He challenged and rushed Good Golf to apologize after the joint to the retired in a major way. The now-deleted ad — which featured a man pushing a woman to the ground over a driver — drew fierce criticism for disparaging domestic violence.
The Good Golf video was first posted on Friday. A day later, the video was deleted and the company released a statement apologizing.
The ad was for a co-noted driver with Callaway. In it, Good Golf co-founder Garrett Clark runs and content creator Alexis Miestowski runs to the ground before Clark can reach it. Clark says sinisterly, “Don’t let me touch the new driver,” as Miestowski puts it on the ground.
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Here it is now deleted if that description doesn’t sound alarming enough:
On Tuesday morning, Callaway responded, releasing a lengthy statement apologizing for the video approval and release.
In a statement, Callaway clarified that the video was produced by Bono Golf, but was approved by Callaway before it was posted. “That approval never happened,” the statement stated.
The challenge is declared “unequivocally against discrimination, domestic violence, or threatening behavior of any kind.” The company also announced that internal and external investigations would be conducted and said it had already changed its approval process so that “this will never happen.”
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PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp was asked about the film on Tuesday before the Tour Championship. He recently shared a tour with Bono, and later this fall he will be hosting Bono at the Austin Championship.
“I think what we’ve seen about ourselves is clearly not aligned with the values of the PGA Tour,” Rolapp said. “We take it very seriously. I think their first response was too soon. It was a bit defensive and late.
“But I think the answers are better. I think we’ve seen some things this morning, we’ve had conversations with them, so we’ll continue to monitor and work with them moving forward. But we’re not disappointed by what we’ve seen.”
He started off as a good YouTube channel, but eventually grew into a golf sponsor. The company is the title sponsor of the Good Golf Championship which will take place in November.
As a result of the ad and backlash that ensued, the Golf Channel announced Tuesday night that it would delay the debut of its “Big Break” reboot. One of the sponsors of the show, told the Golf Galaxy seller, asked to have his brand removed from the series. The reboot of the series is titled “Big Break x Good Good”.