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Good morning GBR community,
Golf’s two listed equipment makers reported within 48 hours of each other, and both quarters came in hot. Acushnet grew sales 13.8% to $820 million and raised its year; Callaway’s growth was 2%, and profit from continuing operations still jumped 67%. Under both sits the same asterisk, a pile of refunded tariffs doing part of the lifting. How much of the best equipment quarter in years is demand, and how much is a check from customs? That is the week’s biggest open question.
We also return to LIV, because last Friday’s edition reported the league was close to new money, and by Wednesday its CEO was announcing a signed term sheet in front of staff at Bedminster. Read the paperwork around the announcement and it looks less like a rescue than a restructuring, with a lender at the top and a bankruptcy file that never quite closes.
Plus: Golfzon backs a full 18-hole indoor course in Nashville, the founder’s family tries to take Golfzon’s Korean holding company off the market, 47 House Democrats demand the fine print on East Potomac, the PIF’s women’s series tees off in London with $2 million on the table, The R&A hands Golf It! to an operator, and a Jumeirah Golf Estates villa sells for a record AED 110 million.
Straight into it. Enjoy!
M&A & EARNINGS
Golf’s two listed equipment makers report in the same week with the same tailwind, refunded tariffs, while in Seoul the family behind Golfzon moves to take its holding company off the market entirely.
ACUSHNET AND CALLAWAY POST BLOWOUT QUARTERS — WITH A TARIFF REFUND UNDER EACH ONE
Acushnet reported second-quarter sales of $820.0 million on Thursday morning, up 13.8%, with net income up 65.1% to $124.8 million and adjusted EBITDA up 45.8% to $208.6 million, a 25.4% margin. The company raised its full-year outlook to $2,650–2,675 million of sales and $450–470 million of EBITDA. Callaway had reported on Tuesday evening: sales up 2% to $612.2 million, GAAP profit from continuing operations up 67%, adjusted EBITDA up 36% to $124.9 million, gross margin up 620 basis points. Before repricing the sector, read the footnotes. Acushnet’s EBITDA includes roughly $38 million of net refunds on tariffs previously paid under IEEPA. Callaway booked $10.8 million of the same medicine into its GAAP margin, and is chasing close to $50 million in refunds overall.
The refund story has a calendar. On July 24 the temporary 10% global tariffs under Section 122 expired, replaced the next day by Section 301 forced-labor tariffs of 10% to 12.5%; Callaway had budgeted for 20%, so the new regime is upside against its own guidance, and it now expects roughly $43 million of gross tariff expense this year, about $7 million better than planned. Acushnet’s raised outlook carries roughly $30 million of refunds inside it. Neither management team hid this; both put numbers on it, which is what lets a reader separate the operating quarter from the customs one.
Strip the refunds out of Acushnet and the engine still runs. Our arithmetic puts underlying EBITDA growth near 19% without the $38 million, and the segment table explains why: Titleist club sales grew 42.0% to $272.0 million because the GTS drivers and fairways launched in the second quarter instead of the usual autumn window, a pull-forward David Maher credits with four PGA Tour wins already. Balls rose 4.5% on Pro V1 pricing. Korea was flat in dollars. On the balance sheet the two companies part ways: Callaway repaid its $258 million convertibles and the last $163 million of its term loan B during the quarter and now holds more cash than debt, while Acushnet carries $936.5 million of long-term debt and keeps returning cash anyway, including an agreement to buy up to $52.5 million of stock from controlling shareholder Magnus alongside open-market purchases.
For anyone selling to this consumer, the useful signal is price: average selling prices rose across balls, gear and FootJoy even where volumes slipped, and the customer kept paying. For anyone underwriting the stocks, the question is narrower, because the refund checks stop and Section 301 keeps billing. When Acushnet laps this quarter in August 2027, how much of that 25.4% margin is still there?
Acushnet’s full results exhibit carries the segment and region tables, Callaway’s release sets out the guidance, and SGB Online’s write-through catches the tariff arithmetic and the four TravisMathew store closures coming in the fourth quarter.
THE FAMILY BEHIND GOLFZON WANTS ITS KOREAN HOLDING COMPANY OFF THE MARKET, AND ONE INVESTOR IS SAYING NO. SJ Holdings, the vehicle of top shareholder Kim Won-il, tendered for the 36.15% of Golfzon Holdings it does not control at 6,700 won a share, about 103.7 billion won at a 57% premium, in an offer launched in late June that expired Wednesday. Bloomberg reports the board backed the deal while minority holder Terton Capital refuses to sell, calling the price unfair; Seoul Economic Daily’s account of the terms notes the holding also owns 32% of Golfzon County, the course operator MBK has on the block — a live test of how far Korea’s governance reforms reach into golf.
TOURS & POWER
Three fronts, one map: LIV negotiates its life after the PIF, Congress opens an oversight fight over public golf land in Washington, and the same Saudi fund that is leaving LIV tees up $2 million for the women’s game in London.
LIV HAS ITS SIGNED TERM SHEET — AND THE PAPERWORK AROUND IT READS LIKE A RESTRUCTURING
Last Friday’s edition carried the setup: LIV was reportedly close to new money, on the strength of written commitments reported by the New York Post. The advance came Wednesday at Trump Bedminster, where Scott O’Neil told players, staff and media that “a lead investor has signed a term sheet approved by our board.” He would not name the investor. The league’s statement, in Front Office Sports’ report from Bedminster, fills in the architecture: players become majority equity holders, more than a dozen parties circle as minority investors, and terms close in the coming weeks with a transaction targeted for September. LIV 2.0 means ten events on five continents and purses near $10 million, down from $30 million this season.
Within hours the mystery had a probable shape. Bloomberg reported that BC Partners’ credit arm is leading a group of investors exploring a loan to the league, with nothing finalized. The Financial Times added the conditions: BC’s money depends on LIV keeping enough stars, the stars want their PIF-era guarantees paid first, and the Saudi fund is weighing settling those contracts at a discount in exchange for liability releases. Jon Rahm alone is reportedly owed about $150 million. On the ground, O’Neil played Wednesday’s pro-am alongside executives from the league’s financial adviser AlixPartners and its investment banker Ducera Partners; the $40 million Michigan team championship is expected to be canceled per the same reporting, and Louisiana is still waiting on $1.2 million from the New Orleans event that never happened.
The word nobody at Bedminster used is the one hanging over the deal. Bloomberg reported in May that LIV had begun laying groundwork for a potential US bankruptcy filing if new money failed to arrive, which the league answered by insisting it was focused on closing a transaction. At the end of July, a Flushing It Golf report picked up by the New York Post said insiders expected a filing within weeks to restructure contracts, with Rahm likely standing as the largest creditor. Huddle Up’s Joe Pompliano reads the whole construction as a credit deal in equity clothing: senior secured lending against the league’s assets and contracts, with capital released in tranches as long as enough stars stay. The player majority would be common stock, sitting beneath the lender’s claims. A September close fits either script, rescue or restructuring.
If you hold commercial exposure to LIV, a sponsorship, a hosting fee, a media commitment, the counterparty you signed may not be the one that shows up in 2027: a lender-controlled league, ten events, a third of the purse. Would your agreement survive assignment in a restructuring, and would you re-sign it against a $10 million purse?
Huddle Up’s breakdown is the sharpest read on what a credit structure does to player ownership, and it carries the Bloomberg and FT reporting in one place.
FORTY-SEVEN HOUSE DEMOCRATS ARE DEMANDING THE COST AND THE FINE PRINT OF THE EAST POTOMAC REDESIGN. In a late-July letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting Park Service director Jessica Bowron, Reps. Raskin, Norton, Beyer and Ivey plus 43 colleagues want disclosure on the Fazio-designed conversion of Washington’s three-course public facility, one of the country’s first desegregated, into a single championship layout: the cost, the future of green fees, the bike and walking paths, and compliance with preservation law. The site hosted 130,000 rounds last year. Raskin’s release itemizes the demands, and Sportico’s analysis places it inside ongoing litigation, with work slated to start in September — public golf land in the capital is now an oversight fight.
COURSES & REAL ESTATE
Who should hold the asset, and who should run it: The R&A splits ownership from operation in Glasgow, and in Dubai a buyer pays a record for a golf-estate villa that was never listed.
THE R&A HAS APPOINTED NORTHWIND LEISURE GOLF TO OPERATE GOLF IT!, ITS COMMUNITY VENUE IN GLASGOW. After three years of in-house management, the governing body keeps full ownership and oversight while Northwind, which trades as Great Western Golf and runs 43 Goals football centers, takes the day-to-day; Alyson McKechin stays in charge on site. The facility turned a profit in 2025 with footfall up 5% and a social-value figure above £20 million. The Golf Business has the appointment — a week after buying all of DotGolf, covered in last Friday’s edition, The R&A is buying technology and renting operations.
BXB ESTATES HAS CLOSED THE LARGEST RESIDENTIAL SALE IN JUMEIRAH GOLF ESTATES HISTORY, AT AED 110 MILLION. The off-market deal announced Monday, negotiated by managing partner Alfie Tabrez, nearly doubles the community’s previous record of AED 58 million for a completed villa; the six-bedroom house runs to 21,714 square feet and was first shown to the buyer as a fit-out showcase, never a listing. At the dirham’s dollar peg that is close to $30 million, our conversion. BXB’s announcement has the details — golf-community trophy stock in Dubai keeps setting its own comparables.
TECH & AI
The off-course market keeps widening: Golfzon backs a full 18-hole course indoors in Nashville, and $22 million of growth equity buys into the wholesale software behind the pro shop.
CITYGOLF PUTS ALL 18 HOLES INDOORS IN NASHVILLE — GOLFZON’S SHOT AT OWNING THE ROUND, NOT THE PARTY
CityGolf USA announced its flagship Nashville venue on Thursday, billed as the first full 18-hole indoor golf course in the United States. The project runs on the digital-course model of Golfzon founder Kim Young-chan and is backed by Nessie Capital, Golfzon, Parlay Capital Holdings and the Tennessee Golf Foundation, with Nessie’s Tony Graffia Jr. as chief executive. What they are selling is a complete round in the middle of a city: sequential 18-hole play on Golfzon simulators, real putting surfaces and short-game complexes, a simulator range, a chef-driven restaurant and PGA professionals on staff, offered first through a limited founding membership.
The format is the story. Players hit full shots into screens, then walk to one of 18 physical green complexes to pitch, chip and putt out, hole after hole, with the venue’s own material claiming a full round in about two and a half hours. Golfzon puts the opening in late 2026, promises further US locations, and teases a design partnership with a name architect still to be announced.
Category arithmetic is why the capital showed up. Golfzon’s case leans on a National Golf Foundation count of 37.9 million Americans in off-course golf by the end of 2025, up 63% on 2019, and the venues chasing them have sorted into camps. Topgolf sells the party across 103 US locations. Full Swing, whose hardware now belongs to a broadcaster after the $530 million Versant deal covered in Tuesday’s edition, sells the equipment underneath. What Golfzon wants is the round itself, the product operators assumed only dirt could deliver. There is a subplot in Seoul, too: the same week, the founder’s family moved to take Golfzon’s holding company private, the tender covered above.
Nobody in Eustis or St Andrews needs to fear for the grass. The competition is for hours, because an indoor 18 at city rents sells the same golfer-hours a tee sheet loses to darkness and rain from November through February. If a member in Nashville can hole out 18 before a 9 a.m. meeting, what is your December actually worth?
Golf Business News’ write-up walks through the format mechanics, and Golfzon’s announcement page carries the participation data and the late-2026 timetable.
REPSPARK HAS TAKEN A $22 MILLION INVESTMENT FROM HEADLIGHT PARTNERS. The Anaheim wholesale e-commerce platform processes more than $4 billion a year in B2B transactions for 250-plus brands and 100,000 retailers, and golf is its largest vertical, with 80% of Association of Golf Merchandisers buyers on the system; the money goes to enterprise features, ERP integrations, AI tools and customer-success staffing. SGB Online has the raise — growth equity has found the plumbing between brand and pro shop.
BRANDS & PLAYERS
Sponsorship is turning into procurement: DICK’S buys a seat where junior golfers get fitted, and CDW takes prime-contractor duty for the Ryder Cup’s entire technology build.
STEPHEN CURRY’S UNDERRATED GOLF HAS SIGNED DICK’S SPORTING GOODS AND GOLF GALAXY AS OFFICIAL SPONSORS OF ITS DRIVING RANGE AT ALL FIVE 2026 TOUR STOPS. The retailer brings fitters, equipment and a mobile driver-fitting cart to the season, including September’s Curry Cup at Bethpage Black; the program counts 94 alumni, 83 of them now playing college golf. UNDERRATED’s announcement carries the details — a national retailer paying to stand where the next generation gets fitted for its first real clubs.
RYDER CUP EUROPE HAS NAMED CDW OFFICIAL IT SERVICES SUPPLIER OF THE 2027 RYDER CUP AT ADARE MANOR. The remit grows well past the Rome 2023 brief: prime responsibility for the whole technology build of the centenary match, September 17–19 next year, from design through live operations to decommissioning, including an HPE Wi-Fi 7 network, twin on-site operations centers and cyber security services for an event with broadcast reach above 650 million. Ryder Cup Europe’s announcement sets out the scope — tournament technology is now bid and delivered like construction.
THE DEMAND SIDE
Demand is holding while the operators build around it: Topgolf adds venue 103 and a uniform deal with a media layer, the UK’s pro-shop co-op pays out a record, and July’s weather trimmed capacity without denting play.
TOPGOLF OPENS ITS FIRST WISCONSIN VENUE ON AUGUST 14 AND HAS MADE BLACK CLOVER ITS NATIONAL UNIFORM PARTNER THROUGH MAY 2031. The Monona site near Madison is US venue number 103, with 72 bays over three levels; the five-year apparel deal puts Black Clover on every employee nationwide, on co-branded retail racks in each venue, and across Topgolf Media Networks’ 28,000 in-venue screens. SGB Online covers the opening and the outfitting deal — the venue count and the monetization layers are now growing on the same schedule.
TGI GOLF HAS RETURNED MORE THAN £1 MILLION TO ITS PGA PROFESSIONAL PARTNERS FOR 2025, A FIRST FOR THE GROUP. Every partner is a shareholder, and each one’s cut of the distribution tracks their spend across more than 60 approved suppliers; the group passed £10 million in cumulative returns last year, across two decades. The Golf Business has the numbers — the co-op model on the pro-shop side keeps compounding, one seven-figure year at a time.
JULY WAS A SECOND STRAIGHT SLIGHT-HEADWIND MONTH FOR US GOLF WEATHER, WITH PLAYABLE HOURS DOWN 2% YEAR ON YEAR. Pellucid’s national reading leaves the year to date at +1% with roughly 60% of annual rounds already banked, and 21 of 45 regions favorable against 13 down; June rounds came in flat per Circana even as weather capacity fell 3% that month, a utilization gain. Pellucid’s July report has the regional splits, and the record national pace from the NGF was covered in Tuesday’s edition — capacity wobbled in July, play didn’t.
WHAT WE ARE READING
Baller Golf’s case study of Hypegolf argues the winning golf-media model is one brand expressed through articles, product drops and physical spaces that feed each other, with the Toyota capsule and the month-long New York Clubhouse as proof. David Skilling’s most useful turn is aimed at operators: clubs and courses should start behaving like media companies too, if they want the next generation walking in.
The Golf Business reports on a study of AI assistants that found the same club can be recommended on one platform and invisible on another, and that almost no operator has tested where they stand. Author David Mullins puts it plainly: clubs assume the answer engines rank them like Google, and they don’t. For anyone whose new-member funnel starts with a search box, ten minutes well spent.
Golf Business Technology’s interview with Jared Solomon traces Five Iron Golf from a 2017 Fifth Avenue room, and a co-founder teaching lessons out of a Midtown suit shop, to more than 30 venues, 500-plus simulators and 8,000 members, with a new flagship one block from where it started. The founder-grade detail is what makes it, growth framed as convenience, one 7 a.m. lesson at a time.
Fergus Bisset’s argument in Golf Monthly is that the story of golf pricing itself out of reach is mostly perception: memberships and equipment have tracked 20 years of inflation almost exactly, a £349 driver in 2005 against £629 now, and the real outlier is rack-rate green fees at trophy venues. Uncomfortable reading for anyone repeating the affordability line, which is most of us.