Golf has been booming over the last decade, and among the executives in the middle of that investment and activity has been 8AM Golf president and CEO Hoyt McGarity.
8AM Golf was founded in 2018 by Howard Milstein, and the holding company now boasts a portfolio that includes 15 businesses, including GOLF.com, GOLF Magazine, True Spec Golf, Miura Golf and the newly-opened Bounty Club in Nashville, which was built in partnership with 8AM partner Justin Timberlake.
In the latest episode of “The Deal” podcast with Jason Kelly and Alex Rodriguez, McGarity shared his insights on 8AM Golf’s business investments and strategy, and what he believes will drive the game’s future. Below, you can read 6 takeaways (lightly edited for clarity) from McGarity’s conversation with Kelly and Rodriguez.
“Today, we have about 15 different golf companies,” McGarity said. “But in 2018, 2019, we probably were around six. And we didn’t really have a holding company. We owned them individually, and we thought, ‘Okay, we need to house them somewhere.’ And we formed the holding company called 8AM Golf. And since then, we’ve been collecting brands in the sport that are best in class.
“I think we’re in every facet of the game, right? We’ve invested everything from hospitality to equipment to media to events to travel. I mean, you name it. We’re pretty much in everything except for apparel. We sell a lot of apparel through our e-comms, but we don’t own an apparel company. I think our closest thing to that might be PAYNTR [shoes] now that we just bought a position. So that was kind of our way of getting into [apparel]. But, we thought, once you had one or two three investments, it’s best to surround them with other great investments. And even if they’re in different areas, they all can feed off one another. And I think we’ve done a really good job of creating this, maybe one of the first golf holding companies.”
On what kind of companies appeal to 8AM Golf…
“We try to find these unique, best-in-class products that may be a bit above the rest, right? And we’re very pretty particular on that,” McGarity said. “I don’t think anyone’s looked at more golf companies than us in the last 10 years. I spend my days, from a venture startup with nothing to a massive, multi-billion dollar company. … We are very particular on the CEOs, the operating side. Do we gel with them? Do they fit in? We try to surround our current businesses with stronger businesses, right? And I think once you get consistency and synergies between them all, you start to see the effects of that, and I feel like we’re seeing that on a daily basis now.”
On 8AM Golf developing the Bounty Club in Nashville…
“I never thought we were going to own a golf course or build one from scratch, right? I mean, that was a dream, if you think about it, from growing up in the golf business,” McGarity said. “We just had our first member-member, and we’ve only been open for just over a month, and I was sitting there, I’m like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this actually happened.’ So this goes back to ’21. We’ve been in the design business. We knew a lot about golf course, architecture. We do a lot around golf. And Nashville was a little starved for golf in general, and then Justin’s [Timberlake] connections to Tennessee, we kind of found this incredible property off market in [2021], around Memorial Day. And now we opened up.
“It’s a private club. We have about 140ish members at this moment, mostly national-based, I would say 100 of our members are from not Tennessee or Nashville. And we’re growing. We’re only a month in and it’s pretty successful to get to that number. I don’t know where we’ll cap it out, but we kind of like our number, 150, 160. … We’re only 12 minutes from downtown. It’s unbelievable. We can’t be closer. And Nashville is growing like crazy, and people love going there. We’re just fortunate to have this incredible property that’s so close to downtown.”
On the Bounty Club vibe…
“It was interesting. Where do we lie, right? And we had to decide as a club, and it wasn’t too hard to decide with Justin, Nashville,” McGarity said. “We thought, okay, well, we wanted a world-class championship golf course. But we want it to be fun, and the one thing Justin always preached to us was, ‘Listen, you can have a great golf course, but a terrible hang … and an okay golf course, but an incredible hang — and your people, they will come there, be there, have fun with it. If you hit both, you’ve gone really well, right?”
T-Squared Social in St. Andrews.
courtesy T-Squared Social
On the new-age golf boom…
“I think with the younger generation, what you’re seeing now is like — take today, I was at T-Squared Social,” McGarity said. “And I’m just looking around to lunchtime in St. Andrews, Scotland. There’s not much going on, and we’ve got kids in there from the university hitting golf balls in the simulators. They’re playing darts, they’re just around the sport, having fun with it in a different way, which is something that maybe I wouldn’t have done when I was a kid. We didn’t even have simulated golf, right? Not much. And this boom in simulator golf is massive, and it’s bringing in a whole new wave, and it’s a lot less threatening to hit a golf ball, 10 feet into a screen, than chase it around a golf course, especially as a beginner. I travel a lot around the world, and [see much] simulated golf. Golfzon in Korea is one of the largest golf companies in the world, and it’s literally just in Korea. They have more locations than Starbucks in Korea. It’s always been in Asia, and now you’ve seen it come here, and I think it’s generating this interest level of this younger generation.”
On what’s next for 8AM Golf…
“We just acquired three businesses in the last four months, so we really haven’t slowed down. Or we’re partnered up with different businesses and made investments. I don’t see us slowing down,” McGarity said. “As long as we’re cash flowing and doing the right things, we will keep growing. I think that we will bring in partners. I have no doubt in my mind that’s probably the next step, but … you’ve got to prove it first, and now we have something that we proved, and I think it’s a great front-running brand. We get approached all the time, from private-equity firms to celebrities, all sorts of people coming to us [asking], ‘How do we get involved in this world?’ So I think that I want to see growth. I don’t have any intentions to slow down.”
Listen to McGarity’s full interview here. To learn more about 8AM Golf, click here.
