Garrett Hadfield’s Dream of a More Welcoming Sport Come to Life
Header Photo: Hadfield alongside Cody Heath, "the other half of Goat Track"
If you’re heading to a driving range for the first time, it’s unlikely you’ll be proficient from the get-go.
It takes hours upon hours of practice - and frustration - to hit that shot. But, swing after swing, maybe a lesson here and there, your stroke becomes pure, your shot straight, and just like that: you’re a golfer.
Garrett Hadfield knows it takes time to master your game, but he also knows it takes time to transform the sport.
After falling in and out of love with golf, Hadfield set out to change the way it looks, who it’s for, and who feels welcome on the course. And he’s making waves.
The “Costume”
Hadfield caught the golf bug late, spending his early years obsessed with skateboarding and snowboarding.
The Edmonton native first flirted with the sport at 18, playing a few rounds one summer. The catalyst came a year later, when his mom brought home a newspaper clipping advertising a job at the Royal Mayfair Golf Club.
Hadfield applied, got the job, and fell in love.
“A lot of the similarities between skateboarding and golf, just with the whole ‘you can't perfect this sport. It takes you forever just to be any kind of good, and if you don't practice, nothing is going to happen for you.’ I think that's what drew me to it.”
Hadfield dove head first into the sport. He completed a Golf Management degree at Grant MacEwan University, earned his professional card by age 24, and landed a job with TaylorMade shortly after.
Although he was thriving in the golf world, Hadfield, with a style inspired by skateboarding culture and a growing number of tattoos, felt like he didn’t belong.
“Why is this sport the way it is?” he remembers questioning. “Why is it telling everyone how they have to be and what they have to wear? It just became that kind of costume every day.”
By 2016, after only a decade in the game, he couldn’t take it.
“I was just completely over and done with the whole industry and everything about golf, because it felt so stagnant at that point. It just felt like rinse and repeat,” he said.
Hadfield left the industry to work in men’s fashion, but returned the next year with dreams of a sport that was less rigid; less bound by exclusionary tradition.
The idea of a clothing brand that bent those rules began to brew in 2018 and Hadfield partnered up with Cody Heath, a likeminded professional.
The pair worked for two years, smoothing out the kinks of design and supply before they launched Goat Track Social Club, a brand that took a casual approach to golf attire.
It offers unassuming clothing that would be unimaginable on courses of the past; flowing floral crewnecks, colourful headcovers, and polos designed to be worn untucked.
For Hadfield and Heath, that was the point. The pair wanted to make fun, stylish clothes that challenged the assumptions of the sport, and adopted the slogan “Golf is for everyone.”
Transforming attire, attitudes, and access
Hadfield and Heath launched Goat Track with big dreams on March 1, 2020, but two weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic began.
When golf became one of the only activities available during a country-wide lockdown, the pair took advantage of its increasing popularity to shift their focus to a place it remains: the community.
Tee times were booked, and socials were thrown to connect golfers and promote their brand.
Goat Track grew rapidly over the next two years before another unexpected turn of events brought Hadfield even closer to that community.
With what started as an Instagram message, Hadfield was offered the chance to take over Rundle Golf Park by the City of Edmonton.
Despite having only played the course once, he jumped at the opportunity, but it meant quieting his ambitions with Goat Track.
“It [Goat Track] just became a little bit much with running the golf course. So we said, ‘let's just keep it in house, sell it online. Maybe scale our numbers back a little bit, but focus on the community and make fun clothes that we like and just try to make it as fun, as approachable as possible.’ And that's kind of the motto that we've brought to Rundle Park,” he said.
When he took over, Hadfield said Rundle - a short course with “diabolically undulating” greens hidden in a park of the same name - was the “forgotten” sister of the city’s three courses.
“We knew we had a really good product. It was just no one knew this place existed, so it just became about exposure, social media, word of mouth and getting our pro buddies to come and play and go back to tell their members.”
Three years later, Rundle has seen a bounce back to its former glory. Its numbers have increased, four tough holes were bumped up to par 4’s - to glowing reviews - and a new restaurant, Shortees, was opened.
Most importantly, Hadfield has been able to bring the slogan that started it all - “golf is for everyone” - to the game.
Believing cost is one of golf’s biggest barriers, his first act as director of golf at Rundle Park was simple: buy junior clubs. If they fit, they’re free to rent.
The next year, they began a new event called Golf Gals Day.
Golf Gals Day runs on two consecutive weekends, where women and girls take an hour-long lesson from professionals Elizabeth Stewart and Gina Nelson at Victoria Golf Course before playing 18 holes at Rundle Park the next weekend.
Sticking to his goals of making golf affordable, the event is just $50 for women over 18, and completely free for those 17 and under.
In 2024, the event drew 57 people. That number doubled the next year as around 120 women and girls came out to play, many with little to no experience in the sport.
“My goal in this whole rigamarole is just to have everyone play golf. I want everyone to try golf, or I want everyone to know that they can try golf if they want to,” said Hadfield.
Giving back is also important to the 39 year-old, who credits his parents for setting that example.
He and Heath began collecting food donations at every event in 2022 and taking them to a local food bank at the end of the season.
They have also donated proceeds to a local animal rescue society, a women’s shelter and a U13 baseball team.
“I find so much more joy and pride and accomplishment out of helping. I think it just kind of goes back to how I was raised; when you're in a position to give back, you should give back.
“My friends love it, because as a golf pro, I get free clubs and free stuff, so I give it to them at the end. That's another charity I deal with, my buddies,” he chuckled.
“Humbling”
Ten years after a “stagnant” culture drove him from the game, Hadfield reflected on his journey from his first job in the golf industry, to a course he now runs.
“I didn't think it was going anywhere, to be honest. I thought it was just going to kind of be, that was it,” he said.
“I went from, ‘I can't stand this game. It's the same thing every day. I have to put on this costume, I’m tired of it’ to ‘let's maybe make our own stuff.’ and now we're here six years later, and the game has completely changed. So it feels cool to be a part of it.”
Hadfield doesn’t take all - or even much - of the credit for this shift, praising trailblazing professionals, innovative golf YouTubers, and bold business owners.
“It's a very humbling, cool thought that I had anything to do with the great scheme of golf changing into a more welcoming atmosphere, to know that anything we made, or an event or an idea we had, or anything else, sparked something else somewhere.”
“Golf is for everyone is basically everyone's slogan now,” he continued. “Which is awesome, because it was nobody's before, and it was ours right out of the gate, and now everyone wants that as their slogan. It’s perfect, because the goal wasn't to be billionaires. It was to get people to play golf and create this community.
“The world is so brutal right now that if this can be a place where you can at least have a little bit of happiness, whether you look like you, or you look like me, whoever you are, it doesn't matter.
“That's just kind of the motto around here and I guess if that's the message I can convey, it’s that golf doesn't need to be scary and stuffy. It can be fun and inviting.”
That’s exactly what he’s doing, inviting.
With Goat Track Social Club members across the world, barrier-breaking events, and affordable prices at Rundle Park, that invitation is already being answered.