By David Droschak
Where has 2021 gone? It’s hard to believe that the two best holidays of the year in my opinion – Thanksgiving and Christmas – are bearing down on us.
Shopping for your favorite golfer — whether it’s your spouse, sister or brother, father or mother, uncle or aunt — could be the most challenging in recent time, so I’m here to offer a few unique ideas that may not necessarily fit in a stocking but will turn heads.
For the golfer who loves to travel and has a bucket list of courses, send away for WANDERWIDE’s Golf Register Print, which allows golfers to track the public courses they’ve played, map where they are headed, and display golf adventures as art. After another course conquered, get out your custom stamp (included with purchase) and mark it off the list.
And the best part, $1 from every print is donated to First Tee, an international youth development organization introducing the game of golf and its inherent values to kids and teens.
The Public Golf USA black and white print includes Pinehurst Resort, along with Omni Homestead in Virginia, Kiawah Island and Sea Pines in South Carolina, and Sea Island in Georgia. In all, 27 courses are listed on the 15.5-by-40 inch poster, which costs $59 unframed.
The poster list includes a “Who’s Who” of public courses from Pebble Beach to Whistling Straights. If there is an update in 2022, I would like to see my personal favorite — Primland Resort in Virginia — added to the roster.
And golf is not the only travel destinations the company features. Adventurers can now choose from an array of prints, including the national parks, ski areas, the 50 states, baseball stadiums and world wonders, among others. Every register print is hand illustrated and screen printed in small batches by artisans in Denver. More info: https://wanderwide.co/
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Possibly the most unique item to hit the golf boutique market in recent memory are custom carry bags produced by FlagBag Golf Co. with a motto of: Carry The Bag, Fly Your Flag.
A veteran golf superintendent in California by the name of Josh Smith came up with an idea of creating custom golf carry bags out of used, flown flag pins that were in many cases destined for the trash heap.
And along with brother Matt, launched the golf company at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The flag bags are not cheap. They start at $895, but will certainly turn heads.
“It is a real one-off, personalized item, and it is being made in the USA so that means it’s expensive,” Josh Smith said. “The parts and pieces going into making the bag are of the finest leather, with amazing stainless steel fixtures, and then there is the amount of time (more than 10 man hours) it takes for one stitcher to pull it all together.”
“What I’ve often said is women carry purses and you may have one you carry to church and one you use for a night out,” Matt Smith said. “We’ve run into a lot of customers who have multiple carry bags from different companies. It’s competitive but the golf consumer really respects a high quality, unique product and there is room at the table for a lot of companies if you bring something unique and well received.”
Individuals can send in flags to have bags designed as well as members who are proud to represent a particular private club or resort, such as Pinehurst.
“All the golf superintendents I’ve talked to thought it was a super cool idea and a lot of them said they had a bunch of flags sitting around in barns,” Josh Smith said.
“These are fully functional golf bags and most people are using them as such, but even as a piece of memorabilia people would are interested it in because we all love our logos and our golf courses.” More info: https://flagbaggolfco.com/.
