Callaway breaks with golf media company Good Good after blowback to controversial ad

Callaway Cuts Ties With Good Good After Viral Ad Shows Co-Founder Shoving Female Golfer to the Ground

Sandego.net – The partnership between golf equipment giant Callaway and internet-media outfit Good Good has been dissolved following a week of sustained public outrage over a promotional video in which one of Good Good’s co-founders physically shoved a woman onto the turf. The split, announced by Callaway in a post on X, marks a sharp escalation in what began as a single awkward clip and quickly metastasized into a broader reckoning about how brands vet creative content featuring real people.

The Ad That Sparked the Firestorm

The video, uploaded the previous week, depicted Garrett Clark — a co-founder of Good Good — delivering a shoulder-check to Alexis Miestowski, a female golfer on the company’s roster, sending her to the ground as she reached toward a co-branded Good Good x Callaway driver. The clip was meant to dramatize an obsessive attachment to the club, but audiences read it as a casual act of aggression against a woman, and the reaction was swift and severe. Both companies pulled the advertisement within hours, yet the damage to reputations had already been done.

Questions piled up almost immediately: How did a video showing a man physically knocking a woman down clear internal review? Why was it approved for publication by a major equipment manufacturer? Callaway’s chief executive acknowledged earlier in the week that the company had watched the finished cut and given it the green light before it went live.

Callaway’s Public Response

In its formal statement, Callaway framed the episode as a failure of process rather than of intent, while simultaneously acknowledging the emotional weight of what viewers experienced.

“Over the last several days, we have listened and reflected deeply on the hurt and disappointment caused by the video we reposted. We heard from individuals who shared personal experiences related to violence against women, and their stories were powerful reminders that this issue touches the lives of far too many people. Unequivocally, violence against women is unacceptable and should never be trivialized, normalized, or used as entertainment.”

The company added that its content-review pipeline had not been thorough enough in this instance and that internal corrective measures had been implemented, including a significant tightening of approval procedures. Callaway also committed a one-million-dollar donation to organizations dedicated to preventing violence against women, supporting survivors, and advancing public education on the issue.

“We sincerely apologize to everyone who was hurt, disappointed, or offended by this incident.”

The statement stopped short of claiming the episode was fully resolved, noting that many people still felt wounded and that such hurt is not easily undone.

Clark’s Apology and Explanation

Garrett Clark took to social media on Wednesday with a video apology addressed both to his own role in the clip and to Good Good as an organization.

“This is not, at all, what we stand for. The way this ad was received is not how Good Good is and not what we stand for once again. I want everyone to know that. I do not support (domestic violence), abuse or any of that.”

Clark then offered what he called “some clarity” on the creative premise, drawing a parallel to the 2026 film Obsession, directed by 26-year-old YouTuber Curry Barker. In that movie, a character becomes so fixated on an object that anyone who touches it is metaphorically “possessed” by the obsession. Clark said the ad was supposed to mirror that logic — he was meant to be so consumed by his driver that Miestowski’s attempt to touch it triggered a physical reaction. In hindsight, however, he called the concept “super dumb” and the finished product “the worst ad known to man,” admitting his skin crawled within minutes of seeing it posted, long before the wider backlash surfaced.

He characterized the criticism of the ad itself as “very justified” but pushed back against the stream of hate messages and death threats that Miestowski received in her direct messages, calling those responses disproportionate and unwarranted.

Commercial Fallout for Good Good

The commercial stakes for Good Good are substantial. Multiple reports this week indicated that major golf retailers are removing the company’s merchandise from shelves. Because merchandise sales constitute a large share of Good Good’s revenue, a prolonged shelf-pull would represent a serious hit to the company’s bottom line. The brand built its audience through social-media videos showcasing its personalities playing golf, but the monetization model leans heavily on apparel, accessories, and branded gear rather than advertising alone.

Context: The Rise of Online Golf Media

Good Good was founded in 2020 and rose to prominence during the pandemic period, when lockdowns drove audiences toward short-form video content and golf’s traditional, staid marketing felt increasingly out of step with younger viewers. A wave of similar companies emerged, pairing charismatic personalities with fast-cut editing and irreverent humor. Their success ignited a long-running debate inside the sport: whether loud, personality-driven content is the right vehicle for promoting a game whose cultural identity has historically emphasized quiet decorum, etiquette, and understated elegance.

The controversy over the Clark-Miestowski clip lands squarely in the middle of that debate. Legacy equipment brands, long associated with conservative sponsorship norms, have increasingly courted these online personalities to reach younger demographics. Callaway’s own co-branded driver with Good Good was part of that strategy. The episode now forces a harder question: whether the speed and informality of internet-native content creation can be reconciled with the review standards that traditional manufacturers are expected to uphold, and whether a single viral moment can undo years of careful brand-building on both sides of a partnership.

For now, the partnership is over. The merchandise is coming off shelves. The apology has been issued, the donation pledged, and the review process formally tightened. Whether the trust of consumers, retailers, and the broader golf community can be rebuilt — on either side of the split — remains an open question that neither company has yet answered.