Five former women’s collegiate golfers are powering the success of golf’s leading fitness brand
OK, admittedly, this is not your typical team Zoom call.
In the middle of a meeting-ravaged, impossibly hectic Thursday, more than a dozen GolfForever staffers stand squared-up to their laptops, ready to open their hips, add core stability, then increase body mobility and shoulder rotation. The trim, athletic company founder, Dr. Jeremy James has dialed in from Australia. Newly promoted CEO Bear Kaminer and fully engaged VPs from various divisions exercise along with an expert fitness guru from cities all over Colorado, the Midwest and the West Coast.
While other execs around the world wrestle over profit & loss reports, HR debacles and endless data analysis, the assembled Dream Team behind the leading golf fitness platform is staying true to its culture and mission by prioritizing its staff’s health and fitness before they head back out and collectively continue the quest to be one of the most indispensable brands in the golf business.
It’s an exhilarating time for the golf industry, with on-course and entertainment-golf-venue participation soaring, equipment sales running hot, destination travel still booming and entrepreneurialism within golf at an all-time high. GolfForever has harnessed the energy of those culminating forces about as well as any brand in the golf space over the last three years, tripling sales its YOY sales figures in both 2022 and 2023 and recently becoming the Official Golf Fitness System of the PGA TOUR.
The platform popularized, in part, by world No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler (who religiously uses the GolfForever SwingTrainer in his workouts) promises users less pain, along with more mobility, flexibility, strength, stamina, and balance.It has become one of the fastest growing companies in the industry by delivering on its claims.
Unsurprisingly, the key players who have driven GolfForever’s rapid rise possess an uncommon depth of talent and experience that make them uncannily suited to aggressively scale the growth of this finely tuned startup. In fact, five of the roughly two dozen professionals who make up the GolfForever team, five are former women’s collegiate golfers who have each carved a unique niche of their own in the golf space and employ a highly specific skill set to fuel the company’s growing influence.
A tireless networker and problem solver, Nicole Hage honed her craft on the pristine-but-treacherous fairways and greens on the LPGA Tour from 2007 to 2014 after a successful playing career at Auburn University. It was on the LPGA that she took on the philosophy to always leave the situations in her life better than she found them. In her Business Development role at GolfForever, Hage forges strategic partnerships with key players in golf, like dozens upon dozens of college golf programs and large unified golf associations. To date, the most impactful partnership Hage has helped orchestrate was with her former home on the LPGA.
Historically, fitness amenities on the LPGA have been virtually nonexistent. By equipping the game’s elite female golfers with GolfForever Swing Trainers and subscriptions to the AI-powered GolfForever app, those players can now access state-of the-art fitness at any venue, completely at their convenience. Talk about a game changer.
“When I played, it was a glaring elephant in the room that there were no fitness trailers, onsite physical trainers let alone masseuses like there are on The PGA TOUR. The quality of your workouts was contingent on the state of the gym at the Hampton Inn, if you had any place to work out at all,” said Hage. “So, to play a role in making proven golf-focused fitness accessible to the game’s best players is gratifying in a way that’s almost impossible to put into words.”
Similar to Hage, Stacy Borkowski, GolfForever’s VP of Sales and Kerri Costello, the National Sales Manager, recall that what passed for golf fitness during their college playing days is a far cry from the advances GolfForever brings to the table today.
“We worked out, but we worked out like team sports athletes. Golf-specific training wasn’t what it is today, so It’s easy for me to be passionate about something that I know helps golf solve critical issues in their bodies so they can play the game better and enjoy it more. GolfForever effectively grows the game by keeping more people in it and thriving,”
Borkowski, a former golfer for the University of Kentucky and sales exec at Nike and adidas. For Costello, who was one of the few female sales and player development professionals for Acushnet/Titleist during a nine-year run, GolfForever brings more than a breakthrough in golf fitness and wellness. The most impactful sea change she thinks the brand can help bring about is opening golfers’ eyes to the fact that their bodies are the most vital piece of equipment and having the body finely tuned outweighs the benefits of custom-fit drivers or cutting-edge golf balls.
“You use your body on every shot you hit in golf, so your body has to be prepared for the workload and strong enough to hit the shots you want to hit,” the former University of Maryland golfer explains. “For the golfing world to take that next step in the evolution of making their bodies the most trusted piece of equipment, it has to be the same kind of aspirational drive that has led to golf equipment and golf ball fitting becoming the new standard in golf retail. Now, everyone gets custom fit for their equipment, but that wasn’t the case until golf professionals became invested in the process. Our next phase of growth will undoubtedly involve giving teaching and club professionals the tools to help golfers play pain-free and at their maximum potential.”
Former UNC-Wilmington golfer Megan Burnham, GolfForever’s executive administrator points to the collaborative culture James, Kaminer and the executive team have built as an ideal environment to hone career skills while living the dream of working in the golf industry.
“There’s working in golf and then there’s working in an environment that lets you pursue your passions and develop with great mentors and that’s what we have,” Burnham said. “The greatest part of this job is meeting GolfForever clients and seeing how the platform brings them a better quality of life. We met a man who could barely walk before he started on GolfForever and now he plays every single day. It’s stories like that that keep us motivated to reach more people. We’re in a unique place in the industry.” GolfForever’s plans to scale beyond its recent successes rely a great deal on the foresight and business acumen the dynamic professional women who have helped steer the company’s best practices and growth strategies. Today, the GolfForever Swing Trainer can be found in PGA Tour Superstore, Golf Galaxy, Dick’s and a host of the top golf retailers in the game.
Before Borkowski came into the picture, retail and wholesale-pricing partnerships were just a pipe dream for the plucky startup. Giving Borkowski the freedom to build a retail sales program from the ground-up has helped position GolfForever in a desirable niche in the marketplace, powering significant growth.
“The empowerment I’ve received at GolfForever wouldn’t have been possible in my previous roles at large, global sports companies,” she explains. “My experience, though, has me ideally suited to help us position our products and all the right places far more efficiently and easily than most startups ever could have. We thrive here because Dr. Jeremy James and our leadership insist on this being a family-first company with a meaningful mission.”
The sales experience and perspective on the consumer habits of golfers Costello has brought to GolfForever from her time at Acushnet has also been invaluable.
“The leadership and pivotal roles at golf companies have so often been filled by men because of assumptions about women’s inclination to start and raise families. At this company, we really nail the work-life balance proposition, and totally benefit from having people who can best thrive in their roles and collaborate well in this culture. All of our employees work remotely, so we’re mutually supportive of everyone’s personal and professional goals. It’s definitely one of GolfForever’s keys to success,” she adds.
Over the past 24 months, GolfForever has been soaring on jet fuel. All eight of Scottie Scheffler’s professional wins have come since he signed on as a GolfForever investor and TOUR Athlete. International golf star Tom Kim, two-time major winner and U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Zach Johnson, and multiple-tournament winner on the PGA TOUR Ryan Palmer have all signed brand ambassador agreements with GolfForever.
The brand has forged partnerships with countless golf associations, including Folds of Honor, Veteran Golfers Association and Golf Canada in addition to its cornerstone alliances with the PGA TOUR and the LPGA. The GolfForever teams’ eyes now shift toward plans to launch a certification program that would make an army of PGA club and teaching professionals qualified and motivated to their students the value of training with GolfForever.
As the brand continues to grow, so does its staff. Earlier this year, GolfForever welcomed new Marketing Coordinator Celia Kuenster after Hage and Borkowski met her at the Women Who Want to Work in Golf event organized by Fore Hire, a company that connects women golfers from all competitive levels to jobs within the industry.
Kuenster played collegiately at the University of Minnesota before completing her education at the University of Arizona in 2020. Her work with GolfForever has already taken her to the 2024 Ryder Cup in Rome and instilled her with a deeper passion for working in the golf industry.
“I love everything that golf encompasses including embracing the unique challenge that comes with communicating the benefits of GolfForever in a way that resonates with wherever a golfer is in their journey in the game. Our messages are constantly evolving by virtue of us paying close attention to what our clients tell us they want from the platform,” Kuenster explains. “As a job in the golf industry, it’s very cool that our leadership does a great job making our collective roles supportive and collaborative of each other.”
After its series of business triumphs and assembling of a board of investors that includes retired vice chairman at Goldman Sachs, Bob Hurst; top spinal surgeon, Dr. Todd Albert; Katie Rodan and Amnon Rodan of Rodan + Fields, GolfForever became attractive to New York-based Clerisy, a consumer growth equity fund who invested $10 million in the company to help ignite the fitness brand’s next chapter.
Primed for continued growth and deeper saturation into the golfing culture, GolfForever is strategizing to become more accessible at more touch points with more advocates from the PGA professional ranks and throughout the industry.
“Our growth thus far is attributable to the combined talents of our team, including Stacy, Nicole, Kerri, Celia and Megan,” said Kaminer. “It’s their collective experiences, their networks, their connections that have built over multiple decades that are the tools in the toolkit that we’re ultimately using as our success formula. If we’re impacting tens and tens of thousands of people today, we need to impact hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in a year from now and continue to deliver the right solution to the right individual at the right time. And we have an amazingly talented team in place to get there.”
