PGA Tour Fan Shop expands in size and product selection for The Players Championship

Practice rounds for The Players Championship hadn’t even started and already sales at the expanded PGA Tour Fan Shop, located just inside the main entrance to the Stadium Village, were breaking records.

“We’ve done better than we ever did on a first day of our early openings,” said Lea Osol, director PGA Tour Merchandising. “We have not had any supply-chain issues this year. Everything came in on time and we’re expecting our best week ever.”

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That PGA Tour Fan Shop began opening the weekend before The Players in 2020, giving customers a chance to get a head start on their Players Championship shopping. The huge merchandise center, expanded this year to around 40,000 square feet (it was 30,000 last year), opened last Friday and on that particular afternoon, a half-dozen registers were open and several dozen customers were strolling the aisles and filling their arms with hats, shirts, club head covers, commemorative glasses and cups and even items for their pets.

Predicting a big week

The PGA Tour doesn’t release sales figures but there was no reason to doubt Osol’s assessment that it would be a lucrative week.

The Tour is coming off strong sales the week of The Presidents Cup last fall in Charlotte and the WM Phoenix Open last month.

The Phoenix Open annually draws the most fans to a PGA Tour event and but Osol is predicting better sales from slightly fewer fans at The Players.

“This is our biggest event of the year so we plan on doing better than Scottsdale,” she said. “We do look to Scottsdale to see what kind of demand there will be. We know our product mix and our fan base and we’re really excited about what the week will bring.”

Most of the additional floor space has gone to adding 12 registers to ease lines. The Tour also provides shipping at a tent just outside the exit so fans can immediately send merchandise to family and friends, or, if they’re at The Players from out of town, to their own homes.

Adding more 'co-branding'

The PGA Tour Fan Shop has the usual merchandise: golf shirts, hats, outerwear, souvenir balls, ball markers, keychains, clubhead covers, cups, glasses, pin flags and posters.

But it’s much more. The Fan Shop is again carrying “co-branded” clothing and headwear from Peter Millar, Lily Pulitzer, Lulu Lemon and Vineyard Vines, and this year is adding Barstool Sports, Flomotion, Greyson, Johnnie-O and Zero Restriction.

Barstool has combined a recent fashion trend with old school, co-branding a Players Championship hoodie with a hat straight out of the 1960s, with the thin rope that separates the bill from the rest of the hat.

Johnnie-O also has a line of hoodies, which Osol pointed out have become accepted outerwear on golf courses, ranging from PGA Tour players to weekend handicappers.

“I love new things and this generation of golf fans also loves pushing the envelope,” she said.

Osol said women are behind fashion innovations in one way: they want flexibility and layering in their apparel. Women want outfits that they can wear to play 18 holes and still be acceptable to go to lunch in the clubhouse or even meet up off the course.

“The ladies are all about lifestyle,” Osol said. “We sell a lot of layering pieces because they have a lot of uses for that, such a quarter-zip, a hoodie … we’ve got some really on-trend T-shirts, tank tops and midriff tops this year. Those focus on a handful of brands so we’ve really expanded the Lulu Lemon this year, some really odd-trend tops from Tasc.”

The PGA Tour Fan Shop is on the right as fans enter the Stadium Village. Hours coincide with gate openings and the end of play each day.

The Fan Shop has also expanded other women’s line such as Vineyard Vines and Ahead.

“It’s a great mix of golf performance with real lifestyle,” she said of the lines of apparel. “You can wear it to the gym but you can also wear it to play golf, go shopping or have brunch. Ladies want something that they can play in and be comfortable sitting on a terrace.”

First Coast brands are hot

One of the most popular items are the numerous examples of shirts and headwear that capture the First Coast beach vibe and rep the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course.

The Fan Shop continues to have great success selling apparel with logos such as “904,” “PVB [Ponte Vedra Beach]” and “JAX.”

One shirt that promises to be in demand is a design by Greystone (which has a distinctive wolf head logo that Osol calls, “the hottest in golf.”

The shirt is called “Sawgrass Curiosities” and is decorated with snakes, alligators, birds and plant life that can be found on the course.

“We don’t have anything like this … it’s just so cool,” she said.

Men gravitate towards hats and golf shirts and there are dozens of styles of golf headwear. Osol even had some fun with her staff: she had a contest to design golf hats and picked three, Annie Clemens, Mason Spalding and Sue Cramer.

Bucket hats are also back in vogue, especially since Anna Davis won the 2022 Augusta National Women's Amateur wearing one. And if it gets chilly and windy, as March does, the Fan Shop has ski hats in stock.

The PGA Tour Fan Shop is on the right as fans enter the Stadium Village. Hours coincide with gate openings and the end of play each day.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Players Championship's PGA Tour Fan Shop expands in size, selection