Golf creator company Good Good and equipment maker Callaway released a promotional video Friday, August 21, for a new co-branded driver. The video shows Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark charging across a tee box and shoving fellow creator Alexis Miestowski — a former Division I golfer — to the ground as she reaches for the new driver. He then says, "Do not touch my new driver." The video sparked immediate backlash. Good Good pulled it Saturday, about 24 hours after it went up. Good Good apologized on X that Saturday afternoon, and Callaway followed with its own weekend statement. Then, in the early hours of Tuesday, Callaway CEO Chip Brewer posted a longer statement admitting his own company had approved the ad before it ever went out. Now critics are going after that statement too.

1. This Is Misogyny, and It Needs Real Consequences (Jamie Klingler, Jasmine Sanders, Nicole Rae, Katie Ginella)

This camp says the ad wasn't a harmless misfire — and neither apology has actually owned that.

Golf keeps saying it wants more women. This ad said the opposite. Jasmine Sanders, who hosts CNN's "Living Golf" and runs The Jazzy Golfer, put it plainly: "Golf keeps talking about making the game more welcoming to women. You can't say that matters and then make violence towards a woman the punchline."

The companies missed the point entirely. That's Nicole Rae, a golf content creator and Skratch's social media director. The ad "endorses violence against women in the scariest and most threatening way," she said.

This needs a real consequence — words alone won't cut it. Jamie Klingler, who co-founded the UK anti-violence group Reclaim These Streets, put it bluntly: "The PGA should cut ties with Good Good." That's a jab at the Tour's business relationship with the company.

Brewer's Tuesday statement made things worse, not better. The statement never named women specifically. Reaction on social media was swift — "Not apologizing to women in this 'apology' is crazy," one person wrote. Michael McEwan, who heads content at the golf outlet The Bunker, called the original video and the apology together "awful, dreadful stuff, sickening, really." Golfer and former "Real Housewives" cast member Katie Ginella said she was done supporting either brand.

2. This Was Genuinely Bad — But Don't Try to Cancel Them, Fix It (Alison Root, Golf Monthly)

This camp agrees the ad was offensive, but says the real fight is over what Good Good's young audience learns from it — not whether the companies survive.

This was hard to watch, even for critics who understood it. Alison Root, writing for Golf Monthly, said she "completely understood why it hit such a raw nerve," calling it "deeply uncomfortable to watch."

What really worries her is who's actually watching Good Good. The company reaches a "massive, predominantly male audience of young men and boys who consume their content religiously," she wrote. Then she asked: "what does an ad like that teach young male golfers about how to treat female players?"

She wants the companies held accountable — not driven out of business. She titled her piece "Beyond the Backlash: Why Good Good and Callaway Need Accountability, Not Cancellation." That's a deliberate split from calls like Klingler's to cut ties.

3. The Approval Was the Failure, Not Who We Are (Chip Brewer, Good Good)

Both companies say this was a process breakdown they're already fixing, not a reflection of their values.

Brewer says Callaway approved something it shouldn't have, full stop. "That approval should never have happened," he wrote. "Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously."

He's pointing to concrete fixes, not just an apology. Callaway pulled the video as soon as it recognized the severity of the problem and launched internal and external investigations. The company has "already made changes to our approval processes aimed at ensuring this will never happen again," Brewer said.

He's also separating this video from the company's overall record. "We believe we have been a positive force for diversity and inclusion in the game of golf. This video was completely inconsistent with that," he wrote. Good Good's own apology made the same move, calling the video content that simply wasn't "aligned with our values as a brand."

Neither company has walked back the products entirely. Callaway pulled the co-branded driver listing from its own site, but as of Tuesday morning the same products were still for sale on Good Good's site.

Where This Lands

Nobody involved is defending the ad. Good Good and Callaway both apologized, and even Golf Monthly's sympathetic take calls it offensive. They just disagree about what happens next. Klingler and Sanders want real consequences, up to the PGA Tour cutting business ties with Good Good. Root wants accountability aimed at what Good Good's young male audience takes from it, without trying to take the companies down. Brewer is hoping that admitting the approval failure and showing process fixes will be enough to move past it. The PGA Tour, for its part, condemned the video but hasn't touched its Good Good Championship partnership.

Sources