecosystem as it transforms from tournament venue to year-round industry hub. South Street isn't buying a hotel. They're buying infrastructure and the development rights around it. The $148M is just the entry ticket.

LIV Golf signs Trackman as official launch monitor partner

Why it matters: LIV Golf secured Trackman as its official launch monitor and ball-tracking technology provider in a multi-year partnership. This legitimises LIV's infrastructure beyond spectacle, giving it the same data backbone that powers the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and elite club fitting operations globally. Trackman's involvement signals institutional acceptance from golf's most trusted technology provider. The deal extends beyond tournament play, Trackman will integrate across LIV's entire ecosystem including broadcasts, player performance analytics, and potentially amateur qualifiers. For context, Trackman dominates the professional golf technology market with presence at virtually every major championship and tour event worldwide. LIV now has access to the same performance data infrastructure its players used before defecting.

Our Take: This matters less for what it says about LIV and more for what it reveals about the equipment and technology sector's pragmatic approach to golf's civil war. Trackman isn't making a political statement, they're following revenue. LIV events need credible data, broadcast partners demand ball-tracking graphics, and players require performance metrics. Trackman provides all three whilst maintaining relationships with traditional tours. The real story is normalisation. As more established golf businesses, from apparel brands to technology providers, engage with LIV as simply another tour client, the league's outsider status erodes. Equipment companies and tech providers don't care about format debates or legacy, they care about markets. LIV represents 54 elite players, 14 global events, and growing broadcast distribution. That's a customer base, not a controversy. Expect more of golf's established infrastructure to quietly integrate LIV into standard operations whilst the governance fight continues above them.

LPGA joins PIF Global Series with $4M Shadow Creek event

Why it matters: The LPGA announced it will co-sanction the Aramco Championship at Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas from 2-5 April 2026, marking the first time American professional golf has partnered directly with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. The $4 million purse tournament features a 120-player field from both the LPGA and Ladies European Tour. This represents new LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler's first major announcement since taking over in July, signalling willingness to pursue Saudi capital where his predecessor wouldn't. The five-event PIF Global Series spans tournaments in Saudi Arabia, Korea, London, Las Vegas, and China with $15 million in total prize money. Whilst the PGA Tour's PIF negotiations remain stalled, women's golf has secured the partnership American men's golf couldn't.

Our Take: This isn't partnership, it's necessity. Saudi Arabia isn't investing because women's golf offers compelling ROI, they're buying access to governance and global legitimacy as part of their broader strategy to establish sporting credibility. The LPGA accepted because a $4 million purse at Shadow Creek fills the gap left when T-Mobile dropped its sponsorship. The women's game lacks commercial infrastructure to support tours without external capital injection, leaving properties vulnerable to whoever writes the largest cheques regardless of underlying motivation. The question isn't whether this deal benefits the LPGA and LET, it does. The question is what happens when Saudi priorities shift or when golf no longer serves their strategic objectives.

Listen: David Perell Interview with Sam Altman, discussing Altman’s method for ‘clear thinking’. The biggest takeaway: the man behind the largest AI company in the world, doesn’t use AI to think and still advocates paper, pen and writing.

Read: Michael Kim on X/Twitter. With over 200k followers, regular Q&As, and plenty of insights into the life of a PGA Tour Pro, this is quality content.

Watch: European Ryder Cup Team go 1920’s gangster in NYC. Brilliant behind the scenes video of the David Yarrow photoshoot before the Ryder Cup.

Tech: Gen Spark this is a hidden gem in the world of AI. It’s a tool where you can query multiple AI models simultaneously, create images, videos, presentations, spreadsheets etc. No more jumping from one LLM to another.

The new uniform: golf's apparel revolution has arrived. But can it last?

Walk into any modern golf club car park and you'll see it: hoodies instead of collars, trainers instead of shoes, and logos you have never seen before but will start noticing more and more. Malbon, Eastside Golf, Bad Birdie, Metalwood Studio and Greyson are not just selling shirts. They are rewriting golf's cultural code while raising tens of millions in venture capital and posting nine-figure revenue runs.

As we featured in a previous newsletter, Nike spent 20 years and $2 billion trying to crack golf equipment before Phil Knight admitted defeat. "We lost money for 20 years on equipment and balls," he said in 2016. "We realised next year was not going to be any different."

The question is no longer whether lifestyle brands can win in golf apparel. It is whether they can avoid Nike's equipment fate by building cultural buzz without losing money until investors run out of patience.

The global golf apparel market is worth around $3.5 billion in 2025, with steady growth projected through the decade. Lifestyle led brands are the fastest growing segment, attracting serious capital and wholesale partnerships. However, market growth does not guarantee individual profitability, particularly when competing against Nike with 18% global market share and Adidas with 14%. Cultural relevance and commercial durability are very different things.

From fairway function to streetwear identity

For decades, golf apparel was functional and conservative. Nike, Adidas, FootJoy and Under Armour made fabrics that performed. Their customers were traditional golfers who replaced polos when they wore out, not because a limited drop sold out in less than 47 minutes.

The new direct-to-consumer disruptors changed the rules entirely. Malbon launched in 2017 as a Los Angeles mood board and quickly evolved into a lifestyle label approaching, and by some recent accounts exceeding, $100 million in annual revenue. The brand raised $28 million in October 2025, more than twelve times its previous funding round. That is not niche anymore, it's scale.

Context is important. Malbon's entire annual revenue would be a rounding error in Nike's golf business. Unlike Nike, which kept apparel after exiting equipment because the margins worked, these lifestyle brands are still proving they can turn cultural cachet into sustainable profitability.

Eastside Golf took a different path. Founded in 2020 by Morehouse College alumni, its Jordan Brand and Nike collaborations turned cultural representation into commercial traction. Those partnerships accelerate distribution and legitimacy, but they also create dependency. You are building someone else's equity as much as your own.

Greyson Clothiers secured $20 million in February 2025, backed by Justin Timberlake and Justin Thomas, reaching 2,500 points of distribution. That wholesale penetration signals a shift beyond direct-to-consumer Instagram drops into traditional retail, where margins compress but volume scales.

Students Golf and Radmor are building niche communities. Metalwood Studio targets design-conscious golfers willing to pay premium prices for understated aesthetics. Each found a lane that the incumbents were not serving.

The economics behind the boom

The structural advantage is straightforward: direct-to-consumer economics. Traditional golf apparel sold through pro shops leaves brands with margins of around 30% to 40%. Direct-to-consumer players keep gross margins somewhere between 60% and 70%, use limited drops to create scarcity, and capture customer data that informs everything.

Around 44% of American golf apparel buyers now use their products beyond the golf course. When your customer wears your hoodie to brunch, the office and the gym, you are competing with Lululemon and Nike Sportswear, not just FootJoy.

The women's segment is the most credible growth opportunity. Women's participation has risen by 33%, driving a 31% surge in apparel demand. Traditional brands largely ignored this demographic or offered smaller men's designs in pastels. Labels such as Foray Golf and Tail Activewear, building authentic identities around women's golf, have genuine differentiation if they execute on product and community.

The problem is that direct-to-consumer economics only work if customer acquisition costs remain reasonable. Social platform advertising costs have risen sharply. The brands that raised capital in 2024 and 2025 are betting they can achieve scale before their cash runs out. Some will be right. Most will not.

Why now, and why it matters

Several forces have converged. Post-pandemic participation bumps and off-course engagement through the likes of Topgolf mean more people wear golf clothes as lifestyle pieces. The National Golf Foundation reports that 47 million Americans now play golf, with 48% of participants aged between 6 and 34. That is transformational.

The experience economy has changed consumer behaviour. Around 53% of new golf apparel consumers are influenced by lifestyle branding rather than performance metrics. Social media velocity changed the game. Viral drops generate revenue spikes overnight that legacy marketing cannot replicate.

However, virality does not equal sustainability. Brands built on hype cycles must eventually transition to predictable revenue models with healthy unit economics. That transition is where most consumer brands fail.

Who is winning, and what winning actually means

Malbon is the poster child, with revenue approaching $100 million and 80% sell-through rates. Yet "winning" in venture-backed consumer brands means either achieving profitability or growing fast enough to justify the next funding round.

We do not know their path to profitability or burn rate. We do know they have raised significant capital and must now deliver returns that justify their valuation.

G/FORE, founded in 2011, carved out a premium position with bold designs and luxury pricing. Its wholesale partnerships with Nordstrom and speciality retailers show another path, embracing traditional retail from the start rather than a direct-to-consumer focus.

Swannies built an entire brand around one product innovation, shorts with built-in compression, proving you can scale on a focused value proposition rather than a full lifestyle position.

The brands navigating wholesale transitions successfully become real businesses. Those trapped in direct-to-consumer purgatory remain dependent on social media algorithms and rising acquisition costs.

What this means for the legacy players

Nike and Adidas remain dominant, but they are losing ground to fragmentation. Nike retained apparel after exiting equipment because margins worked, but golf is no longer a core strategic category. That creates space for challengers to own niches that Nike no longer prioritises.

Adidas relaunched an Originals Golf collection in 2025, leaning on lifestyle cues rather than performance messaging. It introduced apparel made with 90% recycled materials, contributing to a 36% increase in sustainable category sales. That is smart positioning, as sustainability is now a competitive advantage with younger buyers.

The collaboration strategy reveals how legacy brands adapt. When Nike partners with Eastside Golf or Adidas works with emerging labels, they are paying for cultural credibility they cannot manufacture internally.

Tiger Woods launching Sun Day Red with TaylorMade represents another model, leveraging individual brand equity rather than corporate infrastructure. That tells you what Tiger thinks about the future of golf apparel.

The critical question nobody is answering

While it's probably a result of my age bracket and my style credentials, I rarely see Malbon, Bad Birdie or Eastside Golf at any golf course. The volume brands on the first tee are still Nike, Adidas, FootJoy and Peter Millar.

That disconnect between social media visibility and on-course reality is the entire story. These lifestyle brands excel at content and limited-edition drops. What they have not yet proven is that online engagement converts into long-term, profitable market share where it matters most: among regular golfers.

Risks and the runway to scale

Customer acquisition costs on social platforms are rising faster than expected. Cultural relevance is fragile. Today's hyped brand becomes tomorrow's "remember when". There is also the scalability paradox: can a brand built on limited runs become a $500 million business without losing what made it special?

Nike learned this lesson in equipment. It assumed brand power and Tiger Woods would overcome credibility gaps. It didn’t. Even Tiger eventually switched to different irons mid-contract.

Apparel is more emotional and less technically scrutinised, but the lesson applies. Brand power has limits. Without operational efficiency and strong unit economics, even the most popular brands run out of runway.

The strategic takeaways

For retail operators, stocking curated lifestyle brands creates buzz, but traditional performance labels still drive volume and margin. The smart play is balance, not betting entirely on either camp.

For legacy brands, expect more collaborations and minority investments over the next couple of years. Buying culture is faster than building it organically, and the cost of strategic partnerships is lower than the risk of becoming irrelevant to younger demographics.

For investors, due diligence on unit economics and customer retention is critical. Growth without sustainable economics is just expensive capital burn.

The next 18 to 24 months will be defining. Capital markets have tightened, consumer spending is under pressure, and competition is intensifying. The brands that survive will have operational excellence, not just attractive design.

Cultural relevance is not a business plan

The lifestyle brand movement is real, well-funded and culturally significant. These brands are making golf more accessible and relevant to younger demographics. That deserves recognition.

However, cultural relevance and commercial durability are not the same. Nike proved that even the strongest brand in sport can fail spectacularly when unit economics do not work. We are now watching whether lifestyle brands with excellent aesthetics can build profitable, sustainable businesses where even giants struggled.

The incumbents control scale and supply chains. The disruptors control attention and attitude. Some will transition from hype-driven growth to sustainable businesses with healthy margins and retention. They will be acquired by legacy players or go public on their own merits.

Most will not. They will run out of capital before achieving profitability, be acquired at distressed valuations, or quietly wind down. That is not pessimism. It is how consumer markets behave when enthusiasm meets economics.

Golf is big enough for multiple apparel ecosystems. This isn't about whether lifestyle brands belong. They clearly do. The question is which brands will still be around in five years, and whether their investors made money or simply funded an expensive experiment in cultural relevance.

If you are an investor, operator, or executive you should consider what the true customer lifetime value is versus the cost of that acquisition.

Lifestyle brands control attention. But attention without profitable unit economics is just noise. That is not a prediction. It is what Nike's $2 billion equipment lesson already proved.

The mock that moved millions

In 2003, Tiger Woods showed up at the Buick Invitational wearing a short-sleeve mock turtleneck with no collar. Golf shops immediately started receiving inquiries. "I saw Tiger wearing it and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, we're going to start getting calls,'" said Chuck Neely, manager of Edwin Watts Golf. "And I mean, boom, as soon as people started seeing it, we were getting calls."

The $55 shirt ignited a nationwide debate. Many country clubs only allowed mock turtlenecks on "inclement days" and they had to be long-sleeved. River Oaks Country Club's director admitted: "If on a warm day a golfer arrived wearing Woods' short-sleeved mock turtle, that would not meet our dress code."

Woods won his fourth Masters in 2005 wearing that red mock on Sunday. He retired the look for over a decade, then brought it back at the 2019 Masters, and won his fifth green jacket. According to Chris Bailey, Nike's designer who worked with Tiger, "He wants to look timeless. So if you look at a picture today, you can't tell if it was 10 years ago or five years ago."

By 2019, the shirt sold for $85, exclusively made for Tiger with no other Nike athlete wearing the style.

A collarless shirt changed dress codes at country clubs worldwide. And it only took two green jackets to do it.

Next week

We look at how internet golf and YouTube creators are reshaping the sport’s commercial future.

Find us on LinkedIn, X/Twitter and Instagram.

Have a good week. Until next Friday,

David

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