The Flavors of Golf on Full Display

The calendar says we’re still in the first week of 2024 and if the last few days are any indication of what to expect, we’re in for a wild ride covering a sport that is in search of a new image.

Golf — the game itself — hasn’t been immune to change, either. News of a golf ball rollback and other rule changes shook the sport in late 2023, only to be upstaged (depending on your fandom) by news of Jon Rahm switching tours to join LIV Golf shortly after. Divisiveness reigned supreme throughout the sport, each side looking for “mini wins” for their biases and arguments at every opportunity. “Exhausting” may have been the word most used to describe golf since 2021.

What has 2024 offered to golf fans thus far? Welp…

Rory McIlroy appeared on a soccer podcast — aptly named Stick to Football — and offered new, softer thoughts on LIV Golf, how the PGA TOUR has “survived” over the years, and even his original judgement of players switching tours. Those of us who actually took the time to listen to the interview understand that Rory offered objective, in-depth reasoning on his evolved thought process around the current state of men’s pro golf. For the social media bros who only went off a headline — like Greg Norman — you would have thought Rory made a tearful proclamation of wrongdoing and misjudgment. Others went as far as to suggest a “complete U-turn” by McIlroy, which is lazy at best and misleading at worst.

You can listen to the episode below:

Simultaneously, a blogger was on a personal quest to make a hole-in-one on a golf simulator that resulted in a marathon livestream session culminating in 2,627 shots over 37+ hours. We’ve seen this type of content before, but this one captured the attention of far more people than I would have ever imagined, including the likes of PGA TOUR players, professional athletes from other sports, and mainstream public figures. Since I have the mind of an old codger for such things, I poo-pooed the stunt while being equally amazed at how many people embraced it.

The dichotomy of these two examples is obvious since one has nothing to do with the other, aside from the fact that golf is at their foundation. But we’re golf fans on the internet and we’ve perfected the ability to find relationships where they don’t exist, our social media character limits our only barrier. The content must be produced! Give people what they want!

Are other sports having these types of conversations, too? Are baseball fans debating the legitimacy of home runs being hit on simulators, or the launch conditions of metal bats in college versus pine in the majors? Was professional basketball more competitive before the advent of the three-point shot?

This is where, I believe, golf’s ridiculousness reigns supreme. I mean that as a compliment.

Where else can we debate the merits of content like what we saw this week, aside from other hot-button topics like religion or politics? It feels like we all want to debate something collectively and need an outlet that appears safe on the surface, is completely unique to every individual who partakes, and has been around for over a century. The sheer volume of different golf flavors has never been more apparent than right now.

In a few weeks I’ll be returning to the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando to meet with brands and partners of GU and learn about even more flavors of this game. As with previous visits to the Show, there will be an underlying buzz of topics to serve as ice breakers to conversations with industry-minded colleagues we see once a year. However this year already feels different because the game itself feels different. These are not topics we’ve discussed in the past on such a grand scale and with the backdrop of “how are we gonna sell this stuff to golfers?”

Perhaps that’s the point. What worked for us yesterday won’t tomorrow. Golf has remained stagnant to some degree over the years in terms of what is offered to the casual player. Yes, the COVID boom introduced more players to this great game than ever before, but it feels like a healthy dose of disruption has blown in with them. We now think of more names and topics when we hear the word “golf,” which feels like a move in the right direction if we care about sustainability. Tiger could only get us so far, just as Jack and Arnold before him.

Amid the flurry of LIV, golf balls, simulators, artificial intelligence and crowded tee-sheets, the biggest shift in golf will be its very definition. Hogan’s famous quote regarding golf’s biggest battlefield may no longer be between our ears, but rather devoid of any boundaries, let alone within the confines of 18 holes.