Welcome to Issue #48
“In previous years, I might have snuck out for a beer or two and now it’s changed to nappies.”
Tyrrell Hatton
What’s on my mind this week
Matt Fitzpatrick's mystery texter finally revealing himself. Nine birdies out, nine pars in, frustratingly symmetrical for Lauren Coughlin. David Puig turning up at St Andrews without the LIV uniform, make of that what you will. A 5-handicap making a hole-in-one and two albatrosses in four rounds. October golf, when every dry day feels like a bonus. MacIntyre and Hatton taking turns to lose it on the same hole at Carnoustie. Sergio Garcia looking for the LIV exit door. ESPN signing up for more TGL, the big screen stays.
In the news
Why it matters: Golf Saudi is reshaping its investment in women’s golf from 2027, replacing the five-event, $15 million PIF Global Series with a $4 million UK tournament co-sanctioned by the LPGA and LET. It has also agreed a multi-year partnership with the LET Order of Merit.
Our Take: This looks like a change in what Golf Saudi wants its money to buy. The PIF Global Series offered scale: five tournaments, significant prize money and a presence across the LET calendar. From next year, its tournament investment will be concentrated into one event, with LPGA status and players from both tours, alongside season-long backing of the LET Order of Merit. The numbers are striking. $15 million of prize money across five events becomes a single $4 million championship. The question is whether concentrating investment around a property with greater scarcity, stronger fields and access to both tours can create more value than spreading it across the calendar. Golf Saudi has spent years building its presence in professional golf through substantial financial commitments. This latest move suggests it is becoming more selective about where that money goes. In a sports industry increasingly focused on adding events and expanding schedules, it is an interesting change of direction.
Why it matters: ESPN and TMRW Sports have agreed a multi-year extension of TGL’s US media-rights partnership after the league’s first two seasons. Season two generated 21.8 million total viewers, up 8%, while playoff audiences increased 42%. Financial terms of the new agreement were not disclosed.
Our Take: Getting ESPN to take a chance on TGL was one thing. Getting it to sign another multi-year deal after two seasons of audience data tells us considerably more. TGL was built on the premise that golf could be repackaged specifically for television: two-hour matches, primetime scheduling, teams and a purpose-built arena rather than another tournament squeezed into an existing format. There were plenty of reasons for ESPN to test that idea. The more important question was whether it would still want the product once the novelty had worn off. We don’t know what ESPN is paying, so it’s impossible to say how much the media rights themselves have increased in value. But total viewership grew 8% in year two, playoff viewing was up 42%, and TGL says more than 30% of its viewers aren’t regular consumers of professional golf. ESPN has now committed for multiple additional years. For a sports property that didn’t exist two years ago, renewal may be a more important milestone than launch.
Why it matters: UK golf and leisure operator Burhill Group recorded 729,611 rounds across its golf venues in 2025, up 9%, while membership increased 7% to 9,715. Green-fee revenue rose 14% to £6.82 million, subscription revenue increased 9% to £9.09 million and golf venue EBITDA climbed 11% to a record £12.7 million.
Our Take: Golf has spent much of the past five years celebrating participation numbers. Operators may have been wondering what happens next. Burhill’s results may give them some idea. More rounds haven’t come at the expense of membership. Both are growing, alongside green fees, subscriptions, driving-range revenue and ultimately EBITDA. At least across Burhill’s portfolio, the pandemic-era influx is translating into customers spending money in different parts of the business. There is another challenge hidden inside the numbers. Burhill hosted nearly 730,000 rounds last year, up another 9% after already reaching record levels in 2024. A golf course has finite inventory. It can’t manufacture another Saturday morning tee time when the sheet is full. For operators successfully holding onto golf’s new demand, the next phase of growth may increasingly come from getting more value from each customer and each visit, rather than simply putting more golfers on the course.TG
Pic from TGL
Worth your time
Watch: Twenty minutes with Haotong Li, featuring Kevin Hart, Ernie Els, some dancing and very few dull moments.
Listen: Inside Troon’s global playbook, from dynamic tee sheets to the surprisingly complicated business of running golf courses at scale.
Read: Topgolf welcomes 42 million visitors a year. Its new CEO wants to turn a lot more of them into golfers.
Feature Story
Why golf kept showing up for Flyte
Getting from New York City to the Hamptons during summer can take three hours by train and longer by car.
Flyte can do the flight from Teterboro to East Hampton in around 30 minutes.
Flyte is a regional private aviation platform built around short-distance journeys that are often awkward or time-consuming by road or commercial airline. Using small Cirrus Vision Jets, it connects passengers through smaller airports across its regional networks.
A one-way flight from Teterboro to East Hampton costs roughly $4,900 for the aircraft. Split between four people and that's a little over $1,200 each.
There is one problem if those four people happen to be golfers.
The plane can only fit three of their golf bags.
It's a small complication, but a useful example of what Flyte has been learning since golf emerged as an unexpected market for the business.
Flyte wasn't built for golfers. It was built around a type of journey.
There are hundreds of smaller airports across the US that commercial airlines barely touch. Flyte's focus is generally on journeys of no more than two hours, where flying can turn several hours on the road into less than an hour in the air.
The company currently operates regional networks in the Northeast and Florida and has ambitions to expand further across the country.
The question was who needed those journeys enough to pay for them.
Golf started providing an answer.
Pic from PGA Tour
Golf was "screaming the right answer"
Flyte had been working with sports agencies to understand where its service might fit into athletes' travel schedules. It looked at different sports, their itineraries and where athletes needed to move.
Two stood out: tennis and golf.
"We were going over their itineraries for their athletes and golf was screaming the right answer," says Nick Scibilia, Flyte's Head of Strategy.
The appeal went beyond golfers having money to spend.
Professional golfers move constantly between tournaments, and those journeys aren't always cross-country. Around this year's U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, Flyte saw golfers travelling from Long Island to Hartford, Connecticut, for their next event. The journey can take around three hours by road, requiring drivers to travel back across Long Island and around Long Island Sound. Scibilia says Flyte can make the trip in around 25 minutes.
The company tested the opportunity through a partnership with GSE Worldwide and PGA Tour pro Emiliano Grillo during the U.S. Open.
Then it started seeing similar behaviour among recreational golfers.
One of Flyte's investors, Scibilia says, spends much of his summer moving between clubs in Connecticut, Boston and New York. Other golfers have multiple memberships, second homes or regularly travel to destination courses.
The geography helps too.
"You'd be shocked at some of the airports next to some golf clubs," Scibilia says. "You're like, there's an airport there?"
For a business built around using smaller airports, that's an important detail.
Golf hasn't changed Flyte's plans for where it wants to operate nationally. It has changed which airports the company considers within those regions.
"Golf has enhanced the amount of airports which we've been accessing," Scibilia says. "It's been discovering more airports that were flying under our radar because there wasn't really demand for it."
Flyte had found a customer whose behaviour fitted its product unusually well.
Then came the golf bags.
When the customer changes the product
On paper, the recreational foursome looks close to an ideal customer.
Flyte charges for the whole aircraft rather than individual seats, so travelling together allows passengers to divide the cost.
The Cirrus Vision Jet can carry four adults.
It can't comfortably carry four adults and four full sets of golf clubs.
"We could fit three golf bags," Scibilia says. "So if you are flying with a foursome, that's where we run into an issue."
Flyte has occasionally transported clubs separately when another aircraft was available. It is also considering partnerships with club-rental businesses that could have equipment waiting when customers arrive.
Professional golf offers a different opportunity. A Tour player will often travel with one other person and one set of clubs, making the aircraft easier to use.
"For the pro golfer, it's one to two people usually," Scibilia says. "It actually fits a bit better than your everyday golfer."
Flyte has found other assumptions changing too.
The company expected its early customers to look much like the existing private aviation market. Scibilia says it has also attracted younger people earlier in their careers, particularly when groups share the cost.
That behaviour is now influencing the technology.
Flyte is developing functionality that would allow the person booking an aircraft to invite other passengers and split the payment between them.
Golf started as a customer segment. Some of the behaviour Flyte found within it is now feeding back into how the service works.
Golf as a route to the customer
There is another reason golf has become useful to Flyte.
Selling a $4,900 flight online requires trust.
Scibilia describes traditional private aviation as a business still heavily dependent on brokers, phone calls, emails, quotes and bank transfers. Flyte has tried to remove much of that friction. Customers can see the price online, enter their payment details and receive confirmation.
The difficult part has been getting them comfortable enough with the brand to do it.
Scibilia says price hasn't been Flyte's biggest constraint.
"It's really been just getting our name to the customer."
That explains why its partnerships stretch across sport, hospitality and culture.
Flyte has been involved around the U.S. Open and New York Fashion Week and partnered with The Maidstone hotel in the Hamptons. In golf, it has worked with GSE and Grillo and partnered with 319 Golf Society.
"We were talking to hotels, hospitality, casinos, you name it," Scibilia says. "Let's bring our brand to the customer that we're trying to look for."
The 319 relationship shows how that can work.
The private golf society approached Flyte after seeing its activity around the U.S. Open. Its network then introduced the company to golfers in the Carolinas, a market Flyte hadn't explored extensively.
Scibilia says it is too early to judge the partnership definitively, but Flyte has been pleased with the customer acquisition and visibility so far. The companies are now discussing ways to work more directly with golf clubs and destinations.
For Flyte, a golf partnership can do more than put its logo in front of golfers. It can provide access to a concentrated group of potential customers, in places where the service might work.
Following the golfer
Flyte recently added aircraft in Florida and has begun flying into the Bahamas and Caribbean.
It doesn't yet have enough data to know how much of that international demand is golf related. Florida, though, is already one of the golf markets Scibilia finds most interesting.
During Masters week, he says Flyte saw customers fly to a club to play before travelling onwards to watch the tournament.
"They filled their entire day with golf."
Spectators have become part of the opportunity too.
"I think the business of golf is underestimating how many people will travel to watch golf," Scibilia says.
Flyte's model has limits. It generally wants journeys below 600 nautical miles, or around two hours. The Vision Jet has no toilet, while longer flights create additional payload restrictions.
That means Flyte isn't interested in every golf trip.
What has caught its attention is how many fall into the particular window its aircraft was built to serve.
Golf gives Flyte journeys. Golf communities give it access to customers. Golf equipment creates operational problems it has to solve. Golf destinations are bringing smaller airports onto its radar. Customer behaviour is even influencing the technology it is developing.
Three years from now, Scibilia would like Flyte to be more deeply embedded in professional golf, with its service available to players moving around the PGA Tour. On the recreational side, he sees 319 as an early step towards potentially connecting clubs and their members through regional flights.
There are still obvious constraints. Private aviation is expensive and carries an environmental cost. Scibilia believes Flyte's regional model could eventually accommodate electric aircraft as that technology develops, although that remains a future ambition.
For now, perhaps the most interesting part of Flyte's experience is how it arrived at golf in the first place.
It didn't start with the size of the golf market or the spending power of its players.
It looked at how people moved.
Golfers travelling between homes and clubs. Professionals moving between tournaments. Spectators following events. Groups trying to fit more golf into a trip.
Scibilia hadn't appreciated the scale of that movement before Flyte began studying the market.
"I did not realise the amount of travel that is done," he says.
Flyte went looking for customers whose journeys fitted the product it had built.
Golf kept showing up.
One thing from history
The tournament Dunhill killed to build a better one
Pic from Getty
In 1985, Alfred Dunhill launched one of the richest tournaments in golf.
The Dunhill Cup brought 16 national teams to the Old Course at St Andrews, with three professionals representing each country. The inaugural prize fund was $1.2 million. Australia, represented by David Graham, Graham Marsh and Greg Norman, beat the United States in the final.
For 16 years, it worked. Then Dunhill decided to replace it.
In 2001, the national teams disappeared. In their place came 168 professionals, each paired with an amateur, playing across St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns. The prize fund jumped to $5 million and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship was born.
Dunhill was no longer simply putting its name on an elite professional competition. The new format brought customers, business leaders, celebrities and sports stars inside the ropes, playing alongside the professionals at three of Scotland's most famous links.
Twenty-five years later, they're still doing it.
The Dunhill Links returns this week with the same three courses and the same distinctive pro-am format. Dunhill's association with tournament golf at St Andrews has now lasted more than 40 years.
Sometimes the longevity of a sponsorship comes from sticking with something. In Dunhill's case, it came from knowing when to change it.
Have a good week. Until next Friday,
David