This article is part of "The Business of Sports," a series on the teams, leagues, and brands turning competition into big business.
We're in the midst of a golf renaissance in the United States. Americans played a record 545 million rounds in 2025, according to the National Golf Foundation. Gen Z is picking up on what was long considered an old-money, old-people sport. The golf polo has become a status symbol among a certain type of striving guy. Golf courses and clubs are capitalizing on the links revival in a number of ways, and one of the most profitable is their merch. They know some of their logos are a hot commodity among those in the know, and the more exclusive, the better. They're catering to golfers who are seeking a lovely 18-hole day and looking to grab a collectible or 10 to commemorate it.
"It's a little trophy," says Greg Nathan, the president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation, a trade association for the golf business. And a lucrative one at that.
Historically, a golf course's pro — the person who manages much of the facility and provides lessons — typically owned and ran its retail operation, hence calling it a "pro shop." Revenue from the store was part of the pro's compensation. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, a lot of golf courses were built around the US, and the market became oversupplied by the time the Great Recession hit, adding to the economic turmoil. So some clubs went looking for ways to make money.
Over the past couple of decades, courses have taken over the pro shops themselves and brought in retail professionals to handle the business of selling their stuff. Even clubs that weren't hurting picked up on how lucrative the business is. The Association of Golf Merchandisers estimates golf shops generate annual sales of over $1 billion a year.
The real juice, clout-wise, is with the top 500 or so private clubs and resorts.
"Today, with everything being so much driven by online shopping, having a physical shop at a club, I think, still provides that hands-on, touchy-feely experience that people enjoy," says Patrick Casey, the president of the Association of Golf Merchandisers and the founder of Casey's Club Consulting.
Retail operations aren't the end-all, be-all of golf club revenue. Membership dues, daily fees, food, beverage, and cart fees all rank above it, says Jeffrey Davis, the managing director of Fairway Advisors, a golf course brokerage and advisory firm. But it doesn't mean they're not important, from a sales perspective and a marketing one.
"People that are building new courses today are cognizant of their logo and the impact it would have on spreading the word about the club," he says. For clubs and courses that don't put time and energy into merchandise, it can be a "missed opportunity." And some clubs that have changed logos have gone back to their original ones, to reclaim some historical mystique.
But as more courses get in on the merch game, gear from all of them is not created equal. There are some 16,000 golf courses in the United States, and the real juice, clout-wise, is with the top 500 or so private clubs and resorts.
"Those 500 courses, they do some very serious revenue because it's very logo-driven," Nathan says.
It's like going to Disney.
When golf courses renovate — as many of them are doing right now — they often look at the internal facilities, too, including their shops. A well-appointed shop is a place for members at private clubs to pick up gear for themselves (often at a friendly price) and show off to their guests, who can also pick up stuff (at a not-as-friendly price). The markups on branded items and general gear can be quite large, given how exclusive the logos are and the fact that the customer is a little trapped. If you forgot golf balls for the day, the ones at the course are going to cost you.
As logo collecting has become more of a thing among golfers, clubs are figuring out new ways to capitalize. For example, some are leaning into e-commerce so that they don't have to stock all of their merchandise, and if people come to play for a day and don't have time for shopping, they can pick up gear online. (This may open up some breaches of the unwritten rule that people can't wear logos of courses they haven't played, but we'll leave that for another day.) For the courses and clubs that do merch right, "it's like found money," Davis says.
"It's a very positive time for the golf industry right now," Nathan says. Logo-mania is part of it. The more popular the sport becomes, the more the merch matters — at least for those in the know. "It's like going to Disney," he says. "You're going to get some souvenirs."
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
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