Hickory Ridge Golf Course | Carbondale, IL
It’s 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
I’m sitting on my deck with a bourbon, trying to make sense of another strange week in the world of golf.
Then again, golf specializes in strange.
We sure can make a mess out of trying to compress a little white ball with a set of sticks.
This week, we managed to turn a golf commercial into a cultural event.
There were apologies.
There were statements.
There were corporate statements responding to other statements.
There was outrage, followed by outrage over the outrage, followed by explanations of the outrage.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I kept coming back to one word.
Judgment.
Golf is about judgment.
We judge greens.
We judge clubs.
We judge wind.
We judge distance.
We judge whether that tree in front of us is really in play or whether we can somehow convince ourselves we have a window.
Sometimes we even judge whether the $650 driver we just bought is actually going to fix a swing that has been broken since 1997.
So a natural question occurred to me:
Where was the judgment here the Good Good | Callaway ad?
How many people saw this thing before it went live and nobody said, “Guys… maybe don’t shove the woman?”
That’s the part I find fascinating.
Not simply that the advertisement was offensive.
Not even that it was a spectacularly bad attempt at humor.
But that somewhere along the way, a whole collection of people apparently looked at the finished product and thought:
Yeah. That’s the one.
And that tells us something about where golf is headed.
The reality is that golf is changing.
YouTube personalities and creator brands now have enormous audiences. Companies like Callaway understandably want access to those audiences. That’s smart marketing.
The problem comes when you blend a traditional golf company with a creator culture built, in part, around being outrageous.
Somebody still has to be the adult in the room.
And in this case, both sides failed the test.
Perhaps that’s because attention has become more valuable than judgment.
And attention is a hell of a drug.
The commercial itself apparently required some esoteric knowledge of an obscure horror movie to fully understand.
But you didn’t really need the backstory.
A woman reached for a driver.
A man shoved her and stood over her to taunt her.
The internet exploded.
The PGA Tour spoke.
Callaway apologized.
Good Good apologized.
People who sell golf apparel reacted.
Suddenly nobody was talking about the advertisement anymore.
They were talking about the reaction to the advertisement.
The reaction to the reaction.
The apology for the reaction.
And I kept wondering:
Was it even funny?
Because for all the moral outrage, corporate outrage, social media outrage and golf-media outrage, very few people seemed interested in asking the simplest question.
Did the joke work?
Clearly, it did not.
And that may be the strangest part of the entire episode.
A corporate scandal involving a woman was discussed mostly by men, explained through press releases and analyzed through engagement metrics.
There was an almost comical amount of seriousness surrounding a joke that wasn’t funny.
And that is where I think the whole thing went wrong.
Because golf is already funny.
Really funny.
Golf is filled with absurd characters.
Golfers are irrational.
Equipment junkies.
Conspiracy theorists.
Delusional optimists.
People who willingly spend $650 trying to fix a swing flaw that could probably be solved with a lesson.
People who buy miracle cures.
People who convince themselves a new shaft is the answer.
People who call a topped shot a “stinger.”
People who describe a ball trapped behind three oak trees as “having a window.”
Every golfer is a comedian.
Most just don’t realize it.
Which is why I find the whole thing so strange.
With all that material available, somebody looked at golf and decided the best joke involved treating a driver like a cursed artifact from a B-level horror movie.
They didn’t need to manufacture the joke.
They were standing on top of one.
So let me offer a suggestion.
Here is the commercial they should have made…
Picture the Good Good crew standing on a driving range with the new Callaway driver.
One guy swings.
Absolutely nukes it.
“Bro! Did you see that?”
Another immediately grabs the club.
“Nah, bro. You’re shambles. Let me hit it.”
He swings.
Another bomb.
“No way.”
A third guy takes it.
“There’s no shot. You’re both capping.”
Crack.
Missile.
Now they’re all talking at once.
“It’s the face.”
“It’s the shaft.”
“It’s the weight distribution.”
“Bro, this thing is literally a cheat code.”
For thirty glorious seconds, the club has become Excalibur.
A magical artifact capable of fixing decades of bad decisions and over-the-top swing paths.
Then a female voice comes from behind them.
“Can I try?”
Everybody turns.
A female golf influencer steps onto the tee.
She takes the exact same driver.
Same shaft.
Same settings.
Nothing dramatic.
No violence.
No controversy.
Just a smooth golf swing.
Balance.
Tempo.
Center-face contact.
The ball sails twenty yards past everybody else.
Silence.
The Good Good crew stares downrange.
Then at the launch monitor.
Then at each other.
Finally, one of them breaks the silence.
“Bro…”
A pause.
“I think mine’s broken.”
She hands the driver back.
Smiles.
“It’s not just the club, boys.
It’s the swing.”
And walks away.
The guys continue staring into the distance, quietly questioning every life choice that has led them to this moment.
Because every golfer eventually discovers the same terrifying truth.
The club helps.
The technology helps.
The lessons help.
But sooner or later, you are forced to confront reality.
**It’s not the club.
It’s the swing.**
And if Callaway wanted one final punchline, there was another opportunity sitting right in front of them.
The commercial continues…
A few stars arrive.
One after another, they stripe tee shots into another zip code.
Perfect tempo.
Perfect balance.
Perfect golf swings.
The music swells.
The commercial appears finished.
Fade to black.
Then—
Movement.
Way in the background.
A shadow approaches the driver rack.
Slowly.
Carefully.
The figure looks left.
Looks right.
Nobody notices.
He reaches for one of the drivers.
Just as his fingers wrap around the grip, a voice comes from behind him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
The figure freezes.
The camera zooms in.
Bryson DeChambeau.
Caught red-handed.
Bryson shrugs.
“What? I just wanted to try it.”
The voice responds:
“Nice try. Get out of here LIV.”
Bryson sighs and walks away.
Fade to black.
No controversy.
No corporate statements.
No apologies.
Just golfers laughing at golfers.
Because the funniest thing in golf has never been politics.
Or culture wars.
Or fictional violence.
The funniest thing in golf has always been us.
And that’s why I think the joke was standing on the tee box the whole time.
Good Good and Callaway just missed the shot.
Enjoy Your Week – MWM
Michael Mattingly is a freelance journalist from Smithton, Illinois, with a background in advanced mathematics and creative writing. He is a student of the game of golf, drawn to its pressure, rhythm, and unpredictability.
He is also an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and a loyal Chicago Bears supporter
