Quick answer: Good Good Golf CEO and co-founder Matt Kendrick and company president Joe Flannery are no longer with the business, according to an internal employee memo first reported by Business Insider and corroborated by Golf Digest, GOLF.com and the Associated Press. Good Good co-founder and board member Nahid Giga is serving as interim CEO. The departures follow weeks of backlash over a deleted Callaway driver ad, multiple apologies, Callaway ending the partnership, Good Good leaving an Austin PGA Tour title sponsorship and Golf Channel shelving its planned Good Good edition of Big Break.
Two exits at the top
The consequence has reached Good Good Golf's executive suite. An internal memo attributed to finance and operations leader Alex Puchala told employees that Kendrick and Flannery were no longer with the company. Reporting differs slightly in its verbs—some outlets describe the executives as stepping away, others as being out or having left—but the core fact is consistent: neither man remains in his leadership role.
The same memo installed Giga as interim CEO. Giga is not an outside crisis manager parachuting into an unfamiliar company; he is a Good Good co-founder, board member and investor. That gives the transition continuity, but it also gives him an unusually difficult mandate. He must stabilize employees and commercial partners while convincing fans that the company can make decisions differently from the team that produced and managed the last two weeks.
The memo praised Kendrick for helping build Good Good from a small group of friends playing golf into a global community. That history matters. This is not a routine executive shuffle at a mature equipment manufacturer. Kendrick was both an operating leader and part of the origin story Good Good sold to its audience.
How a 15-second ad became an organizational crisis
The chain began with a short promotion for a co-branded Callaway driver. The since-deleted video showed Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark rushing toward a golf bag, pushing creator Alexis Miestowski to the ground as she reached toward the club, and warning her not to touch it. Good Good later said the spot was intended as a parody of the movie Obsession.
The explanation did not neutralize the central criticism: viewers saw a brand using violence against a woman as the punch line of a product ad. Good Good and Callaway removed the video and issued apologies. Clark later posted a longer response describing the commercial as a serious mistake. Callaway CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged that his company had approved the content before it was published.
That shared approval did not prevent the partnership from collapsing. Callaway ended its relationship with Good Good. The PGA Tour and Good Good then announced that the creator brand would no longer serve as title sponsor of the Tour's Austin event. Golf Channel postponed its planned revival of Big Break involving Good Good. What began as a creative failure quickly became a sponsor, distribution and governance failure.
After thoughtful discussions with the PGA TOUR and careful reflection, we have decided to step away as sponsor of the event in Austin this fall.
— Good Good Golf (@goodgood_golf) August 27, 2026
Kendrick's response became a second story
The ad was not the only issue executives had to manage. Kendrick's public reaction after Callaway severed the relationship extended the news cycle and changed its tone. In a social post cited by multiple outlets, he accused Callaway of requesting and approving the ad before asking Good Good to absorb the blame. He also suggested the episode could become documentary material.
There was a legitimate factual point inside that argument: Brewer had publicly accepted that Callaway approved the commercial. But crisis communication is judged by more than whether one sentence is technically defensible. The post read as combative at the moment Good Good needed to demonstrate control, empathy and consistent accountability. It invited a fresh round of coverage focused on the CEO rather than the correction.
That distinction helps explain why leadership consequences can follow even when responsibility is shared across two companies. A chief executive is accountable not only for how a campaign gets approved, but also for how the organization responds when the campaign fails. The original ad exposed a review problem. The following statements exposed a governance problem.
Good Good now has to repair three relationships
The first relationship is internal. Employees need to know who can approve content, who can stop it and how risk will be escalated. A creator company built around speed and personality cannot operate like a traditional network, but it still needs clear authority when its work carries major equipment and tour partners.
The second is commercial. Callaway was more than a logo on a post; the companies developed products together. The Austin sponsorship placed Good Good's name inside the PGA Tour schedule. Big Break offered television reach. Replacing any one of those opportunities would be difficult. Replacing all of them while the brand is associated with a public controversy will require evidence of operational change, not another apology video.
The third relationship is with the audience. Good Good's advantage has always been perceived closeness. Fans watched personalities, friendships and competitions rather than a distant corporate product. That makes creator businesses powerful, but it also makes executive behavior feel personal. When a founder's public response becomes part of the controversy, the usual wall between management and talent disappears.
Why Giga's interim role matters
Giga's immediate challenge is not to erase Good Good's personality. It is to separate creative freedom from uncontrolled risk. That likely means formal review for partner campaigns, documented approval responsibilities and a response protocol that keeps frustrated executives from improvising in public.
He also has to decide whether the company can credibly keep its leadership transition temporary. An interim co-founder offers stability, but sponsors may eventually want a permanent executive with experience across media, consumer products and brand safety. Good Good now spans YouTube, apparel, events, equipment collaborations and television ambitions. That scale demands systems that the original startup may not have needed.
There is still a large audience and a recognizable brand to protect. The controversy has damaged Good Good, but it has not erased the company's reach or the creators who built it. The question is whether the next phase treats the last two weeks as an isolated public-relations disaster or as evidence that the business outgrew its controls.
The fallout is no longer theoretical
Infinite18 previously tracked the end of the Callaway relationship and the later PGA Tour sponsorship and Big Break consequences. The executive departures complete a grim progression: offensive creative, failed response, lost partners, then leadership change.
That sequence is why this story matters beyond one creator channel. Golf's media economy increasingly relies on personalities who can move products and attract younger audiences faster than traditional institutions. The commercial upside is real. So is the governance risk when a creator's brand, an executive's voice and a sponsor's reputation become inseparable.
Good Good did not lose its CEO and president because a social post performed poorly. The exits followed a cascade of decisions: what was conceived, what was approved, what was published, how it was defended and what partners concluded afterward. Giga's task is to prove that the organization learned from the entire chain.