Some advertisements make you want to buy the product. Others make the entire internet ask, “Who on Earth approved this?”
A promotional video from golf equipment giant Callaway and popular YouTube brand Good Good Golf has landed firmly in the latter category. The since-deleted ad showed the brand’s co-founder Garrett Clark charging toward female golfer Alexis Miestowski, shoving her to the ground, and standing over her before warning, “Do not touch my new driver.”
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The clip was apparently intended to be part of a horror-inspired story about Clark becoming dangerously obsessed with the new Good Good-branded Callaway Quantum driver. Instead, viewers saw a man knock a woman down over a golf club — and reacted accordingly.
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“This is a generationally stupid ad,” one X user wrote. “Absolutely incredible that no one in the room said ‘guys hold on,‘” Golf Digest reporter Christopher Powers added.
Powers’ disbelief reflected a defining response to the commercial. People were not only upset by what appeared onscreen, but baffled by how many people must have encountered the idea before it reached them.
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Good Good and Callaway removed the video from their social media accounts on Aug. 21, but, as brands repeatedly learn, deleting something does not make it disappear from the internet. Copies continued circulating, bringing the ad to an even larger and increasingly incredulous audience.
“This is so much worse than I thought it was going to be,” one X user wrote. Another asked whether any women had been involved in pitching, approving, or producing it.
Over in the r/golf subreddit, where a discussion of the controversy attracted more than 1,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments, golf fans were equally unimpressed. “The ad had a school project production value and lacked any real humor,” one commenter wrote. “How this passed by anyone at Callaway with the slightest bit of media proficiency or common sense is mind boggling.”
“The way to normally do these things as ‘jokes’ is to make it so over the top that it’s clearly not intended to be serious,” one user explained. “What you don’t do is have them realistically tackle a woman and then stand over them aggressively and deliver the line.”
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For some viewers, especially women, the ad represented more than one spectacularly misguided creative decision, but embodied the exclusionary “golf bro” culture that the sport has spent years attempting to move beyond.
“As a female golfer, I already feel excluded from the golf world in some ways. They crossed the line,” one Reddit user commented. Another TikTok commenter said they were tired of the “bro culture” and “frat boy mentality” surrounding golf both online and on the course.
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Women working within golf pushed back, too. “They didn’t just create an ad that makes golf non-inclusive to women, but it endorses violence against women in the scariest and most threatening way,” Skratch social media director Nicole Rae said, calling the video “wildly disappointing.”
CNN Living Golf host Jasmine Sanders, known online as The Jazzy Golfer, pointed to the contradiction between the industry’s stated goals and what two of its prominent brands had approved: “Golf keeps talking about making the game more welcoming to women,” Sanders said in a LinkedIn video. “You can’t say that matters and then make violence towards a woman the punchline.”
Golfer and former Real Housewives of Orange County cast member Katie Ginella said she was “in shock” after watching the ad. Ginella, who has spoken publicly about her own experience with domestic violence, said she would no longer support Good Good or Callaway.
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None of these women aren’t wrong — there is a large contradiction in the sport of golf. Women and girls have accounted for 60 percent of the growth in on-course golf participation since 2019, yet much of golf’s most prominent internet content remains built around groups of men, competitive challenges, and rowdy banter. Good Good itself was founded by male creators and only launched a separate women’s channel in late 2025.
Ironically, by partnering with Good Good to make golf feel younger and more internet-native, Callaway — one of golf’s biggest institutions — ended up legitimizing the very “golf bro” culture that makes women feel unwelcome in the sport in the first place.
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Founded as a YouTube channel in 2020, Good Good has grown into a major golf media and merchandise business with more than 2 million YouTube subscribers. Callaway partnered with the group back in 2023, and the brand is now the title sponsor of a PGA Tour tournament scheduled for November.
In an apology posted to X, Good Good said the video “ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand.” Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick also issued a longer statement on LinkedIn, saying the commercial was intended to parody a scene from the horror movie Obsession but that its execution “missed the mark.” “Regardless of what we intended, we are responsible for what we put into the world and how it is received,” Kendrick wrote. “We got this one wrong.”
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Callaway CEO Chip Brewer, on the other hand, said it was “disappointed by the content that was posted” and thanked Good Good for addressing it (language that appeared to place the responsibility primarily on its partner.)
He also admitted that although Good Good produced the video, Callaway had approved it before publication: “That approval should never have happened,” Brewer wrote. “Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously.” Brewer added that Callaway was conducting internal and external investigations, and announced changes to the company’s approval processes.
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Yet, many viewers — and brand partners — were not satisfied with that explanation. Even the Golf Channel postponed the Aug. 25 premiere of Big Break x Good Good until Sept. 1, saying it needed time to make “necessary production updates” after a sponsor requested that its branding be removed from the series (rumored to be retailer “Golf Galaxy”).
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Dick’s Sporting Goods also removed Good Good merchandise from their websites and store floors, along with Target and several PGA Tour Superstore locations. Callaway, meanwhile, removed the Good Good Quantum driver from its own website, although the club remained available directly through Good Good.
Even competitors saw an opening: Golf club brand PXG posted a video of professional golfers Olivia Cowan, Gina Kim, and Auston Kim with the caption, “Our drivers play nice with everyone.”
The uproar surrounding this ad did not happen in a vacuum. In 2021 alone, an estimated 34 percent of murdered women were killed by an intimate partner. The CDC also reports that nearly one in four women has experienced physical violence from an intimate partner, and that more than half of female homicide victims are killed by a current or former male partner.
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In that light, pushing a woman to the ground and standing over her is far too familiar an image to land as a harmless punchline.
If the ad was supposed to show that Callaway’s new driver was worth fighting over, it failed. Instead, it showed how easily violence against women could survive pitching, filming, editing, and corporate approval — all to sell a driver.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text “START” to 88788, or visit TheHotline.org to chat with an advocate. Support is free, confidential, and available 24/7.
Source: https://mashable.com/life/callaway-good-good-golf-ad-backlash
