Chad Mumm
A visionary relationship-builder
For a decade, Chad Mumm had the idea.
The challenge was convincing others that telling golf stories wasn’t just about the shots being hit. The stories were the people who were hitting those shots.
The superstar at home. The best friends who happened to be player and caddie. The guy answering the phone to find out he was being left off the Ryder Cup team.
The story of professional golf, the way Mumm envisioned it, was a collection of stories about the people inside the ropes and the idea was to share those stories with a broader audience, reaching beyond the devotees who spend their weekend afternoons watching tournaments play out.
That idea became “Full Swing,” the immensely popular Netflix series that will release its fourth season next year and is central to Mumm’s expanding reach in the game.
Mumm is an Emmy winner and the founder and president of Pro Shop Holdings Inc., a media, commerce and entertainment company grounded in golf. The digital media company Skratch, as well as the Sugarloaf Social Club apparel brand and content-driven Golf WRX, are under the Pro Shop umbrella, expanding the golf demographic.
Additionally, Mumm served as co-producer of “Happy Gilmore 2,” created the Creator Classic series and was instrumental in bringing the Skins Game back in late November.
“It took almost a decade from first pitch of the idea to the PGA Tour to it actually showing up on Netflix. … I was always kind of working on ‘Full Swing,’ trying to advance the ball incrementally at a time.”
Chad mumm
It was “Full Swing” that helped push Mumm and his company to the forefront of golf’s expanding universe.
“There’s no describing how much it has exceeded expectations. It took almost a decade from first pitch of the idea to the PGA Tour to it actually showing up on Netflix. It was one of those white whale projects for me. No matter what other things we had going on, I was always kind of working on ‘Full Swing,’ trying to advance the ball incrementally at a time. I was able to be patient with it. That’s the key to any of these things that are worth doing. It’s not rushing and building relationships, the need to do it right if you’re going to do it at all,” Mumm said.
“With all of that, it blew me away in terms of its success and the audience it has been able to drive and how fans of the show aren’t necessarily golf fans. It over-indexes with females compared to a lot of sports stuff on Netflix. It’s created a real touch point for the casual viewer into this world of golf. We were in the right place at the right time.”
The breadth of Pro Shop Holdings’ portfolio illustrates golf’s growing reach, touching both new and old consumers. The game has become more than watching PGA Tour events on weekend afternoons and playing an occasional round of golf with friends.
It has become an industry with new touchpoints and a wider demographic interested in different aspects of golf. For years, golf waited for people to come to the game. Now, led by visionaries like Mumm, the game is going to golfers in new and different ways.
“We’re excited about where golf is and where it sits in culture. The industry has so much room to grow as this new audience gets deeper and deeper. If you started watching on YouTube and now you’re obsessed with golf, maybe you started with Bryson’s channel or Barstool or whatever, if you go through this journey as a golfer and your relationship evolves, once you’re hooked, you’re hooked for life,” Mumm said.
“That’s one of the things that makes the game special. We want to be there for that next generation of golfer who has gotten into it the last four or five years for the next 50 years of their behavior as a golfer and they continue to evolve in the game. We want to be there with media for them.”
Ron Green Jr.
