Honestly, thank god April Fools is over. Especially if you’re in (golf) media, every single thing you see over those 24 hours is a red flag or a correction to be made later. Tiger Woods is in on it this year. Also, the Masters? Stay away from Reddit, Twitter, Instagram … actually, just get off your phone and remember what it’s like to breathe in some fresh air.
Although it might seem like a ridiculous prank, now that it’s safely past that dreaded holiday we can officially announce that Sunday Golf is actually signing Happy Gilmore to an NIL deal. OK, so this Happy Gilmore is a freshman golfer at Ball State, but facts are facts. Sunday Golf is, of course, leaning into the signing, which is both the meta joke of all meta jokes and a clear tip of the cap to this young, talented golfer.
RELATED: Happy Gilmore commits to college and rightfully gets a shout-out from Adam Sandler
“I flew out there, and I connected with everybody there pretty well. I wanted to see what they’re working on when it comes to golf bags,” Gilmore said on why he connected with Sunday Golf. “They market, so to speak, with kind of the laid-back, chill golf vibe, which is what I like personally. I don’t really like the whole country club stuck-up type thing.”
Sunday Golf is far from that, a San Diego brand that started with a par-3 bag to not throw your back out with too many clubs and prides itself on being “a bit more relatable than aspirational.” This timely signing with the recently released “Happy Gilmore 2” trailer follows in the footsteps of Sunday Golf’s gimmicky, headline-grabbing deals from first-grader Patton Green to marketing exec Tom Brady. Of course, that mix-up was completely intentional. We hope.
“We gotta fight tooth and nail to draw attention versus sponsoring a player on tour or running large TV commercials,” said Ronan Galvin, CEO and co-founder of Sunday Golf. “We obviously don’t have the budget for that, so we just have to get very creative on how we can drive attention back to the golf bags.”
Happy Gilmore will work with Sunday Golf on social posts and guerilla marketing schemes (like this clip) through the end of the season with an emphasis on growing the youth game. Gilmore’s already made some tweaks to his Ryder Bag. The man knows what he wants.
“It just kind of looks like a second grader wrote his name on the golf bag. I guess that’s the best way to describe it,” Gilmore explained. “I started it last year. It was kind of a funny thing ’cause I had this bag, and I couldn’t get my name embroidered on it in time for a tournament, so I had this dumb idea. And it looked terrible! But it got so many people talking about it. I was just like, well, I guess this is kinda my thing now.”
Happy Gilmore’s personalized Sunday Golf font
Despite being around five years old, Sunday Golf has made it into Dick’s Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, the PGA Tour Superstore and now “Happy Gilmore” lore. Whatever gets eyeballs on the product is a victory, and the brand has no reason to doubt that the Ball State up-and-comer will stick around.
“If it works out well for both parties, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be back, especially given how good of a golfer he is,” Galvin added.
Go get em Happy. Pulling for you. https://t.co/4o4LOoAWDN
— Adam Sandler (@AdamSandler) June 23, 2023
In fact, in his first season at Ball State, Gilmore finished in third place at the Golfweek “Put Me In Coach” Invitational and had another top-five performance at the Purdue Fall Invite Individual. The goal now is to get ready for the Mid-American Conference Championship and help the Cardinals go back-to-back in league titles.
“My mentality is just win by as many as you can,” Gilmore said. “But I guess on a better note, I just want to make as few mistakes as possible.”
That first line sounds like Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore through and through. It took the character a lifetime to learn that second idea, though, and somehow, this college freshman is already there. Sunday Golf seems to be backing the right horse.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
