The grip golfers couldn’t care less about. Until they did

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By Tyler Moore

Tyler Moore spent 5 years as agency CSO leading Golf Pride’s brand transformation. Here’s what he and his team did that worked, what didn’t, and what any operator can steal.

The Golf Pride brand wasn’t broken.

Here’s what was working: a category leader with more than 50 years of history. 97% Tour

usage, without paying a dime for it. The obvious leader in swing grips, headquartered on golf’s hallowed ground, Pinehurst. But we were almost invisible to the everyday golfer, the one who plays without being defined by the game. They didn’t see the benefit of regripping. Some didn’t even know you could.

Most brands fight to get noticed. We had to fight complacency, a tougher problem to solve, and a harder one to diagnose.

START WITH WHY, NOT WHAT’S NEW

The instinct with any legacy brand is to lead with new product news. New material, new texture, new tech. We tried that. We spent significant money proving a simple performance claim, and even helped build a research department around it.

The claim: a fresh set of grips gives you two extra yards. We thought this was the smoking gun, so we built content, ads and retail messaging around it.

It bombed. People called total BS on it.

That failure taught me more than a successful campaign would have. Functional claims don’t move belief. Golfers don’t trust a number they can’t see proven in their own play.

After a lot of soul-searching and real conversations with golfers, we found a stronger hook: an emotional belief. Grips give you confidence in your hands, a connection felt on every swing. That became the platform.

BUILD A PLATFORM AND ESCAPE CONVENTIONS

Once we had the belief, we needed something big enough to carry it. That became Respect TheGrip, Golf Pride’s shift from category convention into culture. It gave the brand real swagger, permission to talk about identity, not just specs.

ALIGN Max proved it. Instead of another product launch, we took it off the course entirely, onto the streets of Chicago. Game Will Travel leaned into urban activations, real culture, real energy, a golf product behaving like a lifestyle brand instead of hiding in a pro shop. That’s the moment.

Respect The Grip stopped being a tagline and started being proof.

GROW THE AUDIENCE WITHOUT ABANDONING THE CORE

Golf Pride’s existing audience was traditional and demographic-led, hardcore performance

players who knew the category cold. Growth meant finding a broader, more cultural audience without alienating the base. A small needle to thread. On top of that, there was no budget for a multi-month segmentation study.

So I took matters into my own hands.

I went dark for a month. Or what felt like it. Reddit threads. Surveys pushed to hundreds of golfers in my own network—one-on-ones with golfers who didn’t fit the old profile. AI to stress-test hypotheses. Social listening to hear what golfers said when nobody was briefing them.

What came out of it: the Soulful Golfer, people drawn to the game’s identity as much as its scorecard. We modeled the revenue lift and lifetime value so leadership could see it as additive, not fluffy.

Internal alignment is its own strategic problem, separate from the external brand work, and it’s the one most operators underestimate.

MAKE RETAIL FEEL LIKE A BRAND MOMENT

Golf retail is a dinosaur, but a necessary one. Walk into a PGA Tour Superstore, and you’ll find grips sold out of bins that look like trash cans. We knew our Soulful Golfer wouldn’t believe a grip mattered until they felt the difference. We built a Retail Lab at headquarters and partnered with PGA Tour Superstore and Golf Galaxy to replace static bins with real, hands-on connection stations.

Retail stopped being a distribution afterthought and became a brand experience. If your product has a physical advantage, give people a reason to touch it.

LET CULTURE PROVE THE BELIEF IS REAL

The clearest signal your brand equity is genuine is when people want the product without you buying their attention. Our quarterly limited-edition drops, Masters Week, James Bond, a Steph Curry partnership, and the vintage vault started selling out on organic content alone. We turned off paid media entirely and let a vocal audience do the rest.

If you can’t imagine your product selling itself through culture and community, you probably haven’t found the real belief yet.

WHAT I’D TELL ANY OPERATOR SITTING WHERE I STARTED

Classic brands don’t need a complete overhaul. They need someone willing to find the belief that built their leadership and re-energize it. We didn’t change who Golf Pride was; we told the story through a sharper, more golfer-centric lens.

The moment you stop asking why anyone should care right now, you start coasting instead of earning attention. Golf Pride had every advantage a brand could want, and none of it mattered until we gave people a reason to feel something about it again.

For you data gurus saying ok, this is nice and all. Show me it worked. Here you go.

Revenue increased 76%. Amazon sales up 57%. Social media following grew 10X. Every Limited Edition drop sold out. I’m currently exploring my next chapter in golf brand leadership. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to keep the conversation going.

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