Welcome to Issue #19
"Claude can't slice a 300-yard drive straight into the woods. I will never be fully replaced"
@stackhodler on X
What’s on my mind this week
Is the PGA getting a total revamp? Rahm’s private jet to the rescue, TGL is on fire, Rory’s Amazon story announced, Luke’s threepeat in Adare, John Daly II like father like son, Scottie reveals Master dinner seating plans, “Don’t f%*king quit”, only 34 days to the Masters.
In the news
Why it matters: McLaren has officially announced its entry into the premium equipment market, with McLaren Golf products launching on 29 April. Led by CEO Neil Howie and executive hires from Cobra, TaylorMade, and Titleist, the brand aims to translate F1's engineering pedigree into a high-end equipment line.
Our Take: McLaren is making a brilliant asymmetric entry. Whilst incumbents like Callaway are projecting $75 million in tariff costs through 2026, McLaren enters unencumbered by legacy manufacturing contracts and standard retail distribution models. By hiring Bob Philion (former Cobra President), they are not just buying credibility; they are buying an escape hatch from traditional golf's margin compression. The strategic bet: F1's aerodynamic validation will command a price point that traditional golf brands, currently stuck in discount wars, simply cannot reach. McLaren is not competing with Titleist; they are competing with lifestyle technology asset classes.
Why it matters: Jon Rahm has publicly rejected the DP World Tour's settlement terms, which reportedly included $2.5 million in fines and a six-event minimum commitment, labelling the demands "extortion." Whilst eight other LIV players (including Adrian Meronk and Tyrrell Hatton) accepted the deal to restore Ryder Cup eligibility, Rahm remains the lone elite holdout.
Our Take: This is the Adare Manor Standoff. Rahm is betting that his status as a generational talent makes him "too big to bench" for the 2027 Ryder Cup in Ireland. Whilst the DP World Tour holds the regulatory keys, Rahm holds the audience draw. By refusing to pay the fines, he is testing the Tour's willingness to field a weakened European team on home soil just to maintain institutional rules of law. This battle is about who truly owns the sport's "IP": the individual stars or the institutions that sanction them.
Why it matters: The global golf equipment market is projected to reach $12.65 billion by 2032, growing at a 4.09% CAGR. Analysts point to an "Engineering Renaissance" where AI-modelled clubs and aerospace-grade materials are replacing traditional tour pro endorsements as the primary driver of consumer purchase.
Our Take: We are entering the "Data-First era" of consumption. The collapse of equipment endorsement budgets is not a sign of industry weakness, but a pivot towards R&D. Players are now demanding forgiveness and launch-angle optimisation validated by simulators rather than by who is winning on Sunday. This shift is driven by the explosion of off-course participation; when you buy clubs for a simulator or entertainment venue, you buy for speed and ease, not for workability on a 7,500-yard course. For investors, golf equipment is transitioning into a tech-utility play, where AI spin-control and smart-sensor integration provide a higher ROI than a logo on a hat.
Pic from Sky Sports
Worth your time
Read: What went wrong with TopGolf? A good review of what caused TopGolf value to plummet, from operational errors, poor business integration and low customer return rates.
Resource: www.thisiswhygolf.com super platform and free resource from IMG which shares the latest research in golf.
Podcast: The History and Business of F1. This is a meaty pod from the Acquired guys but if you have any interest in the world of F1, this one is worth your time.
Founder’s Diary
Building Hanna Golf from a garage in Iowa
Jared Doerfler is the founder of Hanna Golf, a direct-to-consumer putter company that launched in July 2024. The company is named after his daughter. The putters are milled in-house in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Hanna Golf represents a new wave of golf manufacturing: founder-operated, digitally native, and built without traditional retail distribution or equipment industry connections. No venture capital. No industry connections. Just a guy who decided to compete against established brands with hundred-million-dollar R&D budgets.
Over the coming months, Jared will share the reality of building Hanna Golf — the cash flow crises, manufacturing challenges, growth decisions, and lessons learned competing as an underdog in one of golf's most competitive categories.
This isn't polished business strategy. It's real-time entrepreneurship. Here's week one, in Jared's words.
July of 2023 I quit my full time job, bought a CNC mill and put it in my garage.
My plan. To start a putter company.
But I had a major problem. I had no idea how to operate a CNC mill. I had no clue what CAD or CAM was. I was naive and had a little ambition.
I had to quit my job to start this. Or else I would have never started. I burned the bridge and went all in. My wife and I emptied our savings account to chase the dream.
Why putters?
Well it’s really a two part answer.
I walked on to the University of Northern Iowa Men’s golf team in 2008. I wasn’t even there a week and the coaching staff put a new putter in my hands. A prototype my coach got off a tour truck at a PGA Championship. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t sound or feel great. But I made a lot of putts in my career with it.
When I graduated - I gave it back to my coach. For the next ten years, I looked on eBay and Facebook to try and find that putter. But I never could. So in early 2022 I decided I would design my own putter. It was a fun project - I was proud of it.
But I never thought I would start a putter company.
My dad told me he was going to retire in 2023. It hit me. We were just playing catch in the backyard. How did time go that fast?
The other thing about my old man? He was diagnosed with MS in 2012. Now that he is retired - he can’t enjoy the things he’d like to do. Golf, cycle, ski.
Life is short. I had always wanted to start something. We aren’t getting any younger. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.
I had mentally committed to starting something. But I had two non-negotiables. I had to make it, and it had to be in golf.
So putters it was.
It took eight months to teach myself how to make putters - the hardest eight months of my professional career. I thought about throwing in the towel numerous times.
And, it ultimately took us a year to launch Hanna Golf.
In our first week, we sold 50 putters. I will remember that week for the rest of my life - blown away by the support.
Since we officially launched the company in July of 2024 - we have shipped over 1,000 putters to 49 states and eight countries.
We hired our first full-time employee, moved into a 2,000 square foot shop and added a social media intern. And bought more CNC mills.
We’ve done several limited release drops that have sold out in under two minutes.
The company has almost died and ran out of cash twice in the first 18 months. But we keep bouncing back stronger.
I’ve been an underdog my whole life. I live in the gutter of competing. We are an underdog in this golf space. And it is exactly where we like to be.
We are excited for you to follow our journey and hear authentic insights of what it's like trying to build a golf company from scratch - both the good and the bad.
Behind the business
How Titleist keeps winning without making noise
$2.56 billion in revenue. A ticker that simply reads GOLF. And a strategy so focused it borders on stubborn. That's Acushnet - the quiet giant running Titleist and FootJoy.
Pic from Acushnet
Last week, Acushnet Holdings reported full year 2025 net sales of $2.56 billion, up 4.1% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $410.4 million, up 1.5%, driven by higher average selling prices and stronger volumes across golf balls and equipment. Not explosive. Not flashy. Entirely on brand.
Most golf brands are diversifying. Acushnet stays in its lane. So what does discipline actually look like on a balance sheet?
Own the ball. Own the game.
Titleist golf ball revenue reached $821 million in 2025 and it's not accidental. According to the Darrell Survey, 73% of all golf balls teed up on the PGA Tour in 2025 were Pro V1 or Pro V1x models, more than seven times the nearest competitor. More than half of all PGA Tour events this year were won with a Titleist ball.
When the best players in the world trust your product without a contract forcing them to, the amateur market follows.
That dynamic - tour validation flowing down to retail - is the core engine of the Titleist business model. It's not a marketing strategy. It's a proof strategy. And it compounds year after year.
Premium or nothing
Acushnet runs a gross margin of approximately 47.7% - exceptional for a manufacturing business. They don't compete on price. They compete on performance, and they've held that line for over 90 years.
Golf ball revenue grew 4.4% to $821 million. Golf clubs were even stronger, up 7.5% to $775 million, led by the new T-Series irons and higher average selling prices. Together, Titleist golf equipment grew 5.9% to $1.6 billion. That's the core engine, and it's firing well.
Boring is a business model
Revenue has grown steadily to $2.56 billion in 2025. No dramatic pivots. No splashy acquisitions. Just consistent growth in a sport where worldwide rounds were up approximately 2% last year and the number of golfers continues to rise.
While competitors bet on entertainment and lifestyle, Acushnet bet on the dedicated golfer. Every. Single. Time.
Boring, in Acushnet's case, means 73% Tour ball dominance and a $2.56 billion top line. Maybe more golf brands should try it.
Pic from Acushnet
Where the pressure is
It's not all smooth. FootJoy slipped 0.8% for the year - a reflection of a correcting global footwear market rather than a brand problem. Korea declined 5.3% on a reported basis, though only 1.1% in constant currency, which tells a more nuanced story about currency headwinds than underlying demand.
Net income fell 12% to $188.5 million, but context matters: the decline was driven primarily by a $17 million one-time loss on debt extinguishment from a refinancing. Adjusted EBITDA margin compressed slightly from 16.5% to 16.0%, worth watching, but not a structural concern at this stage.
What comes next: the 2026 pipeline
Acushnet is guiding for 2026 net sales of $2.625–$2.675 billion, up approximately 3.6% at the midpoint, with Adjusted EBITDA of $415–$435 million. On a constant currency basis, they're projecting 2.5%–4.5% growth.
The product pipeline underpinning that guidance is significant: new Pro V1x Left Dash and AVX golf balls, Vokey SM11 wedges, new Scotty Cameron putters, and the FootJoy Pro/SL shoe. For a brand that earns its authority through product, this is a strong hand to play into the season.
The takeaway for golf business
The golf industry is full of brands trying to be everything to everyone. Acushnet proves there's a different way. Know your golfer. Serve them better than anyone else. Don't apologise for it.
Their stated mission: to be the performance and quality leader in every golf product category in which they compete, has remained consistent since 1932. That consistency is the strategy. And the numbers suggest it still works.
One thing from history
Titleist: The X-Ray that changed golf
Pic from Titleist
One Sunday in 1932, Phil Young missed a short putt at his club. He was convinced the ball was faulty. His playing partner that day happened to run the X-ray department at the local hospital. Young, who owned a precision rubber moulding company, asked him to X-ray the ball.
The core was off-centre.
Young X-rayed more balls. Nearly all of them had defects, uneven cores that made consistent performance impossible. For three years, Young and MIT graduate Fred Bommer obsessed over creating a perfectly uniform golf ball. In 1935, their first ball was ready.
Now they needed a name. Executives searched for a word that meant excellence, that identified a champion. They chose "Titleist", derived from "titlist," meaning title holder. The name said it all: this ball was for winners.
With the name decided, they needed a logo.
Someone suggested asking Helen Robinson, their office secretary, who was known for beautiful penmanship. They handed her a piece of paper and asked her to write "Titleist."
She wrote it once. That was it. The way Helen Robinson wrote that word in 1935 is exactly how it appears on every Titleist product today—one of the most recognised logos in sports.
There's a plaque commemorating her contribution at the Reservation Golf Club in Massachusetts.
Young and Bommer spent three years engineering microscopic perfection into a golf ball. The name took deliberate thought. The logo took thirty seconds. Know when to obsess and when to trust your instincts.
To this day, every Titleist golf ball is X-rayed during production. And every one carries Helen Robinson's handwriting from that afternoon in 1935.
Have a good week. Until next Friday,
David