Matt Kendrick never saw the ad that just cost his company its biggest sponsor, and he’s now saying Callaway’s own marketing team signed off on it too.
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Good Good Golf was doing really well just a week ago. It had grown from a YouTube channel into a golf equipment company that has raised $45 million from investors like Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions. They even landed a title sponsorship on the PGA Tour. Then one driver ad changed everything, and now, Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick has finally opened up about what happened behind the scenes.
It all actually started with the controversy that began with a Good Good and Callaway ad for their co-branded Quantum Driver. The video was a parody of the movie Obsession. In it, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark pushed fellow member Alexis Miestowski to the ground when she reached for the driver. He then stood over her and said, “Do not touch my new driver.” The ad quickly faced backlash, with many people saying it made light of violence against women. Good Good removed the ad and posted an unsigned apology last Saturday. However, the company did not explain how the ad was approved in the first place.
Then, on Wednesday, Garrett Clark released an eight-to-nine-minute video about the controversy. He called it “the worst ad known to man,” but seemed to put some of the blame on Good Good’s marketing team instead of taking full responsibility himself.
Thursday is when the dominoes actually fell. Callaway formally severed its partnership, stating, “These actions do not undo the harm caused or excuse our role in it,” and pledged $1 million to organizations combating violence against women. Good Good responded by stepping away from its title sponsorship of the Tour’s Austin event, and Golf Channel canceled the upcoming season of Big Break, which had been offering a spot in that same tournament as its grand prize.
Kendrick didn’t take the Callaway split quietly. On Thursday night, he posted on X saying, “Interesting that @CallawayGolf asks us to make an ad, then approves it, then asks us to take the fall, then drops us in a coordinated media blitz and covers it up by giving a million dollars away, thinking everyone will be ok with it. 30 for 39 will be legendary.” The caption was a joke referencing ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series.
The post went viral, garnering nearly 4.5 million views in less than seven hours. In one reply that has since been deleted, Kendrick also said he wasn’t “opposed” to suing Callaway. At the time, many people took that as a sign that he was seriously considering legal action.
The Behind-the-Scenes, Straight From Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick Himself
In a Friday interview with Front Office Sports, Kendrick explained on the record exactly what happened.
“No, I did not see the ad before it was released,” he said flatly.
Kendrick laid out exactly how the approval happened:
“Our marketing team saw it. Callaway said they approved it, and that went through their marketing team, as well. So, both sides saw it. I don’t approve every social post that goes up, that doesn’t come across my desk. Just like it wouldn’t go across (Callaway CEO) Chip Brewer’s desk.”
That is not just Kendrick’s version, either. It matches what Chip Brewer himself had already admitted days earlier in Callaway’s own statement: “While the video was produced by Good Good, it was approved by Callaway prior to posting. That approval should never have happened.”
Two CEOs, on opposite sides of a broken partnership, telling the same story about who actually signed off on the ad before it aired.
Kendrick also walked through his own timeline of finding out. “I was actually out of town, so I wasn’t in office when it came out. I didn’t see it initially when it went up, either. But my team informed me that they had pulled it down, and then I saw it. And after I saw it, I was like, ‘this isn’t acceptable.'”
There were real consequences internally too, confirmed directly by Kendrick. Asked if anyone from the marketing team had been punished, he said simply: “We removed people responsible for the ad.” He didn’t specify whether that meant termination or reassignment.
As for that “not opposed to suing” remark from his early morning tweet storm, Kendrick was clear it was never a real threat. Asked point blank whether legal action against Callaway was actually on the table, he walked it all the way back: “No, we’re not thinking about that. It was just off the cuff responding to a comment.” In other words, that was Twitter venting, not a legal strategy.
The deal was set to end year-end, but both sides were in extension talks when the ad derailed everything.
“Our deal was up at the end of this year… Yeah, we were in talks about extending it.”
Even after PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp criticized Good Good’s response to the controversy, Kendrick praised the Tour’s communication and said he hopes to work together again someday. He said something similar about Golf Channel too. He called executives Tom Knapp and Glenn Grimshaw “stand-up individuals” and said he considers them friends.
“I think the biggest thing is we realized we have to put better processes in place and we’re doing that.”
Basically, this whole situation showed Good Good that it needs better checks before putting ads out. The big question now is whether the company can rebuild the trust it had before all of this happened.