Can golf be cool? This luxury fashion brand insists it can

(CNN) — Golf’s first superstar, Bobby Jones, once described the sport as “the closest game to the game we call life.” Decades later, golf is being compared to broccoli.

The analogy is being made by the co-founder of Whim Golf, a luxury apparel brand and design studio encouraging those with no interest in the game to – quite literally – try their greens.

“People don’t try golf the same way they don’t try broccoli, because they don’t think that they’re going to like it,” co-founder Colin Heaberg told CNN.

“How do you get people to try something they think they don’t like?”

“A little different”

Addressing that question has been Whim’s primary objective since Heaberg and business partner Will Gesel founded what was initially a boutique fashion brand in July 2019.

Clothes have been the primary answer, with a pop-up shop in Chicago marking the company’s launch. There, potential customers could peruse a range of “classic American sportswear;” button-down shirts, polos, shorts and more.

None of the items on the racks would have looked wildly out of place on the fairway, yet the intention was never to reinvent the wheel. Instead, Whim was targeting a specifically broad target market: “People who like X, Y, Z – and golf.”

“There’s a lot of people for whom golf is their whole personality, but for a lot of people who are interested in our brand, they have a whole other set of interests,” Heaberg explained.

“There’s plenty of people who buy our stuff who are never going to play golf, but they just like how we do it. A lot of the clothes that we’re making are pretty approachable – we’re not making the craziest Rick Owens polo or something like that. We’re making pretty good, clean stuff – just a little different.”

Just how different Whim can be while working around a sporting style that – even the most die-hard golfer will likely admit – has a reputation for strict monotony is a dilemma that its founders wrestle with regularly.

Outliers exist, and seem to be emerging with increasingly regularity: golf-mad rapper Macklemore launched clothing line Bogey Boys in 2021 to satiate players who “want to stick out,” an aim Australia’s Jason Day met emphatically at this year’s Masters, in April, when he teed up at Augusta National in an eye-catching sleeveless jumper designed by lifestyle brand Malbon Golf.

Even so, Heaberg remains “uninterested” in the wardrobe choices of the game’s top players. Here, he uses another analogy, about fashion outside of golf. “If you’re looking at the best style, you’re not going to just be looking at movie stars – Ryan Gosling – those people, they just don’t have it,” he said.

The fact that Day was subsequently asked to remove his flamboyant top by Masters officials is testament to Heaberg’s belief that much of golf continues to operate according to a rigid dress code.

“I think it’s hard to make actual market change because the rest of the market thinks that there’s nothing wrong with what they’re currently doing, and are not comfortable with change,” he reflected.

“We’ve always tried to be really constructive about it and not tell people like, ‘We hate your pink striped polo. “We’re like, ‘That’s cool, but this stuff also works.’”

“Free Golf”

Yet what truly separates Whim from other brands is what lies underfoot at the seven pop-ups it has opened across its five-year history.

Each store is fitted with fully playable putting greens made from artificial turf, free to play for passers-by in any of the major cities they have sprung up in, including New York and Los Angeles. Over 15,000 people have been welcomed to the game at their installations.

Whim has expanded to an online shop, produced “countless” art pieces, sold directly to country clubs, and last month unveiled a sneaker collaboration with sportswear giant Reebok – “a dream fulfilled” for Heaberg. Yet clothes are merely the “carrot” to get people, especially those in urban areas, to pick up a club and hole their first putt.

“Everybody jumps like a kid when they finally do the thing that they’ve been trying to do and it works. That’s why we’re doing it – just to really expose people,” he said.

“A little girl gets on the bus and sees a soccer field or a basketball court and sees people doing that, and they tell their parents, ‘I wanna do that.’ If you don’t see golf, it’s hard to know you want to do it.

“Just let people see the thing, and the more you see it, the more you can see yourself within it.”

The putting green installations, dubbed the “Free Golf Initiative,” are part of the brand’s aim to “democratize” a sport that they say has “been held hostage by the general public’s misconceptions over who belongs in the game.”

The ultimate goal: convert as many golfers as possible between the ages of 18 and 34 so that, in a decade’s time, their children can lead a “youth movement” in the sport.

“You’d hear all this stuff about ‘grow the game’ and all these insider golf people would kind of have this lip service about how they’re trying to make it a more diverse and welcoming place,” Heaberg said.

“And we would always just be like, ‘You guys are just not doing anything, though.
You’ve got to do the work.’ We can’t just hire some diversity on the business and be like, ‘Alright, we did it!’ You’ve got to really get out there and put clubs in people’s hands.

“That’s the only metric there is – how many people are touching clubs?”

The-CNN-Wire
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