The sport of golf is at a crossroads. Across the country, courses have struggled to survive. An aging sport built on opulence, exclusivity, and rigid decorum has been continually challenged to bring new faces into the game. Over the last half-century, golf culture has remained largely static, resisting to adjust to society’s shifts towards inclusivity, efficiency, and swagger. However, a recent partnership between the 2023 USA Today National High School Golfer of the Year Kihei Akina and Eastside Golf cuts against the grain. If this partnership is any indication, the next generation of golf stars will embody a different attitude, promising a vital change to the sport.
Eastside Golf is a front-runner in a recent golf renaissance. Many independent companies like Linksoul, Malbon Golf, and Eastside Golf have emerged as powerful forces in the golf apparel ecosystem by constructing their respective missions on modernizing the game of golf and providing apparel that resonates with a younger, hipper, and more diverse demographic.
Beyond clothes, many on the fringes of the game have gravitated towards an anti-country-club movement like the “World Class, Working Class” tagline of the thriving Goat Hill Park in San Diego, CA, that prides itself on socialization, youth access, affordable green fees, a relaxed dress code, and community outreach. The youngest generation of golfers now look up to not only those at the top of the World Golf Rankings but also charismatic golf influencers who have brought many into the sport through vlogging their rounds.
Eastside Golf is a black-owned business and a necessary force in a sport that, for many structural reasons, has severely lacked black representation. The company’s notoriety emerged during a collaboration with Jordan in 2021, where the two brands teamed up to make a custom Jordan IV sneaker. Since then, the collaboration has seen multiple iterations, and a wide spectrum of co-branded apparel has been released.
During my conversations with Earl Cooper, co-founder of Eastside Golf, and Kihei Akina, one word was consistently voiced: culture.
Kihei’s name pays homage to the namesake of his ancestral home on Maui, where members of his family have lived for generations. Akina, a rising senior at Lone Peak High School, now lives in Alpine, Utah, and has committed to in-state BYU to play collegiate golf starting in the fall of 2025. While his immediate family no longer resides in Hawaii, Kihei holds his Hawaiian roots close to heart: earlier this year, Kihei and his brother Keanu, who was then a senior on the BYU golf team, paired up with &Collar to donate hundreds of shirts to children burdened by the Maui wildfires.
While Kihei’s heritage is divergent from Eastside Golf’s black heritage, both cultures were connected by strong community values and a mutual love of basketball. Kihei’s older brother, Kaika, currently plays basketball at NYU. According to Kihei’s father, Alan, Kihei’s siblings “were all supporting [Eastside] before we even really knew what Eastside was because our family is more hoopers than golfers, so that kind of resonated with the kids. They just liked it. They just got it without us knowing.”
Eastside Golf was made aware of Kihei years ago through word of mouth from a friend of the brand; according to Cooper, during their first meeting, Akina was wearing an Eastside Golf and Jordan collaboration polo, “he showed up with it on and, you know, from there, we just hit it off. It was a really good, organic conversation. That’s how we like to start a lot of our partnerships. Just meeting people. Are you one, just a fan of the brand? It’s so great to be rooted in that. And then obviously, his performance has just, you know, continued to skyrocket.”
Like many NIL deals, especially deals featuring athletes without millions of social media followers, mutual respect is crucial to a successful partnership. Eastside Golf believes in Kihei, and Kihei believes in Eastside Golf. It was very impactful to those at Eastside Golf to know that the polo was bought by then-fifteen-year-old Kihei with his own money. While Kihei may now be paid to be an ambassador of Eastside Golf, for years, he represented the brand because he liked it. That is crucial to authenticity in marketing.
Ultimately, the commitment to his culture made Kihei such a perfect embodiment of the brand; in the eyes of Cooper, “Eastside golf is here to promote diversity and bring culture inside of the sport. That’s exactly what we felt he was doing. He represents his family and the whole state of Hawaii. It’s something that he’s super proud to be from… we just talk about culture and he’s a part of the culture. He’s a part of the next up-and-coming generation. And it’s a perfect fit.”
Akina will serve as a brand ambassador for Eastside Golf, making appearances at events and contributing to the storytelling behind the brand and upcoming product launches. It is important for Eastside that the NIL deal serves Akina from a business side, not to cause a distraction from his play; Cooper notes, “With any of our athletes, whether it be NIL or whether it be professional, we’re not looking for them to sell polos. We know how hard the game of golf is. So we just want them to be themselves. You know, that’s our tagline: be authentic.”
Akina has a busy summer ahead. On the horizon is a trip to South Carolina for the Wyndham Cup, an American Junior Golf Association Invitational event that features the top ten boys and girls golfers from the East and West of the United States in a team-format. Akina is also projected to be rostered for the upcoming Junior President’s Cup tournament, in which he will represent the United States.
While the tournaments Akina will play in are only for the highest caliber junior golfers, the events receive minimal media attention compared to high-level amateur and professional tournaments. Many would see the small exposure of these events as a negative, but Cooper and Eastside Golf see an opportunity to tap into powerful storytelling and an untouched market: “When you think about the landscape of golf, currently, you can have the best player in golf, you’re gonna have the best golfer in the world, but that’s not necessarily gonna drive the needle. It’s about having that personal connection. It’s about being informative and going on a journey… It’s more on mission for us. It allows people to go on a journey from the beginning. There is nothing like seeing a kid in high school and watching his career flourish; we’re really into it from a long-term, organic approach.”
Sports marketing is changing. It is no longer viable for companies to be dead set on acquiring only professional talent to market their products. Sports influencers and others playing at the high school and collegiate levels are powerful and often cost-effective brand ambassadors.
Highlighting culture that isn’t country club culture will become a staple in the future of golf marketing. NIL deals featuring players that will become the future of golf will help power this movement. Akina’s NIL partnership with Eastside Golf will not fix the sport overnight, but the deal is not insignificant. This partnership will be one of the building blocks that fosters the necessary change to grow the game.