(Bloomberg) -- The style of professional golfers follows certain old-fashioned country club codes: Think of Arnold Palmer’s pink cardigan, Tiger Woods’ red polo, or Jack Nicklaus’s yellow one. 

Eastside Golf, helmed by Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper, is beginning to change that. The apparel brand’s logo is a cartoon version of Ajanaku in jeans and a sweatshirt with a gold chain, and it emblazons the line of polos and sweatshirts that are sold exclusively on its website. In the past year, the duo has partnered with handful of blue-chip brands including BMW on a series of short films about their golf journey. 

Now, Eastside has entered the basketball arena: On Wednesday, June 29, the company announced a capsule collection with the NBA called Playing Golf After This, which will feature T-shirts with seven of the league’s team logos—including those of the most recent champions, the Golden State Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks, and Los Angeles Lakers—to signal the official end of the professional basketball season. A second capsule featuring crew neck fleeces will be released in early fall.

The company’s name is taken from Ajanaku’s East Atlanta neighborhood, where he grew up. As college teammates at Morehouse College, a historically Black men’s liberal arts college, also in Atlanta, Ajanaku and Cooper helped guide the school’s golf club to what was then called the PGA National Minority Championship, a tournament for HBCUs. 

After graduation, Ajanaku went into private finance, but he ditched the suit in 2012 and tried to start playing professionally. Cooper connected Olajuwon with an artist who would develop a logo, and Olajuwon put it, DIY-style, on polos he wore in tournaments, as well as on his golf bag.

But it was the reactions Ajanaku received when he was out, away from the golf course, that made him realize he had the makings of a business that might also fund his fledgling golf career. He shipped the first 3,500 orders himself, running fulfillment—and writing thank-you cards to early buyers—out of his apartment. He used the money he earned from sales to help offset his travel and tournament fees. “I basically took the entrepreneur route and sponsored myself,” he says. 

In the meantime, Cooper took a different route. He eschewed his original plan of law school and became a PGA Professional—a teaching pro—knowing he wasn’t good enough to go out on one of the professional tours. In 2016, he was named to Golf Digest’s list of best young teachers in 2016.  

In early 2020, Ajanaku convinced Cooper to join him at PGA Show, a trade show where brands and equipment manufacturers hope to catch the eye of retailers and buyers. The striking logo created a buzz there that emboldened the pair to believe that Eastside might be both an apparel company and a means to prove that golf could look a little bit more like the two founders and the Black man on its logo. 

Now, Eastside sells polo shirts, hats, sweatshirts, visors, and head covers that use a striking cursive script that evokes outdoor graffiti more than the interiors of a country club. The brand’s sweatshirts feature big, loud logos emblematic of streetwear and skateboard culture. Shortly after that visit to the PGA Show, the brand got a bump when Chris Paul, then-president of the NBA Players Association, wore one of their sweatshirts as he walked out of a meeting with league officials regarding protests over police shootings.

In many ways, it was a confluence of what the pair hopes Eastside can be: a golf brand that transcends the game with a social message about change. “We’re all about calling out what’s not right,” says Ajanaku. “A part of our business plan is to actually call out other companies or call out the bigger companies or bigger organizations like the PGA Tour. That’s why we did the video where Earl and I got about another 15 to 20 PGA professionals and they all said Black Lives Matter.” 

A recent partnership with agency CAA has broadened their opportunities. Ajanaku says it not only opened doors and gave them credibility but presented them with opportunities they might not otherwise have sought out, particularly when it came to building on their mission of inclusion and authenticity. CAA helped them land a number of collaborations, including the NBA and Major League Baseball. “And we’ve been fortunate to work with [Michael Jordan’s] Jordan Brand and the Jordan Golf Division, of which [longtime Vice President] Gentry Humphrey and MJ have been leading the charge,” says Cooper. 

Golf has always prioritized fashion—it’s part of the tradition of the game. “These little things, like, ‘You gotta respect the game,’” Cooper says. “Yeah. Respect the game. Cool. But if a kid can't afford a polo and wears a t-shirt, does that mean that they are disrespecting the game?”

Additional capsule collections will be released next year, featuring more traditional golf items such as quarter-zip pullovers as well as sweatpants, hoodies, and leisure wear that can be worn on and off the course. They also use their popular social media accounts to document their travels to Jordan’s exclusive Florida golf club, the Grove XXIII, and film campaigns with Charles Schwab. 

“Everyone talks about diversity and growing the game,” Cooper says. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re focused on that. We’re not just here to make money. We want to have a real impact on the game of golf.” 

Cooper and Olajuwon believe clothes can drive those conversations and that, as Black men wearing those clothes while playing golf—and playing at a high level—they can help jump-start conversations at places away from the course. “In the park, in the barber shop, in the bar, and in the club, because we’re wearing the clothing of any and everywhere,” Cooper says. 

“Golf is for everyone,” he continues. “We want to look at the company and ask, ‘Is golf getting better? Are we having more people look looking like us out on the golf course? Is the mindset [of what a golfer looks like] changing right now? Are people comfortable to go to the golf course? And when they arrive there, how are we making them feel?’”

While the duo has made inroads toward building a bigger tent in golf, there remains one glaring omission from the roster of collaborators: the PGA Tour itself. “We have talked to PGA Tour and had discussion about ideas,” says Cooper. They’re waiting to see what comes of it.

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