Why Tiger Woods got new clothes

There are moments when Tiger Woods is testing products when his otherworldly feel and perception becomes apparent—like noticing a miniscule air bubble underneath a golf grip or subtle differences in sound when a golf ball leaves the putter face.

Brad Blankinship learned this early in his tenure as Sun Day Red’s president. During button testing for future polos—yes, that’s a thing—Woods was relaying feedback on the shirt draping his chiseled frame. Although pearl buttons offered a refined look, Woods said he required snap closures for range training to avoid blowing the buttons off the shirt at higher swing speeds.

The request sounded ludicrous.

Not quite sure if Woods was being serious, Blankinship pressed for proof.

“In my head I was thinking there’s no way he’s blowing out buttons,” Blankinship says. “No one does that. I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me or being serious.”

Woods went back to taking rips on the range and returned two minutes later to show Blankinship a spot on the shirt where a pearl button once resided. The brand’s TW Performance polo now comes replete with dual secure placket-snaps.

These days, social media makes it difficult to discern between authenticity and online marketing magic. Just because an athlete or celebrity has his or her name, image and likeness attached to a product doesn’t mean that person is actively involved in the development.

Tiger is aware of the skepticism. Before he’s hardly had time to settle into a chair in the grill room at Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., the 49-year-old makes one thing abundantly clear: He isn’t in the business of slapping his name on polos and calling it a day—not when it comes to a brand that he believes is part of his legacy.

“This isn’t a side project,” Woods says. “I’ve always been deeply involved in the creation process. That goes back to before Sun Day Red. That was head-totoe and even on the hard-goods side [with Nike]. This is no different. I want it to be authentic and real. If I’m wearing it, there’s no reason the consumer can’t wear it. That’s important.”

Up until a few years ago, Woods appeared destined to wear the Swoosh forever. Outside of Michael Jordan, no recent athlete embodied the Nike persona more than Woods, who made his pro debut in 1996 and helped build the TW brand into a behemoth that, at one point, housed game-shaping golf apparel and equipment under one roof.

While the club and ball businesses eventually dissolved in 2016, Woods continued to be the face on the soft-goods side even as Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and other high-profile golfers joined Nike’s tour stable. No one was going to usurp the G.O.A.T. as the face of Nike Golf.

Then came the big shakeup. Just over a year after sustaining serious leg injuries during a car crash, Woods returned to the course at the 2022 Masters wearing a pair of FootJoy golf shoes—and the golf world lost its mind. The face of Nike Golf was sending a message that he needed more leg and foot stability on the course.

“I have very limited mobility now,” Woods said in 2022. “Just with the rods and plates and screws that are in my leg, I needed something different, something that allowed me to be more stable. That’s what I’ve gone to. Nike’s been fantastic over the years of providing me with equipment. We’ve been working on trying to find something to allow me to do this and swing again.”

Nike released a statement confirming the company was working with Woods “to meet his new needs,” but nothing materialized in the short-term. The lack of answers led the industry to wonder where Tiger and Nike were headed.

On a cold, dreary Scottish Tuesday morning during the 2022 Open Championship, David Abeles, TaylorMade Golf’s president and CEO, and Eddie Erkmanis, TaylorMade’s vice president of global sports marketing, made their way to a castle outside St. Andrews’ city limits for what was supposed to be a routine meeting with Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent at Excel Sports Management.

The face-to-face chat was meant to give Abeles and Erkmanis a chance to update Steinberg on future TaylorMade products and their continued work with Woods and other players Excel represented.

Steinberg was waiting outside the castle when the two arrived.

“It was cold,” Abeles recalled. “It was probably 40 degrees, and Mark mentions he wants to talk to us outside about something they’ve been thinking about. There’s a coffee container at a picnic table nearby and a couple of now-frozen bagels on a plastic plate. We’d just had one hell of an Uber ride from our rented home to this castle. Stepping inside where it was warm seemed like a better idea.”

But Steinberg insisted on meeting outside. Cold bagels, it was. As the trio settled onto the frigid wood planks, Abeles started to understand why this meeting needed to be away from prying ears.

“Mark subtly intimated, and he’s one of the great professionals in our sport, that Tiger was considering his options upon the expiration of his agreement with his existing endorser,” Abeles says. “This was about pursuing something else that could build upon his playing legacy, his greatness today and how his life will evolve in the future. Mark wanted to know if that was something we could provide an opinion on.”

In agent-speak, Steinberg was giving Abeles a heads-up that Tiger was going to be looking for a new apparel home, and TaylorMade was up for consideration.

To Abeles, the meeting felt like a signal to pursue Woods and pitch him on something special. TaylorMade conducted its own hunt to find a suitable partner for a merger or acquisition, but nothing materialized.

Abeles assembled a small “swat team” of TaylorMade’s best and brightest to bring a brand concept to Woods. Scott Frost, who was TaylorMade’s associate director of global brand marketing at the time and would eventually become Sun Day Red’s director of marketing, was part of the initial team that birthed the idea of a lifestyle brand centered around the most marketable name in golf.

Spending countless hours dreaming up ideas and thinking outside the box was the fun part. The pitch several months later at Woods’ home office in Jupiter was agonizing.

“Tiger’s so focused when he’s in meetings,” Frost says. “It’s sometimes difficult to tell what he’s thinking until he speaks. We made this video to show him what the brand could be, and we’re all watching him to gauge his reaction. It felt like time slowed to a crawl.”

The two-minute video showed Woods footage from his biggest on-course triumphs, early-morning workouts and rigorous practice sessions. “We’re not merely creating a clothing label or a shoe brand,” a voiceover proclaimed. “Anyone can do that. You are not anyone, and neither are we.” The montage was designed to let Woods know they had a firm grasp on his past, present and future, and how all those stages of his life could meld to create a brand befitting his legacy.

When the video concluded, Woods turned to the assembled group and uttered four words: “You guys get me.” They’d nailed the pitch. Woods was ready to entrust his apparel future to TaylorMade.

As the calendar flipped to 2024, Tiger and Nike announced an official split after 27 years.

“I was fortunate to start a partnership with one of the most iconic brands in the world,” Woods said in the aftermath. “The days since have been filled with so many amazing moments and memories, if I started naming them, I could go on forever. Phil Knight’s passion and vision brought this Nike and Nike Golf partnership together, and I wanted to personally thank him, along with the Nike employees and incredible athletes I have had the pleasure of working with along the way.”

Stroll through the halls of TaylorMade’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California, and you notice the Sun Day Red signage is minimal. That’s because its offices are actually 30 minutes up the Pacific coast. To give the brand its own identity apart from TaylorMade as well as acquire the necessary talent to be successful, the offices needed to be closer to Los Angeles, the epicenter of fashion and design on the West Coast. San Clemente was considered the perfect middle ground to blend golf and fashion talent, so Sun Day Red sits along a road sporting a bevy of surf shops.

In one year, the Sun Day Red team has grown from a small, hand-picked crew to a full-fledged apparel operation of more than 50 employees, adding talent with work experience at FootJoy, Puma, DC Shoes, Quiksilver and other action-sports brands. When you’re building a lifestyle apparel brand, being a diehard golfer isn’t required. The only requirement is possessing the stamina to keep up with Woods as he constantly churns out ideas on how the apparel should look and feel.

If there’s an edge to be had, Woods will eventually find it. During his time at Nike, Woods happened upon a sock designed with extra grip in the yarn and ridged articulation that allowed cornerbacks and safeties in professional football to cut on a dime and not worry about their foot sliding in the shoe.

Woods believed the sock sucked him to the ground and allowed for a more efficient energy transfer. He’s been wearing the sock ever since and tasked Cáje Moye, Sun Day Red’s creative director for apparel and accessories, with improving upon the original design.

“He’s the workaround king,” says Moye. “In his world, there’s always something out there that gives him a perceived edge. If it was anybody else, you might discount the comments or ideas, but he’s generally right.

“We’ve quickly learned it’s a tough sock to make. We’ve sourced the yarn from Japan, found a vendor and are on iteration five or six. We still need to add some more loft and camber on his sock, but we’re getting closer, just not quite there yet. That’s how exacting he is when it comes to apparel.”

On the footwear side, Woods has been just as meticulous. Charley Hudak, Sun Day Red’s chief footwear designer, has worked with countless notable names on tour during his time at Puma and FootJoy, including Bryson DeChambeau, Rickie Fowler and Gary Woodland. He’s used to taking pro feedback and turning it into a finished product, but working with Tiger has been unlike anything he’s experienced.

“I didn’t anticipate him being as innovative as he is,” Hudak says. “I’ve gotten texts from him at all hours with ideas and thoughts to consider. Some might roll their eyes when I say Tiger leaves no stone unturned when it comes to his shoes, but I’m not kidding. He’s a perfectionist.”

When an early prototype shoe was bothering his Achilles tendon, Woods cut the heel section at home with scissors to gain relief. The project eventually led Hudak and team to add space to make the Pioneer Cypress shoe roomier in the heel region.

Even the spike placement went through nearly 20 iterations before the bossman signed off. The hold up? Tiger needed the spike placement for his fifth metatarsal to be just right. The footwear team found a happy middle ground between 5mm and 10mm farther back that allowed him to swing freely.

“You can’t cut corners with Tiger’s stuff,” Moye says. “If you do, he’s going to eventually find out, and you better be damn sure you know what you’re doing and the why behind it when you’re making a product for him that has his name on it.”

So far, Sun Day Red’s place among a sea of upstart apparel brands is encouraging. Going by social media metrics, it was the most engaged brand on the golf-endemic side in 2024 and trailed only Lululemon in the non-endemic apparel world. For retail presence, Frost says the plan is to soon expand beyond online and make it possible to purchase Sun Day Red at select high-profile courses, including Pebble Beach Golf Links.

“We’re going to be starting at the highest-of-high-end private, public and resort courses in the United States starting in July 2025,” Frost says. “We’ll be in 750 or so of the top green grass accounts this year and will expand meticulously as we’re able to scale and service at a world-class level.”

It’s easy to look at Sun Day Red and assume its sole intention is to use red-hot engagement to make further inroads in the apparel space, but it goes far beyond the course for Woods. This is a brand with aspirations of being a full-fledged lifestyle market-mover with a global presence. That could mean the Sun Day Red logo one day being on a football jersey or other areas that don’t scream, “I’m a golfer.”

For the time being, it’s a brand Woods believes has the potential to live on and off the course with fashion-forward joggers, performance training shorts and hoodies.

“I think we’re seeing country club golfers and recreational golfers come together, and fashion is showing that,” Woods says. I couldn’t imagine going to any of the country clubs that I grew up playing wearing a hoodie, but that’s how fashion has evolved. It’s part of our everyday culture.”

Woods insisted on opening an office in Jupiter to stay connected to the day-to-day at Sun Day Red. It’s a way for him to try on the latest wares and offer feedback, but it also allows him to work closely with sports marketing as the brand’s tour stable begins to take shape.

Woods played an integral role in picking former Stanford standout Karl Vilips and South African Christiaan Maas, who plays at the University of Texas, to wear Sun Day Red apparel. While they aren’t household names, Woods is doing his best Billy Beane impersonation by targeting players with high upside who have the potential to break out early in their careers, without a substantial buy-in.

It’s not uncommon for Woods to come to meetings with well-prepared notes and suggest players he believes could be good fits for the brand.

“I didn’t think I’d be this involved at [the sports marketing] level,” Woods said, “but I’ve enjoyed working on that side. I’m always going to be open to the next generation, and they need a landing spot they can grow into.”

A word worth analyzing in Woods’ quote is “enjoyed.” Obviously, numerous injury hurdles have kept him from playing the sport he loves on a regular basis in recent years. Even as he continues to ramp up his training in pursuit of more major championship hardware, Sun Day Red’s trajectory increasingly occupies his mind.

“He’s the busiest human I’ve ever seen,” Moye says. “Every minute is scheduled. But when we’re able to carve out time to get in front of him, it always puts a smile on his face. He’s thriving in this space because it’s truly his.”

In Woods’ eyes, his legacy is tied to the future of Sun Day Red and is in the best possible hands—his own.