Thoughts on the Sun Day Red de but

Sun Day Red: Hit or miss?

Tiger Woods and TaylorMade Golf unveiled the Sun Day Red (yes, three words, not two) apparel line on Monday night in Los Angeles, sharing what had started as a conversation at St. Andrews a few years ago. The night began with a short film introducing the attendees to the brand, its abstract Tiger logo complete with 15 major championship stripes and the three-word brand name that insinuated good things happen in threes.

The apparel itself didn’t seem particualrly risque. There were solid red polos and black pants, leather headcovers with the SDR logo, quarter-zips, belts, some spikeless shoes, golf gloves — all standard fare, really. There were T-shirts and a casual hoodie with a black-on-black aesthetic featuring the brand logo. Woods called out the cashmere hoodies they were going to produce for the brand, suggesting other brands weren’t doing that. (Ralph Lauren has been, and they were in the Ryder Cup gift shop in Italy. They sold out quickly.)

All of this seemed pretty standard fare, but the golf Twitter (or X) community seemed soundly divided on the whole thing. Some people panned the logo as lazy. Some panned the three-word brand name as superfluous word play. Some didn’t like the fashions themselves, with suggestions they were rushed or cheaply made, even though they were really just proofs of concept.

If you took the sum reaction of the super fans that are golf Twitter, you’d assume this was a Segway-level flop. However, the reality is that a ton of people — even those who don’t particularly love the logo and brand name — will buy Sun Day Red. This didn’t come together by accident. TaylorMade is a smart, capabale company that does a whole lot of homework in developing their equipment and likely did the same due diligence of market researching this apparel line. Tiger Woods is still the needle, and Nike sold billions in TW-branded merch over 27 years. While Sun Day Red probably won’t be a 10-figure success, getting into the nine figures is surely possible over time.

What we saw Monday night, though, is really a first draft of a prologue. Woods has been in the public spotlight for 45 years, and he’s been winning important golf titles in public view since 1991. There is so much Woods history to draw upon — even excluding the awful button-down shirts, dad jeans, white belts and that skull ski mask — for future releases. What about the polo and straw hat from the 1994 US Am at Sawgrass? Bring back that baggy sweater from the ‘97 Masters. Mix some of the old with the new.

Sun Day Red is going to be an upscale brand that communicates Sun Day Red is for the real ones who can afford to keep it real. That will likely price out a lot of Woods’ mainstream followers from owning more than one piece, but this also isn’t the mass market play that Nike has long been. It’s a play on the legend of Tiger Woods as he prepares to exit his PGA Tour playing career. It’s different than a Nicklaus apparel or licensing out Arnold Palmer’s branding. For Sun Day Red to thrive, there has to be a fashionable mix of homage to the past and an eye toward the future — kind of how Woods long appoached his playing career.