Golf Channel Pulls ‘Big Break’ Premiere as Title Sponsor Bails Following Controversial Ad

Shortly after The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with the Golf Channel senior executive timed to the return Big Break , Knapp was forced to pull its premiere episode.

“ Golf Channel is postponing tonight’s premiere of Big Break x Good Good to next Tuesday 9/1. This will allow for necessary production updates following a request from one of the show’s sponsors to remove its branding from the series,” the Versant-owned cable network said in a statement sent to THR . “Golf Channel will air encore presentations of Payne Stewart Award coverage this evening.”

The sponsor in question is no ancillary advertiser: Golf Galaxy, owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods and the title sponsor of Big Break x Good Good , yanked its endorsement hours before Tuesday’s scheduled airing, THR has learned. Golf Galaxy has no beef with Golf Channel — Knapp is simply caught between his Big Break boulder (below) and a hard place — but being in business with Good Good Golf these days is pretty bad bad.

Less than a week after our Zoom conversation with Knapp, an unrelated Good Good collab went viral for all of the wrong reasons.

In the Callaway x Good Good commercial , Good Good golfer Alexis Miestowski reaches for Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark’s Callaway driver with Good Good cobranding. Clark rushes her, knocks her down, stands over her and warns: “Do not touch my new driver.”

It was an idiotic ad widely condemned online and by the PGA Tour itself. Among the problems here: pro golf’s major leagues is hosting the Good Good Championship this November, and the winner of Big Break x Good Good is set to get a sponsors exemption into the tournament — for now at least — on Tuesday, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said this entire thing has become “a bit of a fluid situation.”

Beyond the bad ad, Rolapp says he was “disappointed” by how Good Good initially handled the controversy, adding: “It sounds like in the last 24 hours they’ve made some progress. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and see how it develops.”

At first, Good Good’s response to the backlash was brief and vague: “We posted a video to our channels that ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand,” the company stated.

Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick’s latest mea culpa, a (leaked) lengthy internal email obtained by THR , included the following (in part):

We fully understand and own the mistake that was made. The advertisement was intended to be a parody of the movie Obsession , but the execution missed the mark and included content that should not have been published on our channels. In no way were we trying to make light of or support violence of any kind, but we recognize that intent does not erase impact.

As noted in our Tuesday story, nobody seems to see the Obsession parallel Kendrick is referring to.