Golfers are naturally skeptical when something they love gets bigger. We’ve seen it happen countless times, both inside and outside of golf. A small company develops a loyal following because it offers something different. A local business expands beyond its original footprint. A niche product becomes mainstream. Success follows, but so do questions. Can the company maintain what made it special? Will the customer experience change? Does growth inevitably lead to compromise?
Those questions feel particularly relevant right now as private equity in golf continues to grow. Equipment manufacturers, fitting companies, private club operators, simulator businesses and golf entertainment brands have all attracted significant investment in recent years. For investors, the appeal is obvious. Golf participation remains healthy, premium products continue to sell, and many businesses have developed loyal customer bases that are difficult to replicate.
For golfers, however, the conversation is often more complicated. Most golfers don’t care who owns a company. For example, how many golfers know that TaylorMade Golf has had three owners in the last 15 years, and may soon have another one? They care whether the company they trusted yesterday is the same company they’ll trust tomorrow.
What Private Equity is Really Buying
As we began looking deeper into recent investments across golf, one common theme kept appearing. Private equity isn’t really buying putters, fitting bays, or golf courses. It’s buying relationships. The challenge is that relationships are difficult to scale. Trust, authenticity and belonging don’t show up neatly on a balance sheet, yet they are often the most valuable assets a golf business possesses.
Three companies illustrate that tension particularly well: L.A.B. Golf, Club Champion and Concert Golf Partners. While they operate in completely different corners of the industry, each raises the same basic question. Can growth happen without sacrificing the things that made these businesses successful in the first place?
L.A.B. Golf: When the Outsider Becomes the Insider
Few companies have experienced a rise quite like L.A.B. Golf. What makes the story interesting is that L.A.B.’s success wasn’t simply about putters. Plenty of golf companies make quality putters. What L.A.B. managed to build was a movement, something much harder to create.
Lie Angle Balance technology itself wasn’t exactly new, but L.A.B. brought it to golfers with a message that challenged conventional thinking. The products looked different. The marketing felt different. Founder Sam Hahn didn’t present himself like a typical golf industry executive. The company embraced its quirks rather than trying to hide them. The “Revealer” became part educational tool, part marketing device and part symbol of the company’s broader philosophy.
For years, L.A.B. felt like an outsider brand. Early adopters got the sense they were discovering something before the rest of the golf world caught on. The company developed a passionate following among golfers who believed the technology offered something fundamentally different from traditional putter design.
Eventually, the rest of the golf world did catch on. Tour usage increased. Social media accelerated awareness. Word of mouth continued to spread. What was once a niche company became one of the hottest equipment stories in golf.
From Niche Brand to $200 Million Valuation
According to reporting from Golf Digest, L Catterton acquired a majority stake in L.A.B. Golf in a deal reportedly valuing the company at more than $200 million. Golf Digest cited reporting from The Wall Street Journal, which noted that L.A.B. sold approximately 130,000 putters in 2024 and was expected to potentially triple that figure in 2025. Those numbers tell the story of a company experiencing tremendous success, but they also introduce a fascinating challenge.
Can a company built around being different continue feeling different once it becomes part of one of the largest consumer-focused investment portfolios in the world? To be fair, neither L.A.B. nor L Catterton appears blind to that concern. Following the acquisition, Hahn emphasized the importance of maintaining the company’s culture while continuing to scale the business.
Can Customization Scale?
The challenge is that growth changes businesses, even when intentions remain the same. One of L.A.B.’s defining strengths has been customization. Length, lie angle, alignment options, shaft choices, grips, finishes and personalized configurations all contribute to a product that is tailored to the individual golfer. That level of personalization helps create loyalty because golfers feel connected to what they purchased.
As demand grows, can that experience remain intact? At the same time, customers expect premium products to remain premium. Several industry veterans interviewed for this story expressed a similar sentiment. The moment cost reduction becomes the primary objective, golfers often notice. Whether it’s materials, manufacturing processes, component quality, or overall product development, cutting corners in pursuit of higher margins can quickly damage consumer trust.
What we do know is that L.A.B.’s next challenge may not be proving its technology works. Thousands of golfers already believe it does. The challenge may be proving that the company can grow while still maintaining its identity, customer focus and quality.
Our Take
Many of our readers remember L.A.B. before it became one of the hottest brands in golf. They remember forum discussions when the company was still viewed as a curiosity. They remember the debates over appearance, technology and whether the concept would ever gain traction.
The concern isn’t that L.A.B. accepted outside investment. The concern is whether the company can continue feeling like the same company that attracted those early believers. Golfers often root for outsiders. The challenge comes when those outsiders become industry insiders.
Club Champion: The Business of Trust
If L.A.B. built its reputation on authenticity, Club Champion built its reputation on trust.
To understand why Club Champion became successful, it’s important to remember how different the fitting landscape looked just a decade ago. Today, launch monitors are everywhere. Most major manufacturers talk extensively about fitting. Golfers routinely discuss spin rates, launch windows and shaft profiles. The idea of custom fitting has become mainstream, but that wasn’t always the case.
Club Champion entered the market with a proposition that felt unique. Golfers could easily access a massive matrix of heads and shafts, work with trained fitters and receive recommendations based on data rather than brand loyalty. For many golfers, it represented the first truly comprehensive fitting experience they had ever encountered. The company wasn’t only selling equipment. It was selling confidence.
Taking Custom Fitting Mainstream
According to Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, Club Champion operated 47 locations across 25 states when the firm acquired the business in 2019. Expansion has continued since then, bringing professional fitting opportunities to golfers from North America to Australia. From a consumer standpoint, there are clear benefits. More golfers have access to better fitting. They can make equipment decisions using data rather than guesswork. They can explore combinations that might otherwise never appear on a retail floor.
When Cost Enters the Conversation
Yet if you spend enough time talking with golfers, you’ll notice that the conversation surrounding Club Champion has evolved. Years ago, discussions centered almost entirely around expertise. Today, discussions often include another topic: cost.
Questions arise about premium shafts, increasingly expensive builds, supplier incentives and whether an average golfer truly needs the highest-end configuration available. To be clear, recommending expensive equipment does not automatically mean recommending the wrong equipment. If a premium shaft genuinely performs best, a fitter should recommend it.
The issue is perception.
Club Champion’s greatest asset has never been its fitting bays or launch monitors. Its greatest asset is the belief that recommendations are made independently and solely in the golfer’s best interest. The moment golfers begin questioning that independence, the conversation changes. Whether those concerns are fair becomes almost secondary. Trust becomes the story.
That’s the challenge facing any service business built around expertise. Growth often requires standardization, expansion, partnerships and increasingly sophisticated business operations. Yet expertise and trust are personal. Scaling those qualities is much harder than opening additional locations.
Our Take
The original appeal of Club Champion was simple. It felt brand-agnostic. It felt data- driven. It felt like a place where the recommendation mattered more than the logo. That perception created enormous goodwill among serious golfers.
The challenge today isn’t necessarily whether Club Champion still employs talented fitters. The challenge is maintaining confidence that the recommendation itself remains the priority. Once golfers begin wondering whether they’re being fitted or sold, the relationship changes. Whether that perception is accurate or not, perception matters.
Concert Golf Partners: Can You Scale Belonging?
The private club industry presents perhaps the most interesting example because the product itself is different. Private clubs are not only selling golf. They’re selling belonging, community and identity.
Historically, many private clubs operated under member-owned structures. Members elected boards, participated in major decisions and viewed themselves as stewards of the club’s future. That model wasn’t perfect, and as a result many clubs struggled financially. Deferred maintenance became common. Major capital projects often created difficult decisions and competing priorities.
What Outside Investment Can Provide
Investor-backed ownership groups offer a different solution. They bring capital, operational expertise and resources that many clubs simply cannot generate on their own.
According to Bain Capital, its 2025 investment in Concert Golf Partners supports a company operating 39 private clubs across the United States. Bain stated that it intends to support Concert’s strategy of preserving each club’s “cherished and distinct culture” while continuing to invest in facilities and member experiences. On paper, that’s exactly what members want. Improved facilities, better conditions and stronger long-term stability.
The question isn’t whether investor ownership can improve clubs. In many cases, it absolutely can. The concern is whether investor-owned clubs and member-owned clubs ultimately answer to the same priorities.
Members vs. Investors
A member-owned club exists primarily for the benefit of its members. An investor-owned club must serve members while also producing returns. Those goals frequently align, but sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, difficult decisions emerge. Who decides which projects receive funding? How are dues structured? What happens when profitability and member preference move in different directions?
For some golfers, ownership structure matters very little as long as the experience remains exceptional. For others, ownership is central to the identity of the club itself. That’s why the private club discussion may be the most important of the three. The challenge isn’t simply preserving a golf course. The challenge is preserving culture.
Our Take
Most golfers will never belong to a private club, but nearly everyone understands the appeal of belonging somewhere. Whether it’s a local course, a regular foursome, or a favorite golf community, golfers develop emotional connections to places.
Facilities can be upgraded. Clubhouses can be renovated. Practice facilities can be expanded. Culture is harder. Belonging is harder. And those may ultimately be the most valuable things a club possesses.
What Successful Growth Looks Like
As we researched this topic, we spoke with Chris Koske, Chief Marketing Officer of GOLFTEC Enterprises, a company that has experienced significant growth while remaining focused on golf improvement. GOLFTEC has expanded from a single location into a global business with hundreds of locations while continuing to invest in coaching, technology and customer experience.
Koske offered perhaps the most balanced perspective of anyone I spoke with.
“Companies rooted in providing great product and experience, regardless of who its investors are, have always thrived in golf,” he said.
That’s an important distinction, because growth itself isn’t the problem. Outside investment isn’t automatically the problem. The danger emerges when companies lose focus on what made them successful in the first place.
Koske pointed to a common trap that can emerge as businesses grow: chasing expansion opportunities that don’t fit the brand’s identity or launching products simply because growth targets demand something new.
“Where companies have tripped and fallen over the years is when they start extending product lines to hit investor requirements with products that don’t have strong product market fit or overall acceptance in the market,” he said.
The Real Cost of Growth
That observation may be the most important lesson in this entire discussion.
The businesses that struggle aren’t necessarily the ones that grow. They’re the ones that forget why golfers cared in the first place.
L.A.B. built trust through authenticity. Club Champion built trust through expertise. Private clubs build trust through belonging.
Investors can provide capital, resources, operational support and scale. They can help companies grow faster than they ever could on their own. What they cannot manufacture is trust, and that has to be protected.
In the end, golfers rarely care who owns a company until ownership starts affecting the product, the experience or the relationship. That’s the real cost of growth. Not getting bigger, but rather forgetting why golfers showed up in the first place.
