In 1982, in the PGA Tour event that was the precursor to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Jerry Pate made a hole-in-one on the iconic 16th hole at Cypress Point Club, which requires a shot that carries 230 yards over the Pacific Ocean. Next to him on the tee were fellow pros Tom Watson, Raymond Floyd and Tom Kite along with some stout amateur partners, including former President Gerald Ford and Clint Eastwood. The moment was immortalized by LeRoy Neiman, one of the most popular sports artists of the 1970s and 1980s. He painted the shot in his colorful style, with a focus on the ball flying over the intimidating expanse of sea to green.
Just one problem: Neiman painted the ball white. Pate later told him he hit an orange ball, so Neiman changed it.
Critics.
The painting hangs on the wall in the Cypress locker room with the original orange ball in a glass box next to it. A copy of that painting—one of 350 serigraphs—in 2026 will run you about $17,000.
Being a golf artist is different today. The most successful have shown a willingness to adapt how and what they paint. They gladly work with club committees on commissions that might be driven more by clubhouse space than artistic inspiration. Also, having some showmanship around their process doesn’t hurt either. If they can ascend to the inner circle of golf, the work and prime invites flow.
Lee Wybranski, a 10-handicap who has been making art since he was a kid, is arguably the most popular golf painter today, but his life isn’t all painting en plein air while well-struck 5-irons whiz past. His output is varied.
Wybranski designed the official championship poster for this year’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, as he has done for every U.S. Open since Torrey Pines in 2008. Back then, the USGA selected a new artist for each championship, but Wybranski’s poster sold double what any other U.S. Open poster had. Thus began a collaboration approaching two decades.
He also designs the official posters for the other three majors, the Ryder Cup, the Curtis and Walker Cups, and other marquee events for male and female golfers. These are first-tier commissions with the posters as the volume game. Priced at $30 each, Wybranski earns more when people buy direct from his website, less when he must split the price with the host body. But at Shinnecock, he could sell 10,000 posters during U.S. Open week.
Wybrankski holds on to the original and offers to sell it to either the host club or the champion, typically for around $25,000. Torrey bought that first one. Justin Rose, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy are some of the major champs who own originals.
Logo design and redesign is another lucrative outlet. Clubs typically pay $5,000 to $35,000, the higher end for a complete makeover of their logo and course identity and the lower prices for cleaning up the design a touch, as Wybranski did for Merion.
Often clubs want to memorialize their course routings in a piece that will hang prominently in the clubhouse. Those commissions run upward of $45,000, with additional prints costing clubs $250.
Wybranski began his art career doing pen-and-ink drawings of mansions on Philadelphia’s Main Line before getting the idea to paint golf clubhouses—where he could sell prints to many more members than a single homeowner. His earliest was of Winged Foot’s clubhouse in 1995. Then someone pointed out that golf was played in color. That changed his approach. He taught himself how to use watercolors, and he went on to paint most of the holes at Caves Valley as tee gifts for the annual member-guest.
“I didn’t feel like I was making a real living until the [2008] U.S. Open at Torrey Pines,” he says. “Today we’re booked out for a year. Being the U.S. Open artist really gave me status, and it took off with that collectability.”
PERFORMANCE ARTIST: Cassy Tully paints golf landscapes on grounds before live audiences. (Photograph courtesy of Cassy Tully)
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Golf art, like the game in general, is finding engagement through different means, and some artists work to meet that desire. Joe Woldt, a physical therapist, golfer and self-trained artist, has a burgeoning business drawing golf holes on the covers of scorecards. It started on a trip with three friends to Sand Valley, where afterward he gave each a card with a distinctive course image from their trip. “I tagged Sand Valley and posted them on Instagram,” he says. “My phone blew up.”
Woldt’s scorecard art sells for between $300 and $700, but he’s not quite ready to quit his day job.
Dave Baysden moonlighted for years as a golf artist while working at an engineering firm in Charlotte, N.C. Attention to his work was growing when COVID hit. With uncertainty at work, he volunteered to be laid off and went full time into golf art. He was friendly with Zac Blair, the PGA Tour golfer and founder of The Tree Farm. That connection opened his eyes to the world of golfers willing to pay for art that commemorates their trips.
Today, Baysden has a range of offerings. He’s created digital golf art that sells for $12. He’s made watercolor paintings that sell for up to $2,500 and which Seamus Golf has put on headcovers and B. Draddy will put on clothes. Baysden also drew cartoons for a book that the Arnold Palmer Invitational gave to children.
There is also a performative aspect to being a painter that can create opportunities. Wybranski was part of a Peter Millar ad where he painted outside. Woldt was invited to Erin Hills to paint No. 9 on video. Cassy Tully, who got her start at Whistling Straits, has made painting before a crowd part of her regular offering to fundraising clients. “My live paintings on course paired with a live auction have become very popular,” she says. Tully has partnered with PGA of America’s Reach Foundation after two recent championships to raise $70,000 for charity. She gets only a small portion, but that recognition helps her sell originals for $2,500 to $50,000 in her shop at Pinehurst.
Of course, some golf painters make much more. Graeme Baxter, once the official artist of the Open Championship, has sold oil paintings for half a million dollars. He’s squarely in the fine-art realm. He said he does not do posters or logos.
For Wybranski, posters are a democratizing force for collectors. “They’re priced so anyone can have one.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
