Tiger Woods is still the greatest professional golfer…off the course
Scottie Scheffler hopes to match Tiger Woods’ dominance on the court, but the 15-time major champion remains the key to generating business for unrelated stakeholders.
Woods will help negotiate with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund to become a new minority investor in PGA Tour Enterprises. Strategic Sports Group has already invested $1.5 billion in the new commercial entity.
Meanwhile, his participation in the PGA Championship alone should be good news for ESPN, which will broadcast the first two rounds. With Woods racing toward a Masters berth, ESPN averaged 3.4 million viewers for the first and second rounds, the network’s largest two-day audience since 2018.
Woods, who ended a 27-year relationship with Nike, is wearing a new brand this season, Sunday Red, which unveiled its first collection this month. Sunday Red will be sold exclusively on its website this year, but plans call for the brand to begin offering youth and women’s clothing in addition to its men’s line in 2025, and to be available in wholesale stores.
Sunday Red executives have not ruled out exploring the possibility of sponsoring other professional golfers in the future, or even reviving the iconic T.W. Woods logo made famous by Nike. “It will be his decision,” said BRAD BLANKIN, president of Sun Day Red, reported the front office sport. The main logo of Sunday Red Jigle designed with a brush. “At this point he’s said it’s in the past and he’s ready to move on, so time will tell and it will be Tiger’s decision.”
At Valhalla, Woods will wear head-to-toe Sunday red. That last part is crucial for the golfer, who has struggled at times to navigate the course since he was in a car accident in 2021 and suffered serious injuries to his right ankle. Woods stopped wearing Nike golf shoes, switching to FootJoy models. “The good news is Tiger is in place and they’re doing a good job for him,” Blanksip said. “It’s happening very quickly, a little faster than we would have imagined at this point.”
The Sunday Red Shoes won’t be available to the public until 2025, but Woods is heavily involved in all aspects of the testing. “He has a really unique and insightful perspective and decades of knowledge,” Blankinship said. “Especially with the shoes, he was involved every step of the way, from the number of studs to how the laces were going to be, to the type of leather we used.”
Most of Woods’ clubs are made by TaylorMade, Sunday Red’s parent company, but he plays with Bridgestone Tour B X model balls. Naturally, Bridgestone has a special-edition Tiger Woods version of the ball, which has seen a surge in sales and online and social media traffic during the weeks Woods plays professionally.
But Bridgestone, which has partnered with Woods since 2017, relies on him for more than just sales. “The interesting thing about Tiger is that it can provide feedback beyond what we can capture with launch monitors,” Elliott Mellow, Bridgestone’s head of golf ball marketing, told FOS . Woods’ experience makes him more valuable than other professional golfers when it comes to testing. “He can say something.” This doesn’t work for me. He’s too expensive, but you can see this ball works for this type of player. “” In other words, Tiger’s comments have a major impact on Bridgestone’s entire product line. »
