Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has confirmed it will fund LIV Golf only through the end of the 2026 season, saying the level of longer-term investment required by the league is no longer consistent with the current phase of its strategy. The decision is the clearest sign yet that PIF’s new five-year plan — built around value creation, efficiency, and returns — is beginning to shape concrete outcomes in sport. LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil has acknowledged the league must now “work like crazy” to build the business plan that keeps it going, and new board appointments have been announced as part of the search for long-term financial partners. We break down what this means for the professional game in today’s paid subscriber section.

But first, let’s catch up on this week’s top stories from across the golf industry.

1. INDUSTRY

SUMMIT GOLF BRANDS HOSTS THE SUMMIT AT PEBBLE BEACH, NAMES EVAN IVES 2025 SALESPERSON OF THE YEAR

Summit Golf Brands, parent company of B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, has completed its annual signature event, The Summit at Pebble Beach — a 54-hole pro-member tournament played across Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach that brings together key members of the company, valued advisors, and distinguished club partners.

Hosted each April at Pebble Beach Resorts, The Summit has become one of the most cherished traditions in the premium golf apparel space. This year’s field included seven new participating teams and three international teams, with 22 elite clubs represented — from Seminole Golf Club and Winged Foot to Royal Dornoch, Sunningdale, and Grove XXIII.

The event also served as the backdrop for recognizing Evan Ives as Summit Golf Brands’ 2025 Salesperson of the Year. In just his second full year with the company, Ives became the fastest representative in company history to earn the honor, following a standout performance across strategic partnerships including Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, and events such as the Walker Cup and the U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club.

Competition throughout the week produced several standout performances. Ekwanok won the top prize of one best ball net and one best ball gross, Seminole won the two best ball gross, Low Pro was taken by Matt Cahill from Seminole, and John Daly from The Creek made a hole-in-one at The Hay.

“Each year, The Summit at Pebble Beach is an opportunity to bring together the people who help drive our wholesale business forward at a world-renowned destination,” said Jack Lessing, President of Summit Golf Brands. “Recognizing our Salesperson of the Year, Evan Ives, in this setting made the week even more special.”

• Summit Golf Brands’ wholesale distribution network extends across 25 countries and encompasses over 3,500 premier clubs and resorts worldwide.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com, zerorestriction.com, and fairwayandgreene.com.

• Full press release available at Golf Business Review.

B. DRADDY AND SWEETENS COVE GOLF CLUB LAUNCH CAMP DRADDY, A PERMANENT ON-PROPERTY BRAND EXPERIENCE

B. Draddy has unveiled a new partnership with Sweetens Cove Golf Club, installing a permanent on-property activation that will be known as Camp Draddy at Sweetens Cove. The collaboration brings B. Draddy’s laid-back sophistication to one of golf’s most beloved destinations in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, and represents a natural progression of a long-standing relationship — the brand has been part of Sweetens Cove’s story since the early days through its involvement in events like The Ringer.

Anchoring Camp Draddy is the original Draddy Camper — recently retired following the launch of B. Draddy’s new camper experience — now given a second life as a permanent fixture showcasing the brand’s signature screen print program. Alongside the camper, guests will find a dedicated tent featuring a full range of apparel and accessories, as well as exclusive product decoration created specifically for Sweetens Cove. Completing the environment is a firepit and hospitality elements that capture the relaxed spirit both brands are known for.

The partnership also deepens B. Draddy’s relationship with Reef Capital Partners, the real estate firm leading Sweetens Cove’s ongoing development, by introducing an additional retail presence on the property.

“Sweetens Cove has always represented an authentic spirit within the game of golf, and B. Draddy’s longstanding connection to the property makes this partnership especially meaningful,” said Jack Lessing, President of Summit Golf Brands, parent company of B. Draddy.

“Camp Draddy fits right into that atmosphere,” added Matt Adamski, General Manager of Sweetens Cove Golf Club. “It gives our guests another cool spot to spend time, check out great gear, and be part of the experience.”

• B. Draddy is the Official Uniform and Apparel Provider of the 2026 Presidents Cup and an Official Uniform Supplier of the 2026 and 2028 U.S. Solheim Cup Teams.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com and sweetenscovegolfclub.com.

• Full press release available at Golf Business Review.

IN BRIEF

GOLF.AI AND PROSHOP TEE TIMES PARTNER TO DEPLOY AI CONCIERGE ACROSS U.S. COURSES. GOLF.AI and Proshop Tee Times have announced a partnership to integrate the GOLF.AI Concierge Agent — a 24/7 AI-driven service that answers pro shop calls and messages, supports tee time bookings, and provides course-approved answers — with Proshop Tee Times’ customized course-management platform, which currently supports close to 100 courses and clubs across the United States. The system uses an AI-generated voice of Sir Nick Faldo, the company’s recently announced Global Ambassador, to greet returning golfers by name and confirm upcoming tee times. The first two courses to roll out the integrated system are Calvert City Golf and Country Club in Kentucky and Elk Run Golf Club in Indiana. GOLF.AI CEO Clive Mayhew said courses are increasingly seeking technology that improves the golfer experience at the point of contact while helping staff operate more efficiently. More at GOLF.AI.

FAIRWAYIQ AND GOLF GENIUS INTEGRATE TOURNAMENT MANAGEMENT INTO CART SCREENS. The on-course operations platform, has launched an integration with Golf Genius Tournament Management that brings real-time scoring and live leaderboards directly to cart displays. Every cart in the field becomes a live tournament hub, eliminating the need for players to enter scores on personal devices. The integration is available to customers with Golf Genius Tournament Management Premium and FAIRWAYiQ Enterprise subscriptions. More at FAIRWAYiQ.

McLAREN GOLF LAUNCHES WITH DEBUT SERIES 1 AND SERIES 3 IRONS. McLaren has officially entered the golf equipment market with the launch of McLaren Golf and the introduction of its first irons, the Series 1 and Series 3. Both lines are built around Metal Injection Molding (MIM), an advanced manufacturing process that gives engineers complete control over material chemistry, internal geometry, and mass distribution. The Series 1 is a Tour blade engineered with input from Justin Rose, who will put the irons in play this week in Miami. Michelle Wie West and Ian Poulter — both investors in McLaren Golf as well as ambassadors — complete the initial roster. Both iron models are priced at $375 per club and will be available from April 30 through select custom fitting retailers in North America, Europe, and South Korea, and online at mclarengolf.com. McLaren Golf is supported by 8AM Golf as a key partner.

PERFORMANCE GOLF TARGETS SEVEN MILLION POTENTIAL FEMALE PLAYERS WITH INCLUSIVITY-FIRST STRATEGY. Performance Golf, the coaching and gear brand, has developed a beginner’s program — launched in January — focused on golf etiquette, terminology, and basic techniques, designed to lower the barrier for new players, particularly women. According to National Golf Foundation research, roughly seven million women have never played traditional golf but have expressed strong interest in trying it, with many citing an intimidation factor. Rather than creating separate messaging for women, the brand is producing beginner-friendly content for all genders, featuring coach and internet personality Erika Larkin. The brand is also framing golf as an activity couples can enjoy together. Chief Marketer’s Joanna Gerber has the full story.

TROON KICKS OFF 2026 COMMUNITY SWING SERIES WITH 23 FREE EVENTS NATIONWIDE. Troon has launched its 2026 Community Swing series — a nationwide programme of 23 free, community-focused events at municipal golf courses from Seattle to Sarasota and Cleveland to Kauai. The first event, held at Jackson Park Golf Course in Seattle on April 28, drew more than 120 participants who enjoyed complimentary Toptracer range play, golf instruction, contests, and food and beverage. With more than 150 municipal courses under management, Troon is the largest operator of municipal golf facilities in the U.S. Events run from May through November. Full schedule and registration at Troon.com.

PIF’S RESET NOW HAS A CLEAR CONSEQUENCE FOR LIV GOLF

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has set out a new five-year strategy built around value creation, efficiency, and returns. In sport, one of the clearest implications is that LIV Golf will lose its PIF funding after the 2026 season, forcing the league into a new phase just as the PGA Tour continues its own post-LIV restructuring through private capital, player equity, and product reform.

When Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund set out its 2026–2030 strategy in mid-April, the language was broad, but the direction was clear. PIF said it was moving from a phase of rapid growth and acceleration into one focused on sustained value creation. It emphasized investment efficiency, governance, transparency, institutional excellence, and financial returns. On one level, that looked like a typical strategic update from a sovereign fund reaching a more mature stage of development. On another, it pointed to something more practical: a higher bar for how major investments are judged and how long they remain supported in their existing form.

For sport, that shift is no longer theoretical. PIF has confirmed that it will fund LIV Golf only through the end of the 2026 season, saying the level of longer-term investment required by the league is no longer consistent with the current phase of its strategy. That statement matters because it gives the industry a direct example of how PIF’s new priorities are starting to shape outcomes. The fund has not simply described a more disciplined phase in abstract terms. It has attached that change to one of the most expensive and visible projects in its portfolio.

That makes this more than a story about LIV Golf alone. The bigger issue is how PIF now wants to allocate capital, and what kinds of assets fit the next stage of its development. The fund is not presenting itself as stepping back from ambition. It still sees itself as central to Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation, still wants a significant domestic and international investment role, and still intends to shape sectors tied to Vision 2030. But the emphasis has changed. PIF is now putting more stress on fit, efficiency, value creation, and long-term returns than it did in the earlier expansion phase.

That distinction is important. For much of LIV Golf’s existence, the dominant view was that its funding was effectively open-ended. The discussion centered on whether the league could force change in men’s professional golf, how quickly it might grow, and how disruptive it could become. Less attention was paid to whether the backer behind it would eventually decide that the scale of funding no longer suited its broader priorities. PIF has now answered that question. LIV is funded through the current cycle, but it no longer has indefinite sovereign backing beyond that point.

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NEW YORK, NY — B. Draddy is proud to announce a new partnership with Sweetens Cove Golf Club, unveiling an immersive on-property installation that will be known as “Camp Draddy at Sweetens Cove.” Designed to bring the brand’s laid-back sophistication to life, the activation will serve as a permanent addition to one of golf’s most beloved destinations.

The collaboration represents a natural progression of a long-standing relationship. B. Draddy has been part of Sweetens Cove’s story since the early days through its involvement in events like The Ringer, and this partnership builds on that foundation in a meaningful way.

Camp Draddy at Sweetens Cove, which opened earlier this month, offers guests a unique and welcoming retail experience. Anchoring the space is the original Draddy Camper—recently retired following the launch of B. Draddy’s new camper experience—and given a second life at Sweetens Cove. Once the centerpiece of the brand’s nationwide activations, the camper will now serve as a permanent fixture showcasing B. Draddy’s signature screen print program.

Alongside the camper, guests will find a dedicated tent featuring a full range of apparel and accessories, as well as exclusive product decoration created specifically for Sweetens Cove. Completing the environment will be a firepit and hospitality elements that capture the relaxed spirit both brands are known for.

This partnership also deepens B. Draddy’s relationship with Reef Capital Partners, the real estate firm leading Sweetens Cove’s ongoing development, by introducing an additional retail presence on the property and giving golfers and visitors expanded access to the brand.

Looking ahead, B. Draddy and Sweetens Cove plan to officially debut Camp Draddy during an upcoming on-site event, with more details to be shared soon.

“Sweetens Cove has always represented an authentic spirit within the game of golf, and B. Draddy’s longstanding connection to the property makes this partnership especially meaningful,” said Jack Lessing, President of Summit Golf Brands, parent company of B. Draddy.
“Camp Draddy brings our brand ethos to life in a way that is organic to the experience at Sweetens Cove, and we’re excited to continue investing in opportunities that deepen how golfers engage with our brands.”

“Partnerships that feel authentic to the property are the ones that resonate most with guests, and Camp Draddy is a great example of that,” said Tonya Morrow, VP, Retail and Brand Partnerships at Reef Capital Partners.
“This addition introduces a fresh retail and hospitality element at Sweetens Cove while bringing together two brands that value quality, authenticity, and community. We’re excited to help bring the experience to life.”

“Sweetens Cove has always been about creating a place people want to hang out, have fun, and enjoy golf their own way,” said Matt Adamski, General Manager of Sweetens Cove Golf Club.
“Camp Draddy fits right into that atmosphere. It gives our guests another cool spot to spend time, check out great gear, and be part of the experience. B. Draddy has been around Sweetens for a long time, so having them here in a bigger way just feels natural.”

• For more information on B. Draddy, visit bdraddy.com.

• To learn more about Sweetens Cove Golf Club, visit sweetenscovegolfclub.com.

About B. Draddy

B. Draddy is a premium golf and lifestyle apparel brand founded in 2013 with a focus on timeless design, natural materials, and modern performance. Known for its refined style both on and off the course, the brand has earned a global following and a presence at the highest levels of the game. B. Draddy is the Official Uniform and Apparel Provider of the 2026 Presidents Cup, and an Official Uniform Supplier of the 2026 and 2028 U.S. Solheim Cup Teams. The brand is also the first-ever Mission Partner of Old Barnwell.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com,

• And follow the brand on Instagram: @bdraddy and @bdraddywomen.

Summit Golf Brands, parent company of B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, is proud to announce the successful completion of The Summit at Pebble Beach. The 54-hole, pro-member tournament at Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach is the organization’s signature annual event, bringing together key members of the company, valued advisors, and distinguished club partners for a week of golf, collaboration, and celebration at one of the game’s most iconic venues.

Hosted each April at Pebble Beach Resorts, The Summit has become one of Summit Golf Brands’ most cherished traditions. The event welcomes leading clubs from across the United States and abroad, with this year’s field including seven new participating teams and three international teams.

This year’s event also served as the backdrop for recognizing Evan Ives as Summit Golf Brands’ 2025 Salesperson of the Year. In just his second full year with the company, Ives became the fastest representative in company history to earn the honor, following a standout performance across strategic partnerships including Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, and events such as the Walker Cup and the U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club. The annual award includes an invitation to The Summit at Pebble Beach, making the recognition especially meaningful given Ives’ direct impact and success at the venue.

Of the entire field, ten Advisory Board members participated, along with Summit Golf Brands executive leadership. Throughout the event, participants experienced a range of weather conditions, providing the perfect opportunity to put Summit Golf Brands’ premium outerwear and performance apparel to the test.

“Each year, The Summit at Pebble Beach is an opportunity to bring together the people who help drive our wholesale business forward at a world-renowned destination,” said Jack Lessing, President of Summit Golf Brands. “This event serves as a moment to say thanks to some of our most trusted wholesale partners from across the world who go the extra mile for our brands. Recognizing our Salesperson of the Year, Evan Ives, in this setting made the week even more special.”

“To be named Salesperson of the Year is an incredible honor, especially so early in my time with Summit Golf Brands,” said Evan Ives.

“This company has given me tremendous support, and I’m grateful for the relationships that made this possible. Having the opportunity to celebrate at The Summit made the recognition even more meaningful.”

Competition throughout the week produced several standout performances and memorable finishes. Ekwanok won the top prize of one best ball net and one best ball gross, and Seminole won the two best ball gross. Low Pro was won by Matt Cahill from Seminole, and John Daly from The Creek made a hole-in-one at The Hay.

All participating clubs at the 2026 Summit at Pebble Beach included:

• Conway Farms Golf Club

• Green Spring Valley Hunt Club

• Myers Park Country Club

• Medinah Country Club

• Seminole Golf Club

• Beaverbrook Golf Club

• Fishers Island Club

• Meadow Brook Club

• Manasquan River Golf Club

• Sunningdale Golf Club

• The Alotian Club

• National Golf Links of America

• The Creek Club

• Winged Foot Golf Club

• Canoe Brook Country Club

• Ekwanok Country Club

• Old Chatham Golf Club

• Onwentsia Club

• Wade Hampton Golf Club

• Grove XXIII

• Royal Dornoch Golf Club

• Saucon Valley Country Club

About Summit Golf Brands

Summit Golf Brands is a leading provider of premium golf and lifestyle apparel, renowned for its commitment to quality, innovation, and style. With a portfolio of iconic brands including B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, Summit Golf Brands continues to set the standard for performance-driven, fashion-forward golf apparel.

Their wholesale distribution network extends across 25 countries and encompasses over 3,500 premier clubs and resorts worldwide. Summit Golf Brands stands out for its vertical integration, ensuring unparalleled fulfillment and product decoration capabilities. This is made possible through the utilization of over 200 embroidery heads, housed within their expansive facilities spanning more than 75,000 square feet, located in both Madison and Barneveld, Wisconsin.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com, zerorestriction.com, and fairwayandgreene.com,

• And follow their brands on Instagram: @bdraddy, @bdraddywomen, @zerorestriction, and @fairwayandgreene.

Are driving ranges the poorer relatives of golf entertainment venues?

The answer is definitely not. New technology is coming in at a fair rate to improve the experience for any golfer who is visiting their local range. A case in point is the new Toptracer Go technology, which can provide a wealth of ball data to help golfers. The tech has already been tested on the esteemed ranges of The Open Championship and Ryder Cup last year. The system is easy to use and won’t cost operators a fortune to run.

Keeping on the driving range theme, Power Tee has just released its new white paper Turn Your Driving Range into a Cash Machine, which provides even more useful information to driving range operators on how to improve revenue streams.

Today’s issue also looks at Zen Golf’s new partner portal and Five Iron Golf’s new venue in Saudi Arabia, to name but two additional stories for your reading pleasure.

Enjoy today’s read, speak Friday.

POWER TEE REPORT POINTS TO NEW REVENUE MODEL FOR DRIVING RANGES

Power Tee has published a new report setting out how driving ranges can increase revenue through a more entertainment-led model. The report, Turn Your Driving Range into a Cash Machine, follows an earlier Power Tee guide released this year, 7 Ways Golf Driving Ranges Can Increase Revenue in 2026, and argues that operators can grow income by combining automation, social spaces, and longer customer stays. Among the report’s key findings:

• 38 million Americans played off-course golf in 2025, more than on-course golf for the fourth consecutive year.

• Only about 6.5% of U.S. golf facilities have added simulator or ball-tracking technology, which the report describes as a clear opportunity for ranges to stand out.

• Revenue opportunities highlighted in the report include automated ball teeing, easier payment systems, premium mats and balls, gamified practice, family-friendly layouts, social seating, extended evening hours through modern lighting, and group packages such as corporate events and parties.

• The report also says food-and-beverage income can rise when customers stay longer, including through in-bay ordering, bundle offers, and food-truck partnerships for venues without kitchen operations, with some food trucks willing to return around 20% of sales to the facility.

• Power Tee says facilities using its automated teeing system typically see revenue increases of 25% to 40%, while its premium striking mats can reduce water and maintenance costs by as much as $25,000 a year.
  

Power Tee says its own system helps remove friction by reloading a ball after every shot, integrating with gameplay systems, and offering up to 40 tee heights for different users.

The company pointed to GO USA Fun Park in Murfreesboro as a recent example, with the family entertainment venue reporting a 25% rise in driving range revenue after installing Power Tee across its hitting bays. “Integrating Power Tee was a strategic decision to differentiate our driving range,” said chief operating officer Alex Abdo. “We’re not just a place to hit balls anymore.”

Abdo added that the return on investment had been “almost immediate,” while Power Tee founder Martin Wyeth said the venue’s experience showed how automated teeing could help turn a range into a more significant profit center within a wider leisure setting. For range operators who know the numbers could be working harder, the report provides a practical starting point for review.

ZEN GOLF LAUNCHES PARTNER PORTAL TO SUPPORT GLOBAL INDOOR GOLF EXPANSION

Zen Golf has launched a global Zen Partners Portal to support its 78 business partners across 28 countries as it expands its moving-floor indoor golf technology.

The password-protected platform gives partners continuous access to marketing collateral, high-resolution installation imagery, video content, price lists, room design specifications, coaching material, sports science resources, technical documents, customer case studies, and testimonials. Alerts will be issued when new content is added, with Zen saying the portal will help partners respond to customer inquiries more efficiently and in greater detail.

The portal will also act as the knowledge hub for Zen’s integration with Trackman’s Virtual Golf 3 software, which enables simulated course and practice-ground conditions to trigger real-time movement on Zen playing surfaces.

TrackMan iO and Trackman 4 owners will have exclusive access to automatic movement on the Zen Swing Stage and Zen Golf Stage, with Zen Green Stage putting integration expected later. Zen said its Active Terrain Technology is designed to deliver more meaningful data and a closer connection between simulator golf and on-course conditions. Its moving-floor systems, already used by leading PGAs, Tour golfers, governing bodies, elite coaches, universities, equipment companies, custom-fitters, and premium residential installations, are positioned by the company as a core part of the next phase of indoor golf.

“Zen is the pioneer of full-size adjustable golf playing surfaces,” said Zen’s Andy Hiseman. “With the new web portal our business partners can now respond to their customer enquiries more efficiently, and more comprehensively.”

TOPTRACER GO AIMS TO LOWER THE COST OF RANGE TECHNOLOGY FOR GOLF FACILITIES

Toptracer has launched Toptracer Go, a lower-cost range technology product designed to make shot-tracking data available to more golf facilities.

The system operates with one camera covering 50 meters of tee line and allows players to scan a QR code and view real-time data on their mobile device, including shot distance, ball speed, and launch angle, turning range warm-ups into a more data-led practice session before going on course.

Toptracer said the technology was used on practice ranges during 2025 at the PGA Championship, The Open Championship, and Ryder Cup, where fans could access real-time player data by scanning a code at the practice range. “We built Toptracer Go to remove friction, for both the operator and the golfer,” said Scott Blevins, Toptracer President. “At $999 a month, we’re opening the door for more facilities to offer a premium experience, while giving golfers a simple, instant way to get meaningful data every time they step on the range.”

Toptracer announced that the prices for Toptracer Go are set at $999 per month, £829 per month in the UK, €979 per month in Continental Europe, and 8,991 SEK per month in Sweden.

FIVE IRON GOLF OPENS FIRST SAUDI VENUE AT PIF TOWER IN RIYADH

With tensions running high in the Middle East, Five Iron Golf has pressed ahead with the opening of its first Saudi Arabia venue at PIF Tower in Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District.

The new 12,000 sq ft site developed in partnership with Golf Saudi is part of the Kingdom’s wider push to expand golf participation, infrastructure, and year-round access to the game. The flagship Five Iron Riyadh location features 11 simulators using a mix of Trackman and GOLFZON technology, allowing guests to practice, compete, and play from any number of virtual courses.

Five Iron Golf’s new Riyadh facility caters equally to the more serious golfer by offering professional coaching, Callaway Tour Fitting, indoor golf leagues, beginner clinics, women’s programming, and junior instruction. The venue has been designed to combine performance technology with hospitality, including a full-service bar and kitchen, flexible event space for corporate functions, client entertainment, team-building, and private gatherings.

“We are seeing a fundamental shift in golf, where growth is no longer driven solely by elite competition, but by building the infrastructure and access points that bring more people into the game,” said Jared Solomon, Co-Founder and CEO of Five Iron Golf. Thomas Rudy, Chief Investment Officer of Golf Saudi, said Five Iron’s model “combining technology, hospitality, instruction, and community” would support Saudi Arabia’s aim to build a more accessible golf ecosystem across grassroots participation, elite competition, and modern indoor formats.

The new Riyadh facility might be the first in Saudi Arabia, but Five Iron Golf already has venues located in the wider region, namely, in Dubai, with further developments in the pipeline for Abu Dhabi and another venue in Dubai.

GARMIN DATA REPORT SHOWS YOUNGER GOLFERS, MORE VIRTUAL ROUNDS, AND LOWER SCORES

Garmin’s latest Trends in Golf Data Report says golfers using the Garmin Golf app played more often and improved across nearly every shot category in 2025, with the strongest participation growth coming from younger players.

The number of Garmin golfers under 20 rose 76% from 2024, while those aged 20–29 increased 53%, 30–39 by 18%, 40–49 by 15%, and 50–59 by 12%. The median number of rounds increased 13%, with golfers averaging one extra round, while both female and male Garmin users rose by about 16%.

Real-life rounds grew 17%, but virtual rounds climbed 58%, supported by Garmin’s simulator products, including the Approach R50 launch monitor and simulator and the Home Tee Hero app, which offers access to more than 43,000 courses.

Garmin said golfers who registered a launch monitor and used it for at least six months lowered their average score by 4.4 strokes, based on users who played at least 20 rounds before and after registration and used the device at least five times. The report also found Garmin golfers had a median handicap of 14, with the U.S. and Canada at 12, Australia at 14, and France, Sweden, and the UK at 15.

Away from the course, Garmin golfers logged 49% more yoga activities and 45% more strength training, pointing to a broader link between golf, fitness, and performance tracking.

CENTROID REOPENS TAYLORMADE SALE PROCESS AFTER OLD TOM FINANCING DELAY

First reported in the excellent Substack newsletter Money In Sport, a news report in South Korea confirmed that Centroid Investment has reopened efforts to sell TaylorMade.

The news comes after the preferred bidder, Old Tom Capital, with an offer of about $3.1 billion or 4.5 trillion South Korean won, failed to secure financing by the required deadline, according to investment banking sources. Centroid is now seeking new buyers through multiple global investment banks and aims to choose a new preferred bidder and begin contract negotiations by June or July.

The renewed process switches the focus to F&F, a South Korea-listed fashion and brand management group known for operating global apparel licenses, including MLB and Discovery Expedition, which also participated as a strategic investor in Centroid’s original TaylorMade acquisition and holds a right of first refusal.

Industry sources say F&F has raised its internal offer to around 4 trillion South Korean won, meaning competing bidders would likely need to exceed that level, potentially into the low-to-mid 4 trillion South Korean won range, to secure control.

F&F, already a strategic investor from Centroid’s original TaylorMade acquisition, is now viewed by some industry observers as the leading candidate because of its financial position, including annual operating profit of 400 billion to 500 billion won, net profit above 400 billion won last year, and a recently extended 1 trillion won acquisition-financing commitment from lenders, including Samsung Securities.

TaylorMade management is reportedly cautious about any restructuring led by a strategic investor without a strong understanding of the golf industry, making post-acquisition integration a key issue, but Centroid’s renewed bidding process gives the seller a fallback route to recover its investment if no superior offer emerges.

JUSTIN ROSE TO DEBUT MCLAREN GOLF IRONS AT CADILLAC CHAMPIONSHIP

News broke earlier this week that Justin Rose will make a surprise equipment change at this week’s Cadillac Championship in Miami after signing with McLaren Golf as the new company’s first global ambassador.

The announcement coincides with the launch of its first official iron set today, Wednesday, April 29, on the eve of the tournament and during the same week as Formula 1’s Miami race, where McLaren and Cadillac will be battling on track.

Rose, previously an equipment free agent, will put a full set of McLaren irons in play while retaining his existing woods and putter, and will also wear the McLaren Golf logo and use a custom McLaren Golf bag in its traditional papaya color. We covered the story that McLaren was creating a golf division earlier this year with a pledge to “push the boundaries of equipment design and manufacturing,” and Rose said he has been involved in the engineering process for more than a year.

“Clubs are feeling great,” Rose said. “Obviously, a lot of my own preferences have gone into the irons that I’m playing.” Rose, who has been a free agent since his time with Honma unraveled after just over a year in 2020, believes his time as a brand-agnostic player has left him clearer about his equipment needs. “I’m actually looking at what can be better. I’m looking to mitigate risk,” he said, adding that range data had shown the McLaren irons outperforming his current set, although he acknowledged there would be a refinement process once the clubs are tested in tournament conditions.

The new McLaren irons will have to be something special, as Rose has employed Mizuno, Srixon, and Miura irons at various intervals as a free agent.

HCLTECH TO LEAD DP WORLD TOUR DIGITAL PLATFORM UPGRADE

HCLTech has been named Official Digital Experience Partner of the DP World Tour and will lead a multi-year program to overhaul the Tour’s global digital presence, centered on its website and app.

The partnership will focus on fan-led digital innovation, with HCLTech using its digital engineering, experience design, data platform, and large-scale transformation expertise to build scalable web and mobile platforms for fans, on-course spectators, players, coaches, media, and commercial partners. The upgraded ecosystem is intended to provide easier access to live content, immersive experiences, analytics, and personalized fan journeys across devices and markets.

HCLTech will also become an Official Marketing Partner of the Tour, with Official Partner status at five DP World Tour events each season, supported by hospitality, on-site and digital activations. “The DP World Tour has a truly global fan base, which demands a world-class digital ecosystem,” said Michael Cole, Chief Technology Officer of the DP World Tour. HCLTech Chief Marketing Officer Jill Kouri said the program would help fans “discover, analyze and share the moments that matter,” while Max Hamilton, the Tour’s Executive Commercial Director, said the partnership gives HCLTech a global platform to showcase its innovation at scale.

LIV GOLF’S NEW ORLEANS DEBUT POSTPONED

LIV Golf’s planned New Orleans debut has been postponed, with Louisiana officials confirming the June 25–28 event at the South Course at New Orleans City Park Bayou Oaks will not go ahead as scheduled while the league explores a possible autumn date.

Louisiana had committed $7.2 million in state support, including a $5 million hosting fee and $2.2 million for renovations to the city-owned course, while LIV had projected a $40 million local economic impact and support for more than 1,150 jobs, with grounds tickets priced between $22 and $31.

Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois said the state had already paid $3.2 million under the contract and expects LIV to return incentive funding, with Louisiana also expecting $1.2 million to be repaid following the cancellation, while allowing the $2 million already invested in course upgrades to remain in place.

Reports said LIV is seeking to move away from the original summer dates because of New Orleans heat, competition for attention during the FIFA World Cup, and a desire to ensure the course is ready, with local reports also citing the need for the league to “restructure financially and find additional sources of funding,” as it considers a smaller, exposition-style event in September or October. “We appreciate LIV’s good-faith efforts and look forward to maintaining our partnership as we continue conversations around an event later this year,” the joint statement said.

BETTINARDI ADDS HEEL-SHAFTED OPTIONS TO ZERO-TORQUE PUTTER LINE

Bettinardi has expanded its move into reduced and zero-torque putters with two heel-shafted Hexperimental models, the #7 compact mallet and #9 high-toe blade.

In traditional Bettinardi fashion, both putters are milled entirely from 303 stainless steel and are priced at $550 in limited quantities, with shipping scheduled for early June.

The new models are priced at $550 in limited quantities, with pre-ordering available now, and shipping scheduled for early June. The new additions sit alongside the previously released Antidote putters, which used a more center-shafted, onset design in wider blade and deeper mallet shapes. Bettinardi’s Hexperimental design uses a modified plumber’s neck hosel to create a more traditional address look with less onset, while aligning the shaft axis closer to the head’s center of gravity to reduce twisting and make it easier to return the face square.

The #7 uses a compact mallet profile with a rear flange cutout to move weight to the perimeter for added stability, while sole cutouts help shift mass forward; the #9 offers a wider high-toe blade shape. Both models include Bettinardi’s latest F.I.T. face milling pattern, which removes 30% of the face surface through parallel-line milling to produce a softer, responsive feel intended to appeal to players who might otherwise prefer an insert-style putter. Finally, Bettinardi has constructed each model from 303 stainless steel to improve feel and balance.

There is a tension at the heart of every driving range. The golfers who show up most often — the avid players, the ones who keep the lights on — are also the ones most likely to find the experience flat. They practice. They hit balls. They leave. The range does its job, but it rarely captures the thing that makes golf on the course genuinely compelling: the feeling of competition, of being measured against someone else, of having something at stake.

That gap is what Inrange has spent the last three years building a solution to. And Season 3 of The Inrange World Tour — going live May 1st, next week — is the clearest, most commercially developed version of that solution yet.

What the World Tour is

The Inrange World Tour is the world’s biggest range golf competition. It runs across 85+ venues in 17 countries within the Inrange Partner Network, and the format is deceptively simple: monthly six-hole contests played virtually on world-class courses such as Le Golf National (host of the 2024 Paris Olympics), Gleneagles (host of the 2014 Ryder Cup), and the iconic Pebble Beach.

This is not a casual leaderboard bolted onto an existing product. It is a structured, global competition with divisional scoring, promotion and relegation, and an invitation-only elite tier. And it sits entirely within the Inrange infrastructure already installed at every partner venue. Operators do not program it, staff it, or promote it independently. It runs, and with it comes a recurring, structured reason for players to return.

Season 2 recorded a 4.5x increase in participation over the debut year. Season 3 is built to go further.

What is new in Season 3 — and why it matters for operators

Three additions define this edition, each deepening the business case for the facility.

1. Divisional scoring gives every player — from scratch to 28-handicap — a genuine path to winning their division, with a dynamic promotion and relegation model that recalibrates continuously.

2. Tour Elites introduces an invitation-only tier for the top performers across Inrange’s full network, turning a facility’s most engaged regulars into the faces of range golf as a competitive sport.

3. The headline addition for Season 3, however, is the Solheim Cup activation — and for operators targeting group and social business, it is the most commercially significant move yet.

   During a portion of the tour, players declare allegiance to Team Europe or Team US, competing across three rounds where individual scores also count toward a collective team result. This is not just a competitive format — it is a social one. Players join groups, compete together, and return as teams. Social golfers playing together means more players per visit, longer dwell times, and a direct boost to bay usage and food and beverage spend. It is, in short, another revenue generator that the venue does not have to plan, staff, or promote.

The activation is anchored to Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands — the host venue for the 2026 Solheim Cup this September, which Inrange Golf is currently precision-scanning into its software. Bernardus is a Kyle Phillips-designed championship course that has hosted the DP World Tour’s Dutch Open three consecutive years and is now preparing for one of the largest women’s sporting events in the world. Players at any Inrange venue anywhere on the planet will be able to compete on it.

For operators focused on attracting groups — corporate events, league nights, social rounds — structured team competition is one of the most reliable levers available. The World Tour delivers it automatically, without any additional effort from the facility.

The operator equation

The Inrange World Tour does something most engagement tools cannot: it gives every type of golfer a reason to come back on a schedule that the venue does not have to manage. The avid player returns to defend a division placing. The social golfer returns to contribute to their team’s score in the Solheim activation. The competitive player returns to chase a monthly leaderboard that resets and renews the stakes.

The results speak for themselves:

“The Inrange World Tour has elevated the experience at The Range at Clermont National by turning practice into competition. It’s created a more engaging, social environment that keeps players coming back more often and has had a direct impact on driving increased bay usage and overall revenue.”
— Jimmy Stewart, Owner & Operator of Clermont National, GRAA Winner.

Inrange describes its ambition as making range golf a standalone sport — with its own tours, its own majors, its own competitive infrastructure. The Inrange World Tour is the engine of that ambition. For operators who have the technology installed, that ambition is already delivering results. For those who do not, the gap is becoming harder to ignore.

• Season 3 goes live on May 1st.

• More info: The Inrange World Tour.

• Find 85+ venues in 17 countries within the Inrange Partner Network.

It seems like the golf world is a little different since I last wrote for GBR.

The expression about waiting for a bus, then three come at once, seems highly relevant in the case of Rory McIlroy and The Masters. For nearly eleven years, McIlroy could not crack the nut of Augusta National.

His win in 2025 was special for so many reasons, and it feels now like it kind of took the wind out of his sails for the rest of the season.

2026 comes around, and McIlroy captures his second green jacket and becomes the first player since Tiger Woods to successfully defend his title.

So, like the buses, is an unprecedented three-pete on the cards for next year?

Big shout-out to Tomas and his excellent Rorynomics dossier covering how the McIlroy empire continues to grow on and off the golf course.

Hot on the back of The Masters came the impending collapse of LIV Golf. There has been so much across all media platforms on this story that it only seems fair to let the dust settle before looking at what’s going on here.

I’ll be taking a closer look in Friday’s GBR at what the Saudis are actually doing and how LIV Golf fits into the narrative.

For today, we’re covering the latest National Golf Foundation report on how many Americans are ready to get involved in taking their growing love of the game to the next step, by getting out on the golf course.

Elsewhere, The R&A has just published a new five-year strategy report, which sets some very ambitious targets for growing the game outside of North America.

The Indoor Golf Alliance (IGA) has been coming more on the radar over the past twelve months, as it looks to grow a network of individuals and businesses setting the right standards in the simulator and golf entertainment business.

This week, the IGA announced details of their upcoming virtual conference, which brings together experts from across the burgeoning industry, covering topics such as simulator technology and equipment optimization, to creating profit models to drive any simulator/entertainment-based facility.

Finally, thanks and welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined the GBR community, your input into how GBR grows is something Tomas and I would love to hear about along with any collaboration ideas.

Speak Friday.

NGF SAYS MORE THAN 21 MILLION AMERICANS REMAIN READY TO ENTER ON-COURSE GOLF

The National Golf Foundation says recreational golf continues to benefit from strong participation growth while still holding substantial untapped potential.

More than 21 million Americans are classified as having a latent demand for on-course play, meaning non-golfers who say they are very interested in playing on a traditional course, including both first-timers and former players who have been away from the game for more than a year.

That figure now exceeds the population of New York state and sits alongside a 20% rise in on-course golfers over the past six years to 29.1 million, the highest level in nearly two decades. Overall golf participation, including on- and off-course formats, has increased by more than 40% since 2019, while more than 28 million non-golfers say they are very interested in trying golf entertainment venues or simulator golf. Although both latent-demand measures were slightly lower year on year, NGF said interest in on-course golf remains about 37% above pre-2020 levels, suggesting recent softness reflects demand being converted into actual play.

The report also noted that average annual inflow, defined as people taking up golf for the first time or returning to the game, was about 30% higher from 2020 to 2025 than during 2014 to 2019. At the same time, the industry still faces a conversion challenge: only about 36% of non-golfers say they would feel comfortable around other golfers, roughly half are unsure they would feel welcome at a golf course, and only about one in four beginners becomes a committed golfer, the segment responsible for most rounds and spending. NGF said the long-term strength of the business will depend not just on attracting interest, but on turning that curiosity into lasting participation.

R&A SETS FIVE-YEAR GLOBAL PLAN TO ADD 22 MILLION GOLFERS

The R&A has launched a new five-year global strategy aimed at opening golf to millions more people worldwide and sustaining the sport’s recent participation growth.

Targets within the newly announced strategy include the headline figure of attracting 22 million additional golfers. The R&A also has ambitious plans that cover:

• Creating more than £25 billion in social value through the game

• Generating more than £1.5 billion in economic benefit through its championships

• Establishing more than 200 strategic partnerships, investing in golf

• Producing more than five billion fan interactions across live attendance, broadcast, and digital channels around The Open, the AIG Women’s Open, and elite amateur championships.

Built around the purpose of “Opening Golf to the World,” the strategy is structured around three themes — Unite, Inspire, and Lead — under which The R&A said it will strengthen governance, broaden the appeal of its championships, and work with partners to expand access, support sustainability, and improve pathways into the sport.

The launch comes as The R&A prepares to publish new research showing that 112.2 million adults and juniors now play golf in all its forms worldwide outside the United States and Mexico, up 4.2 million year on year, including 65 million adults, 47.1 million juniors, and 68.3 million people participating in off-course formats such as driving ranges and simulators. “Golf is in a strong position, and these new figures show that participation continues to boom around the world, especially among younger audiences,” said chief executive Mark Darbon.

He said the strategy was designed to turn that momentum into long-term growth by increasing participation, expanding the reach and impact of championships, and demonstrating more clearly golf’s social and economic contribution. Under the plan, The R&A will continue to oversee areas such as the Rules of Golf, the World Handicap System, equipment standards, and world ranking systems, while also giving greater attention to newer formats, including simulator golf, adventure golf, and range-based participation. It said The Open and the AIG Women’s Open would be further developed as global platforms for audience growth and reinvestment in the sport, while technology and data would be used more widely to support national federations and improve the golfer experience.

The R&A’s full report can be viewed here.

FORE GROUP AND PROAGENDA PARTNER ON COACHING AND BOOKING PLATFORM

Fore Group and ProAgenda have formed a partnership to bring a golf-specific coaching and booking operations platform to green-grass and indoor golf facilities across the UK and Europe.

ProAgenda has been developed for golf coaches, academies, and simulator businesses, combining lesson bookings, lesson packages, academy schedules, coach calendars, bay and simulator availability, client records, and payments within a single platform, while also integrating directly with Lightspeed Retail so lesson revenue feeds into wider club reporting.

The system also includes a branded mobile app that allows golfers to book lessons and manage packages using their existing club login details. Under the agreement, Fore Group will support facilities in assessing, implementing, and integrating ProAgenda into their broader software systems, including retail, membership, and reporting platforms. “With coaching programs becoming more sophisticated, the admin burden behind the scenes has grown significantly,” said Cameron Probert, chief executive of Fore Group. “What stands out about ProAgenda is that it has been built specifically for golf. It solves real operational pain points, particularly lesson package management and simulator scheduling, while integrating cleanly with Lightspeed.”

ProAgenda chief executive Jordy Hagedooren said the partnership would help more facilities move away from manual administration and toward a scalable digital model, with the two companies saying the combined offer is intended to reduce admin, improve operational visibility, and create a smoother experience for both coaches and golfers.

IGA SETS JUNE 24 DATE FOR INDOOR GOLF VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

The Indoor Golf Association has announced that its Indoor Golf Virtual Conference will take place on June 24, 2026, with the one-day online event aimed at facility owners, operators, and industry professionals looking to improve performance through technology, strategy, and operational planning.

The program will include six expert-led sessions focused on key areas of indoor golf business management:

• Simulator technology and equipment optimization, including comparisons of launch monitors, software platforms, and licensing models;

• Profitable facility design, covering layout, location, budgeting, and investment planning;

• League formats and scheduling strategies to build recurring revenue

• Brand development and market positioning;

• Membership structures such as monthly and annual plans, tiered access, and dynamic pricing

• Data-driven decision-making, including KPI tracking, revenue per bay, facility utilization, and customer lifetime value.

The IGA said the conference is intended to give both new and established operators practical guidance on launching, managing, and scaling indoor golf businesses, with further details on registration, speakers, and related information to be released in due course.

More information on the IGA’s Indoor Golf Virtual Conference is available here.

GOLF VX LAUNCHES QUANTUM IN U.S. SIMULATOR PUSH

Golf VX has officially launched its Quantum simulator platform in the United States, introducing a new system that combines ultra-high-definition course graphics, AI-led swing analysis, and integrated play modes within a single simulator environment.

Central to the platform are 4K course visuals, providing immersive imagery when in simulator mode. Fitters will be interested in the Quantum Eye Sensor Technology, which uses ultra-high-speed cameras capturing up to 4,000 frames per second for ball and club data, and a 15X Plate Terrain System designed to recreate uphill, downhill, and uneven lies through more than 19,000 terrain variations.

Quantum also features a six-step AI swing analysis tool that assesses the motion from address through follow-through, alongside a redesigned user interface intended to simplify navigation across training, play, and competition settings. The system includes multiple usage modes, from long-game, short-game, and putting practice to stroke play, multiplayer competition for up to six players on one simulator, global connected play across other VX sites, tournament and league formats, and course-specific practice on individual holes.

Supporting hardware includes the Q-Console, Q-Mat Display, and Q-Pad, which Golf VX said help create a more connected in-venue experience. “Quantum is a turning point for both Golf VX and the simulator industry,” said chief executive Kyu Choi. “By combining a platform that renders over 19,000 undulation points, along with advanced training analytics and social gameplay, we’re delivering a next-generation experience for every type of player.” Golf VX said Quantum is now being rolled out across its U.S. locations, with further expansion planned through 2026.

SRIXON LEANS INTO IRON ENGINEERING WITH NEW GLOBAL PUSH

Srixon has launched a new campaign, The Iron Standard, as part of its ongoing global rebrand, using the initiative to highlight the engineering discipline, design process, and technical refinement behind its iron lineup.

Centered on Yuki Shimahara, the company’s engineering manager and principal tour engineer, the campaign gives a closer look at how Srixon develops its irons from raw steel through to final player testing, with an emphasis on the collaborative work between engineers and designers around shaping, center-of-gravity placement, turf interaction, and measured performance. Shimahara said recent ZXi iron development included subtle but deliberate changes such as adjusted scoreline placement, softer edge radius around the face, and refined hosel shaping, all intended to improve consistency, feel, and overall performance, even if they are less visible than headline technologies.

“With every new iron model, we build on the core strengths we’ve developed over time while also responding to trends we’re seeing,” he said, adding that prototypes are reviewed and refined through repeated testing and group evaluation. Srixon said the campaign will run across digital, social, and global media channels, giving regional teams material for product education, player validation, and behind-the-scenes storytelling while reinforcing the brand’s focus on purposeful innovation and precision-led iron design.

PGA TOUR TO END MAUI EVENT AS SONY OPEN’S FUTURE SHIFTS UNDER REVIEW

The PGA Tour has confirmed that it plans to end its tournament presence in Maui, confirming the end of the Sentry Tournament at The Plantation Course at Kapalua Country Club for the previous year’s PGA Tour winners.

The Tour also announced that it is exploring a move that would place the Sony Open in Hawaii on the PGA TOUR Champions schedule, potentially alongside the existing Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai to maintain a two-event footprint in the state.

The Sentry, staged at Kapalua’s Plantation Course from 1999 through 2025, was not played this year after serving as the season opener from 1999-2013 and again in 2024 and 2025, with Hideki Matsuyama winning the final edition in 2025 at 35 under par, a Tour record relative to par.

In a statement, the Tour thanked Kapalua, Maui County, the state of Hawaii, and local supporters for their long association with the event, while adding that further details on the 2027 schedule would be released later. Discussions are continuing over the future of the Sony Open, which has been held at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu since 1971 and served as the PGA Tour’s opening event in 2026, when Chris Gotterup won the title, the first of his two victories this season.

The Tour said it has remained in communication with both Sentry Insurance and Sony during the process.

GENESIS SCOTTISH OPEN TO REMAIN AT THE RENAISSANCE CLUB THROUGH 2030

The Genesis Scottish Open will remain at The Renaissance Club through 2030, with the East Lothian venue set to stage the Rolex Series event for an eighth straight season from July 9-12, 2026.

Since becoming host in 2019, the course and wider event offering have continued to evolve, helping drive record attendance, including a weekend sell-out in 2025, with additions such as the Fringe by the Tee stage in the Fan Zone and the stadium-style par-3 hole now known as The Thistle.

For 2026, the Championship Course will be rerouted to create a stronger closing stretch, with The Thistle moving from the sixth to the 15th hole as part of the redesign. The tournament remains co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and PGA Tour, counting toward both the Race to Dubai Rankings and the FedExCup, while title sponsor Genesis extended its backing through to 2030 last year.

The event also continues to receive support from the Scottish Government and VisitScotland through 2028. “The Renaissance Club has been a fantastic host venue for the Genesis Scottish Open over the past eight years and we are delighted to be able to call it our home through to 2030,” said championship director Rory Colville, while The Renaissance Club chief executive John Sarvadi said the event had established itself among the leading tournaments in world golf and pointed to the strength of recent champions including Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Min Woo Lee, Bob MacIntyre and Chris Gotterup.

CHEVRON CHAMPIONSHIP RAISES PURSE TO $9 MILLION

As the first major of the LPGA season gets underway this week, officials of The Chevron Championship announced that the total purse has increased to $9 million.

The increased purse for this year’s tournament, being held at Memorial Park, is a rise of $1 million from last year and nearly $6 million since Chevron became the title sponsor in 2022, with the 2026 winner set to receive $1.35 million.

Chevron said it continues to invest not only in prize money but also in player support, including a $10,000 missed-cut stipend for every competitor, making it one of 11 of the Tour’s 33 events to offer that assistance, plus personal courtesy cars provided by Cadillac. The event has also expanded its player amenities with family dining overlooking the 18th green, a new player-only dining area tailored to athletes’ nutritional needs, and a host of further enhancements.

“At Chevron, we are proud to continue elevating women’s golf by increasing the Tournament purse to $9 million and making this a special event for players,” said Laura Lane, Chevron’s chief corporate affairs officer. Other established features remain in place, including the annual Champions Dinner, this year prepared by Thomas Keller with input from defending champion Mao Saigo, the presentation of the Dinah Shore Trophy, and the custom western boots awarded to the winner by Republic Boot Company.

CALLAWAY ADDS QUANTUM MINI DRIVER AND QUANTUM TI FAIRWAY WOODS

Callaway has expanded its Quantum metalwoods range with two new models aimed at players seeking more specialized performance: the Quantum Mini, carrying on Callaway’s recent run of mini drivers accompanying their main releases each year, and the Quantum Ti, a premium fairway wood built with full titanium construction.

The Quantum Mini is offered in 11.5- and 13.5-degree lofts and introduces Callaway’s Step Sole to the mini-driver category for the first time to improve turf interaction and playability from the fairway, while also using a new Tri-Force Face made from layered ultra-thin titanium, Poly Mesh, and carbon fiber to preserve speed, distance, and spin consistency on off-center strikes.

It also features a next-generation AI-optimized face, adjustable front-to-back weighting to influence launch and forgiveness, and an OptiFit 4 hosel with seven settings for loft and lie tuning.

The Quantum Ti, available in 15-degree 3-wood and 18-degree 5-wood models, is positioned as Callaway’s most advanced fairway wood and combines a full titanium body with Speed Wave 2.0, which places up to 70 grams of tungsten low and forward to improve launch and energy transfer, alongside the new Step Sole to reduce turf contact and improve heel stability. It also features an AI-optimized face, heel-to-toe weighting for ball-flight adjustment, and an OptiFit 4 hosel on the 3- and 5-wood that provides eight loft-and-lie configurations.

Both models are due at retail on April 29 and are priced at $549.99.

There is a moment that Chris Wilkins lives for. It happens in a pro shop, or at a trade show, or across a table in a boardroom. A Director of Golf — someone who has been ordering the same bag tags and tournament medals for fifteen years — picks up a T&S piece for the first time. They don’t say anything immediately.

They turn it over. They run their thumb across the surface. They feel the weight of it settle into their palm — not the lightness of stamped zinc, not the hollow rattle of epoxy-coated alloy, but something closer to currency. Something that doesn’t move. The colors don’t sit on the surface; they live inside it, fused into the metal at temperatures that approach 800 degrees Celsius, ground flat by hand until the enamel and the metal are perfectly flush.

“Machines can’t replicate this,” Wilkins says. “You can’t automate the ‘feel.’ When you hold a piece of genuine hard enamel, your thumb knows the difference instantly. It feels like currency. It feels like value.”

That moment — that quiet recalibration — is what T&S Medals and Insignia is betting on.

The numbers behind the silence

The economics of golf awards are not complicated. They are just rarely spoken about honestly.

A standard bag tag from a volume supplier — the kind that fills the merchandise drawers of thousands of clubs across America — costs somewhere around ten dollars to produce. It gets sold to the club for twenty, maybe thirty. The margin is healthy. The product is forgettable.

A T&S entry-level bag tag — still, in Wilkins’ own words, “far beyond anything else in the market” — runs at around forty-five dollars per piece. Their premium pieces sit between fifty and fifty-five.

The difference in price is modest. The difference in what you are holding is not.

At the upper end of the market, the gap becomes almost absurd. At some of the most prestigious tournaments in the world, commemorative coins and keepsakes sell for two hundred and fifty dollars or more in the official merchandise shop. The presentation box is beautiful. The unboxing experience is considered. But the object inside — silver-core, wrapped in acrylic — carries a surface finish and a quality of manufacture that T&S would not accept off their own production line. The cost to produce it? Probably forty or fifty dollars.

“The markup is real,” Wilkins says. “But the quality isn’t always there to justify it.”

The person in the room who doesn’t see it

Here is the complication T&S hasn’t fully solved yet.

The Director of Golf, Wilkins has found, usually gets it immediately. They are golfers. They have spent years developing an appreciation for craft — for the weight of a milled putter, for the way a forged iron feels at contact, for the difference between something made and something manufactured. When they hold a T&S piece, the neural pathway is already there.

The Merchandise Manager is a different conversation.

In the larger clubs — the ones with the budget and the footprint to support a dedicated merchandise operation — it is increasingly the Merchandise Manager who makes the call on awards and recognition products. And more often than not, that person is young. They are professional and well-intentioned, but they are early in their golfing journey.

“They can be a bit hit and miss,” Wilkins says. “They’re very young in their golfing journey to understand what I’m trying to say to them about how good this would be for their tournaments, for their members and their guests. Because they’re also not usually golfers.”

This is the quiet challenge at the center of T&S’s move into elite golf: the product sells itself, but only to the person who already speaks the language.

What the club is really selling

Here is the frame that Wilkins keeps returning to, the one that tends to cut through:

Walk through the bag drop at any serious private club in America. Look at what’s in the bags. Japanese forged irons crafted with the same metallurgy used in samurai swords. Milled putters — likely Scotty Cameron or Bettinardi — treated with the reverence of religious artifacts. Exotic shafts. Hand-stitched leather headcovers.

Now look at what hangs from the zipper.

More often than not, it is a piece of stamped zinc alloy, coated in a thin layer of epoxy, churned out by the thousands in a nameless factory. It is lightweight. It feels temporary. In a game obsessed with tradition, permanence, and legacy, the objects used to commemorate achievement have become disposable.

“If a member cherishes a milled Scotty Cameron putter for its craftsmanship,” Wilkins says, “why would a club recognize their achievements with anything less?”

A Member-Guest at a top-100 club might carry an entry fee of two or three thousand dollars. The memories made over those two days are irreplaceable. At the end of it, the participants are handed something that feels like it came from a trade show giveaway bin.

A T&S piece does something different. Hard enamel fused to metal does not yellow in the sun. It does not scratch. It does not peel. A bag tag made today will look identical in fifty years. It is, as Wilkins puts it, an heirloom — not metaphorically, but literally.

The standard they carry

This is not a company that learned quality in order to serve golf. It is a company that has been trusted with the highest possible standard for four decades, and is now bringing that standard to a new category.

Since the year 2000, T&S Medals and Insignia has held the contract to produce the Order of Australia — the highest civilian honor the Australian government bestows. When a dignitary receives recognition for a life of service, the object in that moment was made by the Wilkins family’s business.

They have crafted pieces presented to King Charles III. To the late Prince Philip. To former US President Bill Clinton. “If you make a mistake on a golf bag tag, a customer complains,” says one industry insider familiar with their work. “If you make a mistake on a medal being pinned onto a King or a President, it’s a diplomatic incident. That level of scrutiny creates a culture of perfection that you simply cannot fake.”

It is this DNA — not a marketing position, but a lived standard — that T&S is importing into elite golf. The Club Championship medal should carry the same gravity as the Order of Australia. The guest bag tag from a bucket-list round at a great course should anchor that memory for a lifetime, not spend a week in a jacket pocket before disappearing.

The moment

None of this, in the end, is communicated through words. It is communicated through the object itself, in the moment when it is first held. The weight. The coolness of the metal. The thumb moving across a surface where enamel and steel meet flush, ground smooth by an artisan whose hands have done this for thirty-five years in a factory in Singapore that has worked with T&S since the very beginning. That is the moment Chris Wilkins is chasing in every pro shop, every trade show, every boardroom meeting. The moment when the Director of Golf stops talking, and just holds it. And their thumb knows.

• More information: T&S Medals and Insignia.

I’m back home in Scotland for a visit. I’m lucky because home is slap-bang in the middle of one of the busiest areas in the country for golf courses.

Within a ten-minute drive from the front door are courses like Muirfield, North Berwick West, Renaissance Club, Gullane, Luffness New, and Archerfield. There are a few more, but you get the gist.

One thing about this area is that none of the golf courses are public courses (especially Renaissance and Archerfield). Visitors can and do play, but essentially, these courses are private members’ courses.

If I were writing this from somewhere in Michigan, the story would be different. In a new NGF report, Michigan comes out on top for the most public-friendly courses in the U.S.

The number of publicly accessible courses is important as the game continues to show positive growth, and Michigan is one of only five states that has more than 800 courses available for the public.

Elsewhere in today’s GBR, we look at the Indoor Golf Alliance’s new membership program offerings, Power Tee’s newest report on driving range turf maintenance, a really useful read if you are spending obscene amounts of money to keep your range looking good.

We also take a look at Zen Golf’s two Green Stages setup, which gave guests the chance to experience how tricky the greens were at Sawgrass during The Players, which showcased some new technology that will be available later this year.

Enjoy today’s GBR.

Here are the three paragraphs for your newsletter, in Tom Miranda’s editorial voice:

B. DRADDY JUST TURNED A CAMPER VAN INTO THE BEST SPOT ON THE COURSE

B. Draddy, the premium apparel brand under the Summit Golf Brands umbrella, has just unveiled something worth paying attention to: a purpose-built mobile unit designed for activations at member-guest tournaments, club outings, and private events. This is not improvised merchandising under a pop-up tent. It is a fully realized brand experience on wheels — expanded interior, custom shelving, branded content on a built-in TV, and a lighted exterior awning that keeps the activation alive well into the evening.

What makes the business model interesting is its total customization logic: every activation is tailored to the host club’s identity, from product assortment to gift bags and event-specific touches. The outcome, in the words of Matt McFarlane, SVP of Sales and Co-Head of the Americas, is a setting that blends “elevated merchandising with a relaxed social environment” — a formula that high-end private clubs have been searching for without finding a brand willing to execute it with this level of consistency.

This launch is worth watching. B. Draddy is already the Official Uniform and Apparel Provider of the 2026 Presidents Cup and an Official Uniform Supplier for the U.S. Solheim Cup Teams in 2026 and 2028 — institutional visibility that is rare for a brand of its size. The Camper is a natural extension of that strategy: direct presence inside the elite club circuit, bypassing traditional retail channels entirely.

📄 Access the full press release here.
You can follow the brand on Instagram: @bdraddy and @bdraddywomen.

NGF REPORT SHOWS MICHIGAN LEADS U.S. IN PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE GOLF COURSES

Michigan has the largest supply of publicly accessible golf in the United States, with 748 daily-fee, municipal, and resort courses at the start of 2026, a total greater than the entire golf-course supply in 45 states.

The state had 868 golf courses overall, making it one of only five states with more than 800 courses, behind Florida on 1,290 and California on 963, and just ahead of New York on 830 and Texas on 825. According to National Golf Foundation data, 86% of Michigan’s courses are public, well above the national average of 72%.

The report said Michigan’s combination of temperate weather, natural scenery, central location, and the country’s longest freshwater coastline has helped it earn the label “America’s Summer Golf Capital,” with courses stretching from the Detroit area to Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula serving nearly one million in-state golfers while also attracting visitors from across the U.S. and Canada.

Golf’s annual direct economic impact in Michigan is estimated at about $3 billion, based on a recent NGF Economic Impact Study carried out for the Michigan Golf Alliance and its affiliated organizations. Nationally, NGF said golf generates about $102 billion a year in direct economic impact and noted that its state-level reports are used by legislators, tourism bodies, and industry groups to assess the game’s local footprint, with updated state summaries and wider data analysis also available to members.

INDOOR GOLF ALLIANCE INTRODUCES NEW MEMBERSHIP PROGRAMS

The Indoor Golf Alliance has announced a revised set of membership programs with options tailored to operators, suppliers, and prospective businesses, and annual memberships available with monthly payment plans.

The organization said its mission is to bring the industry together through education, information, community, and value, with the free IGA Community tier offering a weekly industry newsletter, research insights, public webinars, and industry announcements.

The paid Operator Member program includes vendor discounts, which the IGA said typically exceed the cost of membership, together with access to IGA University resources such as video libraries, playbooks, and templates, a private member community for indoor operators and advisers, conference registration discounts, adviser Q&A sessions, an IGA Member Facility badge, and directory inclusion.

The Business Partner membership adds promotional and commercial benefits, including a verified partner badge and directory profile, logo placement and links on the IGA website, discounted event and trade-show participation, members-only advertising rates, job-board postings, monthly newsletter inclusion for company news, one annual shared blast email, two press releases in IGA News updates each year, content on the IGA News page, social media support tied to press releases, and video links on the IGA YouTube channel. Business Partners also receive access to IGA University, invitations to webinars, access to moderate the IGA member community for structured industry dialogue, opportunities to engage with advisory councils, and eligibility to participate in webinars, subject to editorial approval. The IGA said most operators should be able to recover the full $500 annual membership cost through a single vendor discount, one pricing adjustment or one avoided operational mistake, and highlighted preferred vendor offers, including a Golf Genius package under which U.S. and Canadian operator members can receive a $500 round credit on the Golf Genius TM Flex Plan, offsetting the membership fee. Other listed offers include ProAgenda, Indoor Golf Shops, All Star Inflatables, KZG Golf Club Components, VioptIQ, and Northwestern.

POWER TEE RELEASES REPORT ON CUTTING DRIVING RANGE TURF MAINTENANCE COSTS

Power Tee has released a new special report, How Golf Facilities Can Dramatically Reduce Turf Maintenance Costs at Driving Ranges, available as a free download for general managers, golf course superintendents, course operators, and chief operating officers.

The report addresses the growing cost of maintaining grass tee lines as labor expenses, equipment use, turf recovery requirements, and water costs continue to rise, and sets out practical strategies intended to reduce the time, expense, and effort involved in managing those areas.

The report examines the often overlooked operating costs tied to traditional grass tee lines and outlines alternative approaches designed to cut mowing, divot repair, irrigation demands, and turf recovery cycles, while also looking at how modern range design and technology can improve efficiency and help protect turf. “Grass tee lines are one of the most labor-intensive and costly areas for superintendents to maintain,” said Martin Wyeth, chief executive and founder of Power Tee. “This report shows how facilities can rethink their range operations to dramatically reduce turf wear, lower maintenance costs, and free up valuable staff time for other priorities across the course.”

Among the areas covered are the hidden labor costs caused by turf damage on traditional tee lines, examples of facilities that have reduced range maintenance demands, strategies to lessen mowing and repair requirements, ways to protect high-traffic areas from excessive wear, and operating methods that allow maintenance teams to redeploy labor more efficiently.

JUNIOR GOLF HUB REPORT MAPS NEW COLLEGE RECRUITING LANDSCAPE

Junior Golf Hub has released its 2026 College Golf Report, a study based on an audit of more than 2,000 programs that the company says is intended to help junior golfers, families, and college coaches navigate a recruiting environment reshaped by NCAA rule changes and rising academic standards.

The report examines the impact of the House v. NCAA settlement, under which Division I men’s and women’s golf programs now operate with a nine-player roster cap, and argues that the reduced margin for error has increased the importance of targeted recruiting built around scoring and academic data. “The math of getting recruited has been rewritten in 2026, but the opportunity for dedicated athletes has never been clearer,” said Rogers Knick, founder of Junior Golf Hub. “While roster spots are more competitive at the top, our data provides a clear map to help players find where they actually fit.” Among the report’s main findings, Junior Golf Hub said the scoring average of a team’s fifth player is now the most useful benchmark for recruits assessing where they could make an immediate impact; that although nearly 30,000 golfers compete across all divisions, roster numbers narrow significantly over time, with more than 16,000 freshmen entering the system each year and overall rosters shrinking by almost 40% by senior year; that a GPA above 3.8 can be a significant advantage in securing places at academically selective institutions such as Stanford, Harvard and Columbia; that college golfers typically improve by 3.3 strokes from freshman to senior year; and that all 304 men’s and 274 women’s Division I programs can now be grouped into an eight-tier system based on team scoring and fifth-player metrics.

The report also says college golf remains a substantial source of opportunity, pointing to nearly 2,000 programs across the NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA and arguing that there is a suitable pathway for players across a wide range of ability levels.

ALLEGIANCE FLAG SUPPLY LAUNCHES GOLF GIVEAWAY TO SUPPORT FOLDS OF HONOR

Allegiance Flag Supply has launched “Honor on the Green,” a national giveaway tied to America’s 250th anniversary that will support Folds of Honor through a guaranteed $25,000 donation.

Running from March 15 to April 15, 2026, the campaign offers entrants the chance to attend a major championship golf tournament in Pennsylvania from May 11-17, with the prize including two week-long tickets and $5,000 toward travel and expenses. The initiative is intended to link championship golf with the broader anniversary year while supporting Folds of Honor’s mission to provide educational scholarships to the spouses and children of fallen or disabled service members and first responders.

“At Allegiance, everything we do is rooted in honoring this country and the people who defend it,” said Katie Lyon, co-founder of Allegiance Flag Supply. “As we approach America’s 250th birthday, we wanted to create something that brings people together around tradition and service, while directly supporting the families who have sacrificed so much.”

Since 2007, Folds of Honor has awarded nearly 73,000 scholarships to military and first responder families across the United States. “It’s allowed me to be financially free and just focus on finding how I want to give back to the world,” said scholarship recipient Stephen Federicoa. “And that is a precious gift.”

INRANGE WORLD TOUR RETURNS FOR THIRD SEASON

The Inrange World Tour, the range-golf competition run by London-based technology company Inrange, will return for a third consecutive season, expanding across 18 countries and more than 90 venues in the Inrange Partner Network after the company said participation increased 4.5 times last year.

The new season begins this month with a pre-tour qualifier in Myrtle Beach, before the main competition opens on May 1 with Round 1 played on a digital version of Le Golf National, host venue of the 2024 Olympic golf event and 2018 Ryder Cup. The tour will again use monthly six-hole contests played on digital versions of leading courses, but Season 3 will introduce several new elements, including algorithm-based divisional scoring designed to create performance-based groupings with promotion and relegation, an invitation-only Elites tier for top players identified through Inrange’s radar network who will compete for a share of $30,000. In addition, a team-play component is available linked to the Solheim Cup, in which players will represent either Team Europe or Team USA across three rounds that also count toward a collective result.

The season will also feature Bernardus Golf, this year’s Solheim Cup venue, which Inrange said is currently being scanned into its software. “We’re changing the conversation around what range golf looks like,” said Ian Blunt, Inrange’s programme lead and global brand manager. “For decades, it’s been limited to just practice, which fundamentally ignores the competitive spark that’s built into every golfer. Our goal is to get players game-ready, and then give them the platform to actually prove it against their peers—both locally and internationally.”

ZEN GOLF AND TWO12 RECREATE TPC SAWGRASS PUTTS

Guests visiting the Morgan Stanley Fan Experience during The Players Championship were able to face the same putting challenges as Cameron Young and the rest of the field faced, thanks to what Zen Golf and TWO12 Events described as a world-first activation built around two 12-foot Zen Green Stages.

The two greens, placed side-by-side and pre-loaded with the actual green slopes for the tournament pin positions on holes 16, 17 and 18, allowed guests to attempt three breaking putts based on the exact gradients, ball positions and daily hole locations used on the Stadium Course, before receiving assistance on subsequent attempts from Zen Eye, an overhead projector and augmented-reality system due to launch in summer 2026 that made its public debut at the event.

The activation projected putting lines, ball position, distance, and PGA Tour average make percentages onto the surface while the stage adjusted beneath players’ feet to match the real slopes, with prizes awarded to those who holed two or more putts, and the twin-stage layout allowed two participants to play at once. “This first-of-its-kind experience absorbed fans directly into the challenge of THE PLAYERS tournament in a world-first activation,” said Steve Bauerle, chief executive of TWO12 Events, while Morgan Stanley chief marketing officer Jess Schnurr said the experience was designed to bring clients and fans “closer to the moments that define the tournament.”

Zen Golf founder Nick Middleton said the system allowed guests to “stand over the very same putts” and experience a version of the pressure faced by players during the championship. The activation was the latest collaboration between Zen Golf and TWO12 Events, which also worked together at the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, and Middleton said further tournament-based experiences are planned in the United States with new Trackman integration and additional Zen Eye features in development.

CALLAWAY APPAREL UNVEILS SPRING 2026 PATRONS WELCOME COLLECTION

Callaway Apparel, developed by Perry Ellis International, has launched its Spring 2026 Patrons Welcome Collection, a limited-availability range that will be worn by Callaway Apparel ambassador Max Greyserman as part of his official scripting.

The company said the collection is designed as a seasonal tribute to the colors, flavors, and visual references associated with this point in the golf calendar, combining those motifs with Callaway Apparel’s Chev logo in a line intended to reflect both spring golf and the brand’s established identity.

“Our Patrons Welcome Collection is about more than apparel, it’s about channeling the charm and pageantry that make this time of year so meaningful for golf fans,” said Oscar Feldenkreis, chief executive of Perry Ellis International. “We’ve paired the technical innovation Callaway Apparel is known for with designs that reflect our passion for the game.” The assortment includes polos, T-shirts and layering pieces, with highlighted items including the Azalea Gingham Polo, which combines a traditional gingham pattern with a floral overlay inspired by azaleas and southern landscapes, the Pimento Mini Print Polo, which references a familiar golf-course food staple, and the Signature Chev Micro Print Polo, which uses a repeating version of the Callaway logo in seasonal colors.

The Spring 2026 Patrons Welcome Collection is available now through select pro shops and retail stores.

LOS ANGELES GOLF CLUB WINS TGL TITLE AS TIGER WOODS RETURNS FOR FINALS

It’s hard to believe, but TGL completed its second season yesterday evening, with Los Angeles Golf Club beating Tiger Woods’s Jupiter Links Golf Club 2-0 in the best-of-three finals at SoFi Center on Monday and Tuesday, giving LAGC the SoFi Cup in front of owners Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams.

The final also marked Woods’s first competitive appearance at TGL this season and his return to SoFi Center, after he ruptured his left Achilles tendon in March 2025 and underwent further back surgery in October. LAGC’s Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Sahith Theegala, and Collin Morikawa will share $9 million in prize money, while Jupiter Links — Woods, Max Homa, Tom Kim, Kevin Kisner, and Akshay Bhatia will receive $4.5 million for finishing second.

Boston Common Golf earned $2.25 million, Atlanta Drive Golf Club $2 million, The Bay Golf Club $1.75 million, and New York Golf Club $1.5 million, with the league’s total $21 million prize fund unchanged from its inaugural 2025 season. The conclusion of Season 2 also leaves TGL entering an important offseason, with its initial two-year media-rights agreement on ESPN platforms now expired. Audience figures for the finals are due later this week, with Season 2 matches averaging 463,000 viewers before the championship round, down from a full-season average of 498,000 in Season 1. David Rumsey, Front Office Sports.

LIV GOLF CONFIRMS SOUTH AFRICA RETURN FOR APRIL 2027

LIV Golf has confirmed that LIV Golf South Africa will return from April 22-25, 2027, at The Club at Steyn City, following what the league said was a debut event this week that attracted more than 100,000 fans.

The announcement was made before Sunday morning’s final round during a press conference featuring South Africa’s Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie, LIV Golf chief executive Scott O’Neil, Southern Guards GC general manager Richard Glover, and Steyn City Properties chief executive Steven Louw. LIV said the event had quickly become a leading stop on its calendar, with good crowds across the first three days and a final day featuring a leading group of players.

“Our return to South Africa in 2027 is a proud moment for LIV Golf,” O’Neil said, adding that the inaugural event had demonstrated the country’s golf culture, player base, and fan support while delivering economic impact and community engagement. McKenzie said the event showed South Africa’s ability to host international sport while supporting tourism, hospitality, creative industries, job creation, and future athletes. Louw described extending the event through 2027 as a significant milestone for Steyn City, while Glover said the atmosphere this week had shown the depth of local support for elite golf and the importance of South Africa as a stop on LIV Golf’s global schedule.

MIURA INTRODUCES PI-402 IRONS WITH THINNER CHROMOLY FACE AND REVISED SOLE DESIGN

Miura has introduced its new PI-402 irons, a players-distance model that builds on the PI-401 launched five years ago by combining a cast 8620 steel frame with a high-strength SAE 8655 chromoly steel face insert to increase ball speed from a relatively compact head shape.

Priced at $350 per club and available from 4-iron through gap wedge at 48 degrees, the PI-402 uses a constant-thickness face measuring three millimeters, which Miura said is 0.6 millimeters, or 17%, thinner than the previous version and produces gains of 2-4 mph in ball speed along with more consistent distance across the face. The chromoly alloy incorporates nickel for toughness, chromium for resistance, and molybdenum for resilience under stress, while a TPU plate in the back cavity is intended to preserve feel despite the thinner face design.

Miura has also revised the sole, drawing inspiration from the Kissaki, the tip of a traditional Samurai sword, with a shape designed to improve turf interaction across a range of attack angles through heel and toe relief, leading-edge relief for steeper swings, a maximum sole width of 22 millimeters, and bounce progressing from 11 to 16 degrees through the set. The center of gravity has been pushed lower through a 35-gram tungsten bar positioned low in a chamber within the cast frame, accounting for roughly 12% to 14% of head weight, a structure made possible by the cast-body construction supporting the thin full-face insert.

Across the U.S., the venues …

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But behind every great golf experience is a busy Pro Shop. Phones ringing. Bookings. Cancellations. Price checks. Member questions. Event enquiries.

The reality for most golf courses is that they are running a high-touch hospitality operation with a constant interruption loop — and it is costing them more than they realise.

The Hidden Cost Of The Ringing Phone. Every time the phone rings in the Pro Shop, something else stops. A staff member pauses mid-conversation with a golfer standing right in front of them. A task is interrupted. Focus is broken.

Multiply that across hundreds of calls per day and the impact becomes clear: lost productivity, a reduced on-site customer experience, staff stretched across too many tasks, missed calls during peak periods, and no coverage after hours.

And most of those calls? They are asking the same three questions. Do you have anything tomorrow morning? What is the price? Can I book for four players?

This is not where golf courses create value. It is where they lose time.

When we built the numbers around this problem, the results were striking. A course receiving 35 calls a day, with just 20% going unanswered, is missing 7 booking opportunities every single day. That adds up to over $53,000 in lost revenue annually. And that is a conservative example.

One Decision. Immediate Impact. At GOLF.AI, we have built a solution to exactly this problem: the GOLF.AI Concierge Agent. It answers every inbound Pro Shop call — handling bookings, availability and pricing queries, course information, cancellations, and after-hours enquiries — without requiring new software, hardware, system integrations, or changes to existing workflows.

Our concierge works with your current tee sheet and booking software. There is nothing to migrate, nothing to install, and no retraining required for your team. We find your course, build your agent, and you can be live in minutes.

The only change is that the phone gets answered differently. Every time. Day or night. Weekday or weekend.

And the results we are seeing across early deployments speak for themselves: courses are recovering between $5,000 and $10,000 per month in operational savings and recovered revenue. That value comes from four places: staff time returned to the shop floor and reinvested into on-site service and pro shop sales; zero missed calls during peak periods; after-hours revenue captured from golfers who call outside normal operating hours; and reduced no-shows through upfront payment links secured at the time of booking.

For course operators who want to understand their own numbers before committing to anything, we have built a revenue calculator directly into the platform at courses.golf.ai. You input your daily call volume and your estimated missed call rate, and it shows you exactly what you are leaving on the table.

Pricing starts at $99 per month for up to 200 calls — that is $0.49 per call. Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial. No credit card required. No commitment. Cancel anytime.

Sir Nick Faldo And The Bigger Picture. The GOLF.AI Concierge is the commercial foundation of something we believe is much larger than a phone answering service.

In March 2026, we announced a partnership with six-time major champion Sir Nick Faldo — our Official Ambassador — for a YouTube series called “Golf’s New Voice,” the inaugural production from GOLF.AI Studios, our new media division. The series pairs Sir Nick’s six decades of experience at the highest level of the game with AI-driven analysis of golf’s defining moments and future direction.

“For the first time, artificial intelligence will become a part of the storytelling of golf itself, revealing patterns, insights, and perspectives across generations of the game,” Sir Nick said.

“Close to 150 million golfers play around the world. It was this opportunity to combine my over 60 years of golf insights with the power of AI and bring that to golfers everywhere that got me so excited about this new show.”

The opening episode focuses on the psychology of elite performance — the mental battles that define great champions and the emotional patterns that shape performance under pressure. Subsequent episodes will examine the evolution of the golf swing across generations, the technology revolution in equipment, the global expansion of the sport, the drama of the four major championships, the intensity of the Ryder Cup, and where the game is headed by 2030.

For us, the series reflects a simple belief: every generation of golf has been shaped by innovation. We are now in the era of artificial intelligence, and “Golf’s New Voice” was created to help the golf world understand how that technology will influence the way the game is played, experienced, and managed in the future.

Give Your Pro Shop Its Time Back

The Pro Shop is the heartbeat of your golf operation. The golfers who walk through your door deserve your team’s full attention. The phone should not be the thing that takes it away from them.

We built GOLF.AI to solve that problem — and to help the golf industry understand that artificial intelligence is not a threat to the game, but an opportunity to make it better.

You can build your own GOLF.AI Concierge Agent in minutes, with a 30-day free trial and no credit card required, at courses.golf.ai.

Clive Mayhew is CEO and Founder of GOLF.AI.

• Record participation.

• Unprecedented institutional capital.

• Structural tailwinds from remote work.

• And simultaneously: the most hostile regulatory, supply chain, and labor environment in modern history.

Topgolf Callaway absorbed $34 million in tariff costs in 2025 — contributing to a 58% collapse in core business profits. Acushnet is budgeting $70 million in tariff headwinds for 2026 despite a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the legal foundation of the tariff regime. The Saudi PIF has injected $5.3 billion into LIV Golf and is burning $100 million per month. International tourism to the U.S. fell 6% in 2025 — the only major economy on the planet to see that decline. And the workforce that mows the fairways is disappearing in real time.

This is GBR Intel’s flagship analytical dossier for 2026:

• 7,200 words,

• seven sections,

• three scenarios,

• and one strategic framework for navigating the decade ahead.

It covers:

• the tariff shock and why uncertainty is now worse than the tariffs themselves.

• The geopolitical inflation compounding on every cost line.

• The workforce crisis no one in the industry wants to name directly.

• The math behind private club attrition.

• The $5.3 billion golf war with no end in sight.

• The AI revolution that is simultaneously the industry’s only deflationary force and its biggest structural wildcard.

• And three rigorously modeled scenarios — with assigned probabilities — for what the golf business looks like in 2030.

This is not a trend piece. It is a planning document.

The full dossier — GBR Intel | The Golf Industry Outlook: Three Scenarios for 2030 — is available now.

Standalone price: $179.

Get the dossier

Paid subscribers get it at $89 — half price. Not yet a paid subscriber? A GBR annual subscription costs $90.

Subscribe, then get the dossier at $89 instead of $179.

Subscribe now and get the dossier at $89

Curious what’s inside? Download the Executive Summary free.

Thank you for being part of GBR. This one took a while to build. I hope it earns your time.

— Tom Miranda, Golf Business Review

For questions or corrections: tom@golfbusinessreview.com

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It’s not for the casual golf fan who wants to relive Rory’s Masters. That reader has dozens of options — crónicas, highlight reels, podcasts, Netflix’s Full Swing.

Rorynomics is for five specific professional profiles, and every chapter is built with them in mind:

1. Golf brand managers and sponsorship decision-makers. Chapter 3 is a direct benchmarking tool. When your CMO asks “what should we pay to sign a top-twenty-in-the-world player next year,” the dossier gives you the comp set with reported fees, contract durations, activation structures. The Nike-to-TaylorMade transition mechanics alone are worth the price for any brand considering a golf equipment sponsorship in the post-2026 market.

2. Player agents and athlete representation firms. Chapter 4 is the most sophisticated public documentation of how an elite athlete’s commercial and investment architecture can be structured across multiple jurisdictions, investment vehicles, and asset classes. Symphony Ventures, TPG Sports, TMRW Sports, the PGA Tour Enterprises Player Equity Program, the Dublin/Belfast/Florida corporate triangulation — it’s a playbook for the post-competitive career that very few firms outside the top tier of athlete representation have internalized.

3. Sports investors and private equity professionals. Chapter 4 (TMRW Sports Series A at $500M, TPG Sports launch with Lunate anchor capital, the 42x Whoop outcome from Symphony Ventures) and Chapter 5 (Player Equity Program mechanics, PGA Tour Enterprises architecture post-SSG $3B investment) provide the analytical frame for understanding where capital is flowing in professional golf right now — and where the next five years of deal activity will concentrate.

4. Tour executives, federation officials, tournament directors. Chapter 5’s institutional analysis of the 2023 Framework Agreement, the June 2025 Rolapp appointment, the January 2026 Returning Member Program and the September 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage gives you the governance context that no single news article can provide. If you’re negotiating a tournament sponsorship, a broadcast rights deal, or a federation partnership in 2026, this is the context you need in the room.

5. Golf industry journalists and analysts. The methodology appendix and source registry are built to be cited. Every material figure is labeled verified, reported or estimated with its source. The dossier is designed to be the reference document other analysts draw from — the way Roger Pielke’s Sporting Intelligence work, or Samford University’s golf audience studies, or the Carnegie Mellon Tiger Woods Nike paper have become reference documents for anyone writing seriously about golf economics.

If you recognize yourself in one of those five profiles, this dossier was written for you.

If you manage a golf brand: Chapters 2 and 3 give you the sponsorship and on-course economics you need to benchmark your next negotiation. $199 is less than an hour of McKinsey time.

If you represent players or invest in sports: Chapters 4 and 5 give you the most detailed public mapping of an elite athlete’s parallel architecture that exists. At $99 for paid GBR subscribers, it’s a rounding error against the value of one decent deal insight.

If you’re a tour or federation executive: Chapter 5 gives you the institutional history that contextualizes every conversation you’re going to have with PGA Tour Enterprises, LIV, or the DP World Tour in 2026.

Buy now RORYNOMICS, The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — $199.

Paid GBR subscribers: $99 (below the paywall). Become a paid subscriber today at $90/year and unlock the discount.

Thanks for reading. In an industry where everyone is selling something, your time and attention mean everything.

— Tom

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Trappers Turn Golf Club has always occupied a special place in Wisconsin golf. Designed by two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North and renowned golf architect Roger Packard, the club sits just one mile from downtown Wisconsin Dells and features three distinct nine-hole layouts — Arbor, Canyon, and Lake — each with its own character and challenges. But among all the holes across all three nines, Canyon #7 was always the one people talked about.

It was the signature hole. The one that defined the course.

And now, after a major renovation that has transformed it beyond what anyone imagined possible, it is about to reopen on May 19, 2026.

A Hole That Always Had Problems

Canyon #7 was special from the beginning — but it had a fundamental flaw. The hole sat deep inside a natural sandstone canyon, and over the years, trees had grown up all around it. The canyon walls that made the hole dramatic were hidden. The canopy blocked sunlight and airflow. The green, starved of both, struggled to stay in good shape.

“It was always our signature hole,” says Todd Nelson, Founder and Owner of Trappers Turn Golf Club and Kalahari Resorts & Conventions. “But the problem was it was in a deep canyon and it was all trees grown up and all around, and we couldn’t get any air in it. And so the green was always in kind of rougher shape.”

The bones of something extraordinary were always there. They just needed to be uncovered.

Five Years of Continuous Investment

The Canyon #7 renovation is the latest chapter in a sustained period of growth and reinvestment at Trappers Turn. Nelson is proud of the trajectory the club has taken.

“The growth over Trappers over the last five years has been phenomenal,” he says. “First we built 12 North, which is a 12-hole beautiful par-3 designed by Andy North. Then we built a 13-hole putting course along with regular putting. Then this last year we did the practice facility, which is really nice — it’s a chipping and putting practice area. And now we’re doing this fantastic project out here on Canyon 7.”

Each project has added a new dimension to what Trappers Turn offers its guests. The Canyon #7 renovation, however, is different in scale and ambition. It is not a new addition — it is a transformation of the hole that was already the heart of the course.

What the Renovation Involved

Andy North Returns To Trappers Turn To Restore The Hole He Always Envisioned — And The Result Exceeded Everyone’s Expectations

The scope of the project was significant. The team cleared all of the trees and brush that had accumulated around the hole over the decades, immediately opening up the canyon and restoring the airflow and sunlight the green had always lacked.

But the clearing work revealed something that surprised even the people who knew the property best.

“We cleaned it all out,” says Nelson. “We got rid of all of the trees and all the brush, added waterfalls, and we’re unearthing all those sandstone. Oh my god, it is so beautiful — it’s beyond belief.”

The sandstone canyon walls, shaped by glaciers over thousands of years, are a defining feature of the Wisconsin Dells landscape. At Canyon #7, they had been largely hidden. Now they are the centerpiece of the hole.

The renovation also included a nearly doubled putting green, now approaching 6,000 square feet, expanded tee boxes, and enhanced water features including a waterfall behind the green.

Back to What Was Always Intended

For Andy North, the renovation is deeply personal. He designed this hole. He walked this property before a single drawing was made or a single piece of dirt was moved. And he always knew what Canyon #7 could be.

“It’s a very unique piece of property with all the valleys and canyons and the rock formations,” North says. “I was really excited about getting a chance to put a golf course in here. Spent a lot of time on the property, just walking the property before we actually put drawings together and started moving dirt, and it was really enjoyable.”

When he sees what the renovation has produced, North sees the original vision finally realized.

“This is what we had in mind when we first built this hole,” he says. “And now it looks like you’re playing into a box canyon, and it’s really cool.”

North also describes the particular satisfaction of seeing the hole in its current state — cleared, shaped, and ready for grass — before the final transformation is complete.

“I love it when it’s in the dirt before you actually put the grass on it because you can really kind of see what’s all there. But it’s gonna be fun to see this in May or June when it’s matured and people are out here playing it. It’s a beautiful hole and it’s a unique place to put a green.”

A Result That Surprised Everyone

Craig Haltom, President of Oliphant Golf Management, has been close to this project throughout. He is candid about the fact that what they found exceeded expectations — even high ones.

“I think we had a sense of what it might look like when we uncovered some of the sides of the hole, but no one expected for the rock work to be so beautiful,” Haltom says. “We thought it would be very pretty, but we didn’t understand that it would fit so naturally.”

From a playing perspective, Canyon #7 now offers something genuinely rare.

“You don’t really very often hit into the middle of a kind of a canyon, into a green that sits like that,” Haltom explains. “There’s neat bunkering, and there’s a different way that you access the green that brings you by the rock walls, and then there’s this beautiful waterfall work behind the green.”

The verdict from the man who will be overseeing its operation is unambiguous.

“I would say that this version of the hole is as dramatic as anything else out here,” Haltom says. “I think it’ll be very memorable.”

A Destination Course Ready for Its Next Chapter

Trappers Turn has always been more than a golf course. The club’s culinary offering is a significant part of its identity, with year-round dining that includes a Friday Night Fish Fry, Saturday Night Prime Rib, and Sunday Brunch that has become a local favorite.

The course also features 12 North, the 12-hole par-3 layout designed by Andy North that opened as part of the club’s recent expansion — a course within a course that offers a different kind of experience to players of all skill levels.

With three full nine-hole championship layouts, 12 North, and now a fully renovated Canyon #7 that has exceeded every expectation, Trappers Turn is entering the 2026 season in the strongest position in its history.

Canyon #7 reopens May 19, 2026.
For tee times and more information, visit trappersturn.com.

I assumed the most striking number in the dossier would be the $850M contract LIV reportedly offered and Rory rejected. It’s the figure that generates headlines. But when I finished writing Chapter 4, I realized that number isn’t even confirmed (Sean O’Flaherty, Rory’s agent, called it “fake news, zero truth” on the record) and, even if it were real, it isn’t the number that explains why Rory is today the most commercially valuable active figure in golf.

The number that actually explains it is this: 42x.

That’s the multiple at which Symphony Ventures — Rory’s Dublin-based investment vehicle, co-founded with his manager Sean O’Flaherty — has revalued its 2019 investment in Whoop, the fitness wearable company. Rory and O’Flaherty entered when Whoop was valued at approximately $240 million. In April 2026, following multiple funding rounds led by SoftBank Vision Fund and others, Whoop closed at a $10.1 billion valuation, according to Sportico’s reporting.

Forty-two times the original investment, on a single position in a portfolio of 27.

And that’s just Symphony Ventures. In parallel, Rory:

• Co-founded TMRW Sports with Tiger Woods and former NBC Sports executive Mike McCarley. Series A valuation: $500M, co-led by Dynasty Equity and Connect Ventures

• Serves as Operating Partner at TPG Sports, the dedicated sports investment platform TPG ($246B AUM) launched in May 2025 with anchor capital from Abu Dhabi’s Lunate ($110B AUM)

• Holds vesting equity in the PGA Tour Enterprises Player Equity Program reportedly worth ~$50M (per The Telegraph)

• Participated in Otro Capital’s $217M round in the Alpine F1 team, October 2023, alongside Ryan Reynolds and Michael B. Jordan

Chapter 4 of the dossier is titled “The Parallel Architecture” and it’s the analytical core of the report. Because the lesson of Rorynomics isn’t that Rory earns a lot of money playing golf. The lesson is that golf has become the launch platform for an institutional investment career that will compound independently of his playing career — and will keep compounding long after he stops competing.

That is the model the next generation of elite athletes is beginning to copy. Understanding how it was built isn’t an editorial luxury; it’s a working tool if you manage a golf brand, represent players, invest in sports, or negotiate sponsorship deals.

Buy now RORYNOMICS, The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — $199

Paid GBR subscribers: $99 (below the paywall). Become a paid subscriber today at $90/year and unlock the discount.

As always, thanks for reading — and for caring enough about this industry to stay informed. See you on the other side.

— Tom

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The numbers behind one of the most misunderstood contracts in golf history:

In January 2013, Nike signed Rory to what the specialized financial press reported as a $200M / 10-year contract (some outlets, including the Irish Times and Sportskeeda, placed the figure as high as $250M). At that moment it became the largest endorsement contract in professional golf history, surpassing Tiger Woods’s original Nike deal from 1996 ($40M / 5 years) and Tiger’s 2001 extension (~$100M / 5 years).

Three and a half years later, the deal collapsed. Here is what happened, and what the collapse reveals about the actual economics of a golf equipment contract:

• FY2016 Nike Golf revenue: $706M, down 8.2% year-over-year. Despite having both Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods as its flagship athletes, Nike Golf could not convert athlete visibility into market share against TaylorMade, Callaway, Ping and Titleist

• August 3, 2016: Nike exits the golf equipment business entirely. No more clubs, balls, bags. Apparel and footwear lines remain

• April 2, 2017: Rory signs a new 10-year Nike apparel deal reported at ~$100M (~$10M/year), running through end of 2027 — The Telegraph, Irish Times

• May 2017: Rory signs with TaylorMade for a 10-year equipment deal reported at ~$100M (~$10M/year) — The Irish Times, The Guardian, Golf Digest Middle East. Catalyst: the TP5x ball after extensive head-to-head testing at The Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Florida

• May 2022: TaylorMade extension, terms undisclosed but confirmed by Sportico to remain in the “two-digit-millions-per-year bracket”

Why this matters beyond the Rory-Nike story:

An equipment contract is not paying the athlete for sporting performance. It is paying for the conversion of athlete visibility into amateur consumer purchase decisions. Despite signing the largest endorsement deal in golf history in 2013 and having Rory as flagship athlete alongside Tiger Woods, Nike Golf still could not dislodge the incumbent equipment oligopoly. The lesson is that athlete capital does not automatically translate into market share in categories where the product itself (clubs, ball) requires functional differentiation that Nike Golf never achieved.

Sportico’s April 2025 note on Rory’s portfolio observed that his current agreements with Nike, TaylorMade and Optum “all run at least ten years” — an unusual level of contractual stability in an industry where two-year renewals are the norm. Chapter 3 explains why that stability is itself the single most distinctive economic feature of Rory’s career, and the hardest for a younger competitor to replicate.

The complete active portfolio as of April 2026:

• Nike — Apparel / footwear — ~$10M/yr — 2013–present

• TaylorMade — Equipment — ~$10M/yr — 2017–present

• Omega — Watches — $8M+/yr (est.) — 2013–present

• Optum — Healthcare data (B2B) — Undisclosed; 10+ yr deal — ~2019–present

• Workday — Enterprise software (B2B) — Undisclosed — 2022–present

• FM — Insurance (B2B) — Undisclosed — 2025–present

• NBC / GolfPass — Digital media — Undisclosed — 2019–present

• Whoop — Wearable tech — Equity stake, not fee — 2019–present

The three structural features that produce Rory’s $55M annual off-course income — and that no other active golfer reproduces simultaneously:

• Decade-long tenure with the same sponsors. Nike 13 years, Omega 13 years, TaylorMade 9 years, Optum 7+ years. Renewal is the single most distinctive economic feature

• Transatlantic reach. PGA Tour + DP World Tour footprint. Scheffler plays only PGA Tour. Rahm’s post-LIV format has no sustained European broadcast presence. No substitute available to brands needing US + European reach through one athlete

• Media accessibility as brand multiplier. The Rory & Carson Podcast, GolfPass founding partnership, “unCOMMON” docuseries. Per unit of competitive success, Rory generates more broadcast mentions, podcast minutes, Google searches and social-media engagement than any peer — which is exactly what the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program measured and paid $35M for across 2021–2024

This is three pages condensed from Chapter 3. The full chapter runs 120 paragraphs and includes the Horizon Sports Management settlement (~€22M, 2015), the Titleist-to-Nike transition mechanics, and the B2B activation logic that explains why Optum and Workday — two companies that sell nothing to amateur golfers — pay Rory in the same bracket as Nike.

It doesn’t fit in an 800-word article. It needs 20,894 words and 12 tables to hold together properly.

Buy now RORYNOMICS, The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — $199.

Paid GBR subscribers: $99 (below the paywall). Become a paid subscriber today at $90/year and unlock the discount.

Thanks for being here. GBR exists because readers like you show up every week ready to think seriously about this business. That’s not something I take for granted. Until next time.

— Tom

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Two days ago at Augusta, Rory McIlroy became the fourth player in Masters history to win back-to-back Green Jackets — joining Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods in a club that had been closed for twenty-four years. Six majors. Career Grand Slam completed exactly one year ago, on April 13, 2025. World number two. And, according to Sportico’s April 2026 valuation, the golf industry’s most commercially valuable active player — the first figure to displace Tiger Woods from that position in more than two decades.

Sports media will spend the rest of this week walking you through the birdies at 12 and 13 and the scramble for bogey at 18. That coverage is everywhere.

• What is nowhere is the economic anatomy of what Rory McIlroy now represents for the golf industry.

• How much he earns on-course and off-course, and why the ratio matters.

• How his endorsement architecture is structured, brand by brand, dollar by dollar.

• What he turned down when he turned down LIV, and what it cost him.

• What equity he holds in TMRW Sports, in Symphony Ventures, in TPG Sports, in the PGA Tour Enterprises Player Equity Program.

• Why Sportico just certified him as “the sport’s best pitchman, unseating Tiger Woods” after Tiger owned that position for twenty years.

We’ve spent months building it. Today we publish it.

RORYNOMICS. The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — 20,894 words, 83 pages, 6 chapters, 12 data tables, methodology appendix and source registry of 25 tier-1 sources. Designed as an industry intelligence dossier, not a sports biography.

The athlete’s career is the vehicle; the industry that surrounds him is the subject.

What’s inside:

• The seven income layers of a professional golfer in 2026 (prize money, FedEx Cup, PIP, Comcast, DP World Tour, Signature Events, majors) with Rory’s year-by-year numbers

• The endorsement architecture: Nike, TaylorMade, Omega, Optum, Workday, FM — reported fees, contract durations, why each sponsor pays what it pays

• TGL and TMRW Sports: Series A valuation, investor roster, Season 1 metrics, Rory’s equity position

• Symphony Ventures: the 27-investment portfolio, the Whoop outcome ($240M → $10.1B)

• LIV: the unverified $850M rumor, the actual Rahm benchmark, the cost of loyalty quantified in three scenarios

• The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage, the Framework Agreement, Rory’s role inside PGA Tour governance

• The Tiger benchmark: where Rory reaches, where he doesn’t, and why the comparison matters

Launch pricing — $199 (for free GBR subscribers). Institutional-grade research at independent pricing: comparable products from Sportico, Front Office Sports Pro or The Information price annual subscriptions at $300–$999. Rorynomics is a one-time $199 research dossier.

Buy now RORYNOMICS, The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — $199

Paid GBR subscribers: $99 (below the paywall). Become a paid subscriber today at $90/year and unlock the discount.

Thanks for your continued support. It keeps this newsletter worth writing.

— Tom

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$280M+ — Rory’s total verified career on-course earnings across PGA Tour prize money, FedEx Cup bonuses, PIP, Comcast Top 10, DP World Tour prize money, and Race to Dubai bonuses. Second only to Tiger Woods among active players. (Chapter 2)

$55M — Rory’s off-course income in fiscal 2026 according to Sportico, the highest off-course figure any active golfer has ever recorded. Nearly double Scottie Scheffler’s. Roughly 5x Jon Rahm’s post-LIV off-course portfolio. (Chapter 3)

42x — Symphony Ventures’ unrealized return multiple on Whoop, from $240M valuation in 2019 to $10.1B in April 2026. One of 27 investments in the portfolio. (Chapter 4)

15–13 — Team Europe’s victory at the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black. First away win by either team since 2012 at Medinah. Rory’s eighth consecutive Ryder Cup, during which a beer thrown from the gallery struck his wife Erica. (Chapter 5)

6 — Career majors. Tied with Nick Faldo for the most by any European player in the modern era. Only Woods (15), Nicklaus (18), Hagen (11), Player (9), Hogan (9), Watson (8), Palmer (7), and Sarazen (7) sit above him historically. (Chapters 1 and 6)

The full dossier connects these data points into a coherent economic architecture across 20,894 words, 6 chapters, 12 data tables and 25 tier-1 sources.

Buy now RORYNOMICS, The Price of Loyalty. How Rory McIlroy Became Golf’s Most Valuable Human Asset — $199.

Paid GBR subscribers: $99 (below the paywall). Become a paid subscriber today at $90/year and unlock the discount.

Thanks again for your continued support.

— Tom

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A brief pause from an absorbing second round at Augusta National — where a firm, fast course is already making the cut look harder than last year. Tyrrell Hatton has been the standout of the morning with a stunning 66, hitting all 18 greens in regulation. Justin Rose sits at 5-under and very much in contention. Meanwhile, Scheffler, McIlroy, and several of the other favourites are only now making their way around the course, so the leaderboard is far from settled.

While they navigate Amen Corner, here are some of the stories and developments that caught our attention this week.

OLD TOM CAPITAL OPENS THE CLUB, ITS PRIVATE GOLF INVESTMENT NETWORK TO ACCREDITED GOLF INVESTORS

Old Tom Capital, the Atlanta and Denver-based investment firm focused exclusively on golf, has relaunched its private investor syndicate as The Club — a membership network giving accredited investors direct access to OTC-sourced deals across golf technology, real estate, agronomy, software, and hospitality.

Membership costs $500 per year. Members receive access to 10+ deals annually, each structured as a separate SPV with a full investment memo, financial model, and direct Q&A with the OTC deal team and company founders. The minimum per deal is typically $10,000, with no obligation to invest in every opportunity. Member economics: 2% annual management fee, 20% carry.

Old Tom Capital’s portfolio includes TMRW Sports, Blue Jeans Golf, TerraRad, Sagacity Golf, Grass League, Quiet Golf, Birdie Houses, Whoosh, TripFusion, and many others. The firm’s deal flow comes from relationships built inside the amateur ecosystem — not a database — which means members see opportunities before they reach the trade press.

The Club is not a fund. OTC describes it plainly: the network is the product. Applications are open to accredited investors.

• Apply for membership here.

• Read the full story on GBR website.

THE MOMENT YOUR THUMB KNOWS: HOW A FAMILY BUSINESS THAT MAKES MEDALS FOR KINGS IS TRYING TO CHANGE WHAT GOLF HANDS ITS CHAMPIONS

There is a dissonance in modern golf that no one talks about, but everyone feels. Walk through the bag drop at any serious private club in America and look at what’s in the bags. Japanese forged irons. Milled putters treated with the reverence of religious artifacts. Hand-stitched leather headcovers. Equipment chosen with obsessive care, at obsessive cost.

Now look at what hangs from the zipper. More often than not, it is a piece of stamped zinc alloy, coated in a thin layer of epoxy, churned out by the thousands in a nameless factory. Lightweight. Temporary. In a game obsessed with tradition, permanence, and legacy, the objects used to commemorate achievement have become disposable.

T&S Medals and Insignia thinks that needs to change. The Australian family business — founded in 1985 on a kitchen table in Sydney by Trevor and Sue Wilkins — has spent four decades producing insignia at the highest level imaginable. Since the year 2000, they have held the contract to produce the Order of Australia, the highest civilian honor the Australian government bestows. They have crafted pieces presented to King Charles III, the late Prince Philip, and former US President Bill Clinton.

Now, under CEO Chris Wilkins — second generation, same standards — they are turning their attention to elite golf. The pitch is simple. An entry-level T&S bag tag runs at around $45 USD. Their premium pieces sit between $50 and $55. A volume supplier produces the standard alternative for around $10, sells it to the club for $20 or $30, and the margin is healthy. The product is forgettable.

“If a member cherishes a milled Scotty Cameron putter for its craftsmanship,” Wilkins says, “why would a club recognize their achievements with anything less?”

The difference isn’t just price. It’s process. T&S specializes in genuine hard enamel — a discipline closer to jewelry making than mass manufacturing. Glass powder fused to metal at temperatures approaching 800 degrees Celsius. Applied by hand, fired in a kiln, then ground flat using stone or diamond abrasives until the enamel and the metal are perfectly flush. The result doesn’t yellow in the sun, doesn’t scratch, doesn’t peel. A T&S piece made today will look identical in fifty years.

“Machines can’t replicate this,” Wilkins says. “You can’t automate the ‘feel.’ When you hold a piece of genuine hard enamel, your thumb knows the difference instantly. It feels like currency. It feels like value.”

That moment — when a Director of Golf picks up a T&S piece for the first time, turns it over, runs their thumb across the surface, and goes quiet — is what Wilkins is chasing in every pro shop, every trade show, every boardroom meeting.

The Club Championship medal should carry the same gravity as the Order of Australia. The guest bag tag from a bucket-list round at a great course should anchor that memory for a lifetime, not spend a week in a jacket pocket before disappearing. The hardware should match the hardware in the bag.

• Read the full story at Golf Business Review.

• More information about T&S Medals and Insignia at their website.

ZERO RESTRICTION AND B. DRADDY LEAD THE FIELD FOR MASTERS WEEK STYLE

As the Masters enters its second round at Augusta National, two brands are standing out for those looking to dress the part — whether inside the ropes or watching from home.

• B. Draddy is delivering the kind of polished ease that defines Masters spectator style this week. From lightweight layers for crisp morning tee times to breathable knits for warm Augusta afternoons, each piece balances comfort and sophistication in timeless silhouettes built to be worn from the first tee to the final putt.

  

• Zero Restriction — over 30 years setting the standard for technical golf outerwear — is offering its signature packable layers this week: fully seam-sealed, multi-layer construction that packs into its own pocket. With Augusta’s spring weather proving as unpredictable as ever, their best-in-class waterproofing is exactly the kind of insurance worth carrying.

• Also worth noting: Seattle-based Radmor Golf has launched a limited-edition Bauhaus x Augusta Capsule, inspired by the course and crafted with sustainable materials. And Weatherman is on the ground with its award-winning Golf Umbrella — wind-proof, UV-protected, and built for precisely the kind of afternoon Augusta delivered earlier this week.

MASTERS WEEK REMAINS GOLF’S KEY BUSINESS STAGING POST

As this year’s Masters reaches its midpoint at Augusta National, WME Sports executives say the tournament has become not only golf’s most high-profile competitive stage but also one of the industry’s most important commercial meeting points, where brands, media companies, talent representatives, governing bodies, and event operators gather to discuss new deals and longer-term plans.

Sean Guerrero and Jordan Lewites, golf agents at WME Sports, said the week now functions as a concentrated industry conference in which decision-makers use hospitality houses, dinners, speaking engagements, and off-course meetings across Augusta to shape marketing strategy, sponsorship activity, and pipeline discussions for the second half of 2026 and into 2027. Guerrero said the Masters provides “a unique opportunity where all of the decision makers are in one concentrated area,” while Lewites said it had become “everybody’s big launch” as the U.S. golf season accelerates.

The pair argued that golf marketing has moved beyond a model dominated by large player and tour sponsorship deals, with agencies instead creating more tailored activations and partnerships around the event. Lewites said WME works with more than 500 corporate houses through sister company On Location and is seeing growing inbound demand from companies that view Masters week as a premium hospitality opportunity, while Guerrero cited a recent arrangement that relocated John Daly’s long-running Augusta-week fan presence from a demolished Hooters site to a Topgolf venue in the city. WME also pointed to its role in helping smaller brands such as Swag Golf build broader licensing and retail partnerships, and said Masters week remains a catalyst for brands seeking to enter golf or expand their presence in a sport where, as Guerrero put it, fans not only watch but also “consume its products” and often remain customers for life.

• More info? You can read this article by Scott Thompson in Fox Business.

AUGUSTA NATIONAL OPENS THREE-STOREY PLAYER SERVICES BUILDING WITH 100-LOCKER ROOM, RECOVERY SUITE AND DINING TERRACE

Augusta National has unveiled its new Player Services Building, a three-story facility located behind the practice range and designed to reshape the on-site experience for Masters competitors and their support teams from arrival to departure. Accessed via a circle drive or an underground garage reached through a tunnel beneath Magnolia Lane, the building combines modern player amenities with extensive historical detail, from corridor walls featuring Alister MacKenzie’s cross-sections of every hole to framed letters from Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. At ground level is a new main locker room with 100 lockers — each fitted with a safe, phone-charging shelf, and gold-plated Masters emblem — alongside a Bobby Jones-themed lounge displaying on loan the four trophies from his 1930 Grand Slam. The lower level includes a state-of-the-art fitness center, a recovery area with three cold plunges, one hot tub, a sauna, 16 treatment tables, and a hallway carrying more than 1,400 nameplates for every player to have competed in the Masters. On the top floor, the Magnolia Dining Room seats about 150 people inside, with terrace space for another 150 overlooking the practice grounds, plus a buffet, bar, televisions, and full dining service. The facility is reserved for players, immediate family members, coaches, caddies, trainers, and support staff, with no access for the public, media, or agents. Rory McIlroy, who returned last month after completing the career Grand Slam, described the new building as “IN-CREDIBLE,” while chairman Fred Ridley said it would offer competitors facilities “unlike anything in sports.”

• Source: Associated Press via PGA Tour

GOLF COURSE CLOSURES RISE AS REDEVELOPMENT PRESSURES BUILD

Sixty golf courses have closed in England and Wales over the past five years, and the pace is likely to increase as financially stretched owners come under greater pressure to sell land for redevelopment, according to analysis by TWM Solicitors based on Valuation Office Agency data now held by HM Revenue & Customs.

The figures show that the number of courses in England and Wales has fallen to 1,810 since 2020, with 184 closures recorded over that period, although some sites later reopened after refurbishment. The analysis suggests that the economics of land ownership, rather than participation alone, are increasingly shaping decisions, with golf courses often occupying large, low-density sites on the edges of towns that are attractive to housing developers at a time of strong demand. Rising maintenance, insurance, and staffing costs, combined with less predictable membership income, have also weakened many operators.

Nick Ball, managing associate at TWM Solicitors, said investors viewed many sites as “ripe for redevelopment”, in some cases retaining golf within a wider leisure scheme and in others replacing it altogether with housing. He added that this type of redevelopment is highly capital-intensive, with funding often coming from private equity, overseas investors, or leisure operators. Examples cited in the analysis include Ifield Golf Club in Sussex, which is due to close after Homes England assembled land for a 3,000-home project near Crawley; Dalmuir Golf Course in Scotland, which has repeatedly been identified by West Dunbartonshire Council as a potential closure amid budget pressures; Calverley Golf Course, which Bradford Council has earmarked for disposal; and Whitewebbs Golf Course in north London, where the land is being repurposed after closure, with permission granted for a women’s and girls’ football academy and specialist turf management center for Tottenham Hotspur.

The report also points to growing consolidation by private capital, citing Epiris-backed Club Company and Dubai-based Select Group among investors reshaping the sector, often by retaining golf as one part of a broader leisure or hospitality model. Consultancy Custodian Golf estimates that about one in five clubs, or roughly 433, are financially vulnerable, leaving the sport increasingly divided between a smaller group of well-capitalized venues moving upmarket and a larger number of marginal clubs facing closure, sale, or redevelopment.

• Source: Andrew Ellson, The Times

Old Tom Capital has quietly become one of the most connected firms in golf since its founding in 2022 — backing companies across technology, real estate, agronomy, and hospitality while building a network that operates well below the radar of the trade press. Now, the Denver and Atlanta-based firm is opening that access to a wider circle of accredited investors through The Club, a relaunched private syndicate built around a simple premise: the deals are better because of who is in the room.

Membership is $500 per year. The room, by design, stays small.

A Network Built on Conviction

Old Tom Capital was not founded on diversification. The firm’s thesis is singular: golf’s commercial transformation is structural, not cyclical, and the firms that build focused ownership positions inside that transformation will generate institutional-scale returns.

Since its founding in 2022 by Matthew Erley and Evan Roosevelt, OTC has deployed capital across venture, credit, and control — backing companies across golf technology, agronomy, software, real estate, and hospitality. Its portfolio includes TMRW Sports (the technology company powering TGL), Blue Jeans Golf, TerraRad, Sagacity Golf, Quiet Golf, Birdie Houses, Grass League, Whoosh, TripFusion, and many others. The firm is headquartered in Atlanta and Denver, with partners and investments across North America, the UK, and Asia-Pacific.

The Club is how individual investors participate in that deal flow.

What The Club Actually Is

The Club is not a golf fund. OTC is clear about that distinction, and it matters.

A fund pools capital into a managed vehicle with a defined mandate. The Club is a membership network — a structured community of accredited investors who get direct access to OTC-sourced deals as they come to market, each as a separate SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle), with full transparency into the investment thesis, financials, and founders.

“The network is the product,” OTC states in its membership materials. The deals are better because of who is in the room. The room is better because of the deals.

Members gain access to:

• 10+ deals per year across golf technology, agronomy, software, real estate, and hospitality

• Full investment memos, financial models, and direct Q&A with the OTC deal team and company founders

• Member economics: 2% annual management fee, 20% carried interest

The minimum investment per deal is typically $10,000. There is no obligation to invest in any deal — each is a separate decision. Capital is called at the time of document execution. Deals close approximately two weeks after the SPV is formed.

Why This Matters for Golf Industry Professionals

For operators, executives, and founders who work inside the golf industry, The Club represents something that has not existed in a structured form until now: a private network that connects capital to deal flow at the intersection of the amateur and commercial ecosystems.

Golf is, as OTC notes, one of the largest relationship networks in business. The course acquisition that closed quietly, the agronomy company that raised a round without a press release, the hospitality concept that serious golfers have been watching for eighteen months — those deals moved through conversations. The Club is the room where those conversations are formalized.

OTC’s deal flow is not sourced from a database. It comes from relationships built across the amateur ecosystem — club operators, technology founders, course architects, agronomy companies, hospitality developers, and governing bodies across professional tours. The firm sees deals early because it is inside the conversations where they originate.

For GBR’s audience — operators, investors, founders, and C-level executives across the global golf industry — The Club offers a front-row seat to the private capital layer that is driving golf’s commercial transformation.

The Standard for Entry

Membership requires accredited investor status, consistent with SEC regulations governing private securities offerings. Applications are open — no referral required, though referrals are encouraged and noted. Membership is active immediately upon payment confirmation.

OTC describes the standard simply: accredited investor, genuine golfer, serious about both.

A Firm That Builds Platforms, Not Portfolios

What distinguishes Old Tom Capital from a standard venture or private equity operation is its stated philosophy: it builds platforms, not portfolios.

Every investment is designed to compound value across the system — shared data, shared distribution, shared ambition. The portfolio companies are not isolated bets; they are intended to strengthen each other. A software company (Sagacity) that optimizes course revenue works alongside a real estate and hospitality play (Birdie Houses) and a technology-forward league format (Grass League and TMRW Sports). The firm deploys capital as a strategic instrument, not a financial one.

The Relaunch

The Club was previously known as the Old Tom Venture Club. The relaunch under the current name signals a refinement of the offering — a tighter brand, a clearer value proposition, and an explicit focus on the quality of the membership rather than its size.

“The deals are better because of who is in the room,” OTC says. “The room is better because of the deals.”

For accredited investors who follow this industry closely, the timing of this relaunch — during the week that the golf world turns its attention to Augusta — is unlikely to be a coincidence.

• Apply for membership at The Club website.

• Learn more about the firm here.

The Masters starts tomorrow. Augusta is ready. And if you are still looking for a way to get there, you are not as stuck as you think — there are 35 private jets heading to Augusta this week with empty seats, and the cheapest starts at $3,105.

We have also got a guest piece from Clive Mayhew, CEO and Founder of GOLF.AI, on how a single operational decision is saving golf courses up to $10,000 a month — and why Sir Nick Faldo is involved.

Plus Andy North’s stunning renovation of Trappers Turn’s Canyon #7, the Golf Business Technology Conference coming to Belfast in May.

Let’s go!

GOLF.AI CLAIMS ITS AI CONCIERGE IS SAVING COURSES UP TO $10,000 A MONTH — AND HAS PARTNERED WITH SIR NICK FALDO TO BRING AI TO THE HEART OF THE GAME

We asked our friend Clive Mayhew, CEO and Founder of GOLF.AI, to write a piece for GBR this Masters Week — and what he has put together is well worth your time if you run, own, or invest in a golf facility.

The argument is straightforward: the Pro Shop phone is one of the most expensive problems in golf operations, and most courses have no idea. A course taking 35 calls a day with just 20% going unanswered is missing over $53,000 in annual revenue. Multiply that across thousands of facilities and you start to understand the scale of what GOLF.AI is trying to fix.

Their solution is the GOLF.AI Concierge Agent — an AI-powered system that answers every inbound call, handles bookings, pricing queries, availability, cancellations, and after-hours enquiries, without requiring new software, hardware, or changes to existing workflows. It works with your current tee sheet and booking engine. You can be live in minutes. Early deployments are showing between $5,000 and $10,000 per month in recovered operational value.

Pricing starts at $99 per month for up to 200 calls. Every plan includes a 30-day free trial with no credit card required.

And there is a bigger story here too. GOLF.AI has just announced Sir Nick Faldo as its Official Ambassador, alongside the launch of “Golf’s New Voice” — a YouTube series from GOLF.AI Studios that pairs Faldo’s six decades at the game’s highest level with AI-driven analysis of golf’s greatest moments, from the psychology of elite performance to where the game is headed by 2030.

• Build your own GOLF.AI Concierge Agent for free at courses.golf.ai.

• Read Clive’s full piece here.

GOLF BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2026 RETURNS TO BELFAST WITH OVER 50 SPEAKERS AND A FULL AGENDA ON AI, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE FUTURE OF GOLF ENTERTAINMENT

Golf’s most forward-thinking operators, club owners, and technology innovators will gather in Belfast from May 5 to 7 for the Golf Business Technology Conference 2026 — an event that has established itself as the definitive B2B platform for the global golf industry.

Hosted at The Merchant Hotel, one of Belfast’s most celebrated venues, GBTC 2026 arrives at a moment when the golf industry is navigating a period of rapid technological change. From AI-driven club management to precision turf agronomy and the rise of golf entertainment, the agenda has been designed to provide actionable insights for anyone responsible for running, investing in, or building the golf businesses of the future.

The Agenda. The 2026 programme is built around five core areas of industry transformation.

• The first session, The Future of Precision Turf Agronomy, examines how data-driven decisions and robotics are lowering maintenance costs while improving course conditions — a conversation that has become increasingly urgent as labor costs rise and environmental pressures mount.

• AI-Driven Club Management follows, exploring how automated systems and predictive analytics are streamlining operations and enhancing the member experience across facilities of all sizes.

• The “Profit with Purpose” Model addresses one of the most debated topics in modern golf management: how to align genuine environmental sustainability with bottom-line growth, rather than treating them as competing priorities.

• Revolutionizing Revenue through Golf Entertainment looks at how technology-integrated ranges and immersive experiences are attracting a new generation of players — and generating new revenue streams for operators willing to invest in them.

• The final core session, Operational Efficiency in the Modern Era, focuses on practical strategies for managing world-class facilities and high-profile tournaments in an environment of rising costs and increasing guest expectations.

The Speaker Lineup. The conference will feature over 50 industry experts across the two days. Among the confirmed speakers:

• Karen Lyttle, Director of Technology at The R&A, will deliver the opening keynote on the technological transformation behind The Open and the AIG Women’s Open.

• Sarah Stirk, Sky Sports Golf presenter, will share her perspective on the intersection of media, entrepreneurship, and the professional tours.

• Simon Elsworth, Global Head of Professional Solutions at Syngenta, will lead the conversation on digital tools for precision turf management.

Also confirmed are Gina Rizzi, President of Radius Sports Group, who has pioneered the measurement and communication of golf’s economic and environmental impact; Bob Morse, President and COO of Invited Clubs, the world’s largest private club network; Nathanaël Pietrzak-Swirc, CEO of Ugolf International, on international expansion and management trends; and TJ Schier, CEO of SmashSwing Immersive, who will showcase the future of competitive socializing and golf-tech entertainment.

The Full Programme. The event begins on Tuesday, May 5 with an optional golf day at Belvoir Park Golf Club — a Harry Colt masterpiece located just minutes from the city center. An evening networking reception follows from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM, giving delegates the opportunity to build connections before the core conference sessions begin on May 6 and 7.

Tickets And Registration. With limited capacity at The Merchant Hotel, places are filling quickly. Delegate passes include full access to all sessions, the VIP Lounge, networking lunches, and the evening drinks reception.

A full two-day delegate pass is priced at £995 + VAT. A one-day pass is available at £795 + VAT. The optional golf day on May 5 is £150 + VAT.

“In less than a month, Belfast will become the global hub for golf innovation,” says Aboo Tayub, Founder of Golf Business Technology.
“We aren’t just talking about the future of the game — we are bringing together the very people who are building it. If you want to see where the industry is headed in 2027 and beyond, you need to be in this room.”

ANDY NORTH’S RENOVATION OF TRAPPERS TURN’S CANYON #7 UNCOVERS GLACIER-CARVED SANDSTONE WALLS HIDDEN FOR DECADES

Two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North has completed a major renovation of Canyon #7 at Trappers Turn Golf Club in Wisconsin Dells — the signature hole of the course he originally designed alongside Roger Packard. The project cleared decades of overgrown trees to expose glacier-carved sandstone canyon walls that had been largely hidden since the course opened, revealing a natural drama that surprised even the people closest to the project.

The hole had always been Trappers Turn’s most talked-about feature, but it had a fundamental problem: sitting deep inside a natural canyon, surrounded by trees that had grown unchecked for years, it was starved of sunlight and airflow. The green struggled. The sandstone walls that made the setting extraordinary were invisible. The bones of something special were always there — they just needed to be uncovered.

The renovation does exactly that. Tree clearing has opened up the canyon completely, exposing the glacier-carved sandstone walls that define the Wisconsin Dells landscape. A nearly doubled putting green now approaches 6,000 square feet. New waterfalls have been added behind the green. Expanded tee boxes frame a shot that Andy North describes as playing into a box canyon — dramatic, enclosed, and unlike almost anything else in American golf.

Craig Haltom, President of Oliphant Golf Management, is candid about how the result exceeded expectations: the rock work, he says, is more beautiful than anyone anticipated, and fits the setting so naturally that it feels as though it was always meant to be there. Todd Nelson, Founder and Owner of Trappers Turn and Kalahari Resorts & Conventions, calls it simply “beyond belief.”

For North, it is the hole he always envisioned. For guests arriving at Trappers Turn this spring, it will be the first time they see it the way it was always meant to be seen.

• Canyon #7 reopens May 19, 2026.

• More info in their website.

• Read the full story here

BEFORE THE FIRST TEE SHOT: EVERYTHING WORTH READING AHEAD OF THE MASTERS

Here are some of the best pieces we have come across this week as the golf world turns its attention to Augusta:

• THE MASTERS ALREADY PERFECTED THE BIG-EVENT CURTAIN RAISER — AND DID IT 65 YEARS AGO. Every major sport is scrambling to create a lucrative pre-event spectacle — F1 sprint races, the US Open’s revamped mixed doubles, the Australian Open’s One Point Slam. But as Sportico’s Lev Akabas points out, Augusta National figured this out in 1960 with the Par 3 Contest, a nine-hole, par-27 round on the Wednesday before the tournament that club members originally dismissed as miniature golf. Six decades later, a clip of Rory McIlroy’s daughter sinking a putt in last year’s contest generated 6 million more views than McIlroy winning his first green jacket days later. Read the full piece at Sportico.

• ANDREW BEATON, IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, EXAMINES JUSTIN ROSE’S IMPROBABLE RENAISSANCE AT 45. Justin Rose arrives at Augusta tomorrow having nearly stolen last year’s Masters from Rory McIlroy — and playing some of the best golf of his life. Beaton tells the story of how Rose has transformed his game in his mid-40s: lifting his front heel on his backswing (borrowed directly from Nicklaus), strengthening his grip, and converting his tour RV into a recovery facility complete with a red-light bed, oxygen tanks, and hot and cold plunges. The result: he is now averaging 304.1 yards off the tee — the longest of his career — and became the oldest ever winner at Torrey Pines earlier this season. Nine players have won the Masters after being runner-up the year before. Rose knows this. Full piece at the Wall Street Journal.

• RICK BROADBENT, IN THE TIMES, TAKES A HARD LOOK AT THE AUGUSTA THAT EXISTS BEYOND THE ROPES. While the world’s attention turns to the prettiest park in golf this week, Rick Broadbent drives a few miles from Augusta National to find mansions giving way to shacks, a homeless population that doubled last year to 1,098 people — including 395 children — and a city that WalletHub ranked 177th out of 182 for job prospects. Some locals call it “Disgusta.” Hurricane Helene made things worse. The contrast with a club that has spent $280 million buying up neighbouring property in the past 25 years is, as Broadbent puts it, jarring. Full piece at The Times.

• THE IRISH INDEPENDENT REVIEWS ALAN SHIPNUCK’S UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY OF RORY MCILROY — AND IT IS ANYTHING BUT BORING. Alan Shipnuck, the writer who exposed Phil Mickelson’s most explosive quotes, has turned his attention to Rory McIlroy. The result, Rory – The Heartache and Triumph of Golf’s Most Human Superstar, is neither a hatchet job nor a hagiography, but it did prompt McIlroy to tell Shipnuck to “f**k off” when he spotted him at last year’s US Open. The book covers McIlroy’s desire for total control — over his image, his sponsors, his documentary — as well as sharp observations from Pádraig Harrington and Paul McGinley, who describes a man with “a heightened sense of justice” who “rarely gives praise to anybody around him.” McIlroy read chapter one, shook Shipnuck’s hand, and said: “It was good. It made me laugh.” Full review at the Irish Independent.

• EVIN PRIEST, IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, ON WHY THE MCILROY-DECHAMBEAU RIVALRY IS THE STORYLINE TO WATCH THIS WEEK. Bryson DeChambeau arrives at Augusta off back-to-back LIV Golf victories in Singapore and South Africa, ready for another crack at the man who beat him in last year’s final group. The tensions are already simmering: McIlroy’s new Amazon documentary revealed he refused to toss a tee to settle who putted first on the ninth green in last year’s final round, telling DeChambeau “this isn’t some game on a Tuesday afternoon somewhere.” DeChambeau, for his part, is keeping score: “I got him at Pinehurst — he got me here.” Full piece at the Sydney Morning Herald.

NO FLIGHT TO AUGUSTA? THE MASTERS STARTS TOMORROW AND 35 PRIVATE JETS ARE STILL HEADING THERE WITH ROOM FOR YOU — FROM $3,105.

Augusta National does not do anything by halves. The Masters is the most controlled major championship in golf — the club sets its own TV deals, bans mobile phones on the course, and has never opened its patron badge waiting list since closing it in 1978. The people who get tickets are largely the same people who fly privately. And they are not going to waste a Masters badge on a connection through Atlanta.

The result is one of the most concentrated private aviation events in the American sporting calendar. Last year, our friends at AceJet tracked every single private charter into Augusta Regional during Masters Week — and built an interactive flight tracker that visualises the full picture, animated on a tournament timeline with daily traffic data and aircraft category breakdowns.

What you are looking at is 1,221 aircraft and 3,884 flights — the full private aviation footprint of one golf tournament. Watch the build-up through the practice rounds, the surge on Thursday morning as Round 1 tees off, and the exodus on Sunday evening when the champion slips on the green jacket and everyone heads home at once.

The traffic patterns tell their own story. The Northeast corridor — Teterboro, Westchester, the New England airports — lights up early in the week as corporate aircraft position executives and clients for the Wednesday through Sunday corporate hospitality schedule. Florida follows close behind. Texas and the Midwest build through Thursday. By Saturday, Augusta Regional has converted one of its runways to aircraft parking and brought in over 100 temporary staff just to manage the ramp.

Augusta National’s badge scarcity is the engine behind all of it. The patron badge system concentrates the attendee pool into precisely the demographic that flies privately. Corporate hospitality compounds it further — companies with long-standing Augusta National relationships lease cabins along the course for the week, and those invitations drive a significant portion of the jet traffic, positioning executives and clients from Wednesday through Sunday.

The airport charges accordingly. During Masters Week, ramp fees run from roughly $125 per day for light singles up to $3,000 per day for aircraft over 50,000 lbs. Ramp reservations go through FlightBridge, and showing up without one during Masters Week is, as AceJet puts it, asking for trouble.

There Are Still Empty Legs Available This Week

The Masters begins tomorrow. And as of this morning, AceJet has 35 empty leg flights available into Augusta and its surrounding airports, starting from $3,105.

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