A commercial meant to promote a new golf driver has instead cost Good Good Golf its biggest equipment partner, a PGA Tour sponsorship, and shelf space at major retailers, after the ad showed one of the company's co-founders shoving a female colleague to the ground.
The Ad
The commercial was produced to promote the Good Good x Callaway Quantum Driver, a co-branded club released through a three-year partnership between the golf equipment maker and Good Good, a media and apparel company that grew out of a popular YouTube channel. In the spot, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark rushes toward his golf bag as fellow Good Good talent Alexis Miestowski reaches for the new driver. Clark shoves her to the ground, then stands over her and warns her on camera.
"Do not touch my new driver," Clark says in the ad.
The commercial was posted to social media in the third week of August 2026 and was taken down not long after it began circulating. Viewers online described it as confusing and disturbing, with widespread criticism that the ad appeared to depict — and by extension trivialize — violence against a woman. The backlash escalated quickly beyond typical golf-industry commentary, reaching mainstream news coverage within days.
Miestowski, a former Division I collegiate golfer, is part of Good Good Girls, a women-focused YouTube channel Good Good launched in late 2025 featuring four former college golfers. According to Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick, who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, the ad was intended as a parody of "Obsession," a horror film that had been a hit earlier in the summer, but the concept did not land as planned.
Good Good's First Response Fell Flat
Good Good's initial public statement, posted that Saturday, said the ad "ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand," and that the company had taken the content down and apologized. The response did little to calm the backlash. Online commenters pointed out that the ad had been deliberately written, filmed, produced, and distributed across the company's channels before anyone objected to its content.
Criticism reached the top levels of professional golf. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp publicly condemned the spot, calling it "clearly not aligned with PGA Tour values." Rolapp also criticized Good Good's initial handling of the fallout as slow and defensive.
Two days after the ad first drew criticism, Callaway Golf CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged that his company had reviewed and signed off on the commercial before it was posted.
"That approval should never have happened," Brewer wrote in a statement, adding that Callaway was treating the matter seriously and offering a direct apology for the video.
Clark's Apology
On Wednesday night, Clark posted a roughly nine-minute video to his personal social media accounts addressing the controversy directly. He described the commercial in blunt terms, calling the concept a bad idea and saying he began regretting it within minutes of it going live. He also walked through behind-the-scenes footage intended to show that the fall was staged and that no one was actually struck during filming.
Clark used part of the video to address the treatment Miestowski had received since the ad went viral, saying she had been targeted with hateful messages and threats in her direct messages. He said the pile-on toward his colleague and his family had been difficult to watch, separate from the legitimate criticism of the ad itself.
Callaway Ends the Partnership
The apology tour did not stop the fallout. On Thursday, Callaway announced it was severing its three-year partnership with Good Good entirely. In a statement posted to social media, the company said it had spent the preceding days listening to people who shared personal experiences related to violence against women, and that the issue was one that touched far more people than the company had initially reflected.
Callaway also said it would commit $1 million to organizations working to prevent violence against women, and acknowledged that its own internal review process for approving marketing content had not been thorough enough to catch the problem before the ad was published.
Hours after the Callaway split became public, Good Good announced it was also stepping away as the named sponsor of a PGA Tour event scheduled to be held in Austin this fall — an event that had been positioned as a symbolic bridge between the PGA Tour's traditional audience and golf's newer generation of online-first personalities and media companies. Good Good said in its own statement that it recognized it had work to do internally and that it was focused on its team and culture going forward.
Good Good's Rise
Good Good started as a golf-focused YouTube channel built around Clark and a small group of friends filming themselves playing rounds, taking on challenges, and building out a personality-driven format that resonated with a younger, online-first golf audience. Over time, the operation expanded well beyond video content, growing into an independent media company with its own apparel line. Its hat designs in particular found shelf space at major golf retailers, including Golf Galaxy and PGA Tour Superstore, well before the Callaway partnership existed.
That growth was fueled in part by outside investment, with the company reportedly raising around $45 million from investors, including backers connected to Omaha-based interests. The Callaway partnership, which began in 2023, represented one of Good Good's most significant tie-ins with a legacy equipment brand — pairing an established manufacturer's engineering with Good Good's built-in audience and marketing reach. The Quantum Driver campaign was meant to be the latest expression of that partnership, positioning the new club as a co-branded product endorsed by personalities its audience already knew and trusted.
How the Ad Was Made
According to the account Clark gave in his apology video, the ad's concept was developed and filmed with the "Obsession" parody framing in mind from the start, rather than being an off-the-cuff decision by any single person involved. He walked through raw and behind-the-scenes clips showing the physical sequence had been choreographed and rehearsed, and that Miestowski's fall was staged rather than the result of an actual, unplanned collision. Clark said that context did not come through in the final edit, and that watching the finished commercial without that behind-the-scenes knowledge was enough to make him regret it almost immediately.
That gap between the ad's intended framing and how it read to viewers without any context is part of what fueled the speed and intensity of the backlash. A parody reference that may have been legible internally to the people who made it did not translate once the video was posted publicly and viewed on its own, without any signal that it was meant to riff on a movie rather than depict a real confrontation.
Retailers Pull Merchandise
The business consequences extended beyond Good Good's corporate partnerships. Major golf retailers, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, and PGA Tour Superstore, pulled Good Good merchandise from their shelves in the days following the controversy. Those retail relationships had been a significant part of Good Good's growth since it expanded from YouTube content into physical apparel, with the company's hat designs previously carried in stores nationwide.
The company's planned reality series with Golf Channel, "Big Break X Good Good," also saw its premiere postponed as the controversy unfolded, delaying what had been billed as a crossover moment between Good Good's online audience and traditional golf broadcasting.
Good Good had built its business over several years by growing from a YouTube channel into an independent media company with a broad social media following, backed in part by outside investment reported at around $45 million. Until this controversy, none of the company's prior content had generated attention or backlash reaching beyond its core golf audience in the way this single commercial did within days of release.
Where Things Stand
As of this writing, Good Good has lost its equipment partnership with Callaway, stepped back from its PGA Tour sponsorship, and seen its apparel pulled from several major retail chains. Clark has publicly apologized and attempted to explain the ad's origins as a failed parody concept, while defending Miestowski from the online abuse she faced in the aftermath.
Neither Callaway nor Good Good has indicated whether further consequences, personnel changes, or business impacts are expected as the situation continues to develop. The episode has become one of the most consequential brand controversies in golf in recent memory, turning what was meant to be a routine product promotion into a broader reckoning over how the ad was conceived, reviewed, and ultimately approved by two companies with long-standing reputations in the sport.
