Callaway Cut Good Good Loose and the CEO Broke an Eleven-Year Silence

Caption: A Callaway golf ball resting near the putting green. Credit: via Wikimedia Commons.

The Rupture

Callaway terminated its partnership with the golf media company Good Good effective immediately on Thursday, August 27, and pledged $1 million to violence-prevention and survivor organizations. On Friday at 3:38 in the morning Eastern time, Good Good chief executive Matt Kendrick posted on X for the first time since 2015, accusing Callaway of engineering the outcome.

Callaway, Kendrick wrote, asked Good Good to “make an ad then approves it then asks us to take the fall then drops us in a coordinated media blitz.” He also suggested the company had distracted from the decision by “giving a million dollars away.” The post drew 6.5 million views.

Hours later he softened it. “We loved being with Callaway for a long time,” he wrote. “They were nothing but great to us.”

The Advertisement

The spot promoted a co-branded driver. In it, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark shoves former Division I golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground while saying, “Do not touch my new driver.”

Good Good apologized on August 22. Callaway chief executive Chip Brewer apologized on Tuesday, August 25. “That approval should never have happened,” Brewer said. “Mistakes were made.”

What Good Good Has Actually Lost

Two things, both concrete. The Callaway equipment partnership is gone. And Good Good withdrew as title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s Good Good Championship, scheduled for November, which means a company that had put its name on a tour event no longer has one.

For a media brand built on equipment partnerships and tour proximity, those are the two assets that matter most.

Callaway Has Not Responded

Kendrick’s characterization of a coordinated media blitz is his account. Callaway had not publicly answered it, and the sequence Kendrick describes, in which the manufacturer approved the ad and then let the smaller partner absorb the blame, is his version of an internal approval process that neither company has documented publicly.

What is documented is the order of events. The ad ran. Good Good apologized first, on the 22nd. Brewer apologized on the 25th and said an approval had happened that should not have. The termination came on the 27th.

Two Days Between Apology and Termination

Brewer’s Tuesday statement conceded that Callaway approved the ad. The Thursday termination removed the partner. Whatever the internal reasoning, those two positions were taken forty-eight hours apart by the same company, and Kendrick’s 3:38 a.m. post is a response to that gap.

References: Callaway Golf CEO apologizes after Good Good ad showing male golfer shoving woman sparks backlash | Callaway severs ties with golf brand Good Good after controversial ad sparks outrage | Fallout from controversial golf ad deepens as Good Good loses deals with Callaway and PGA Tour