As golf equipment-makers go, Gabe Coyne is not what you would call a gearhead.
Nor has he ever been a range rat.
Growing up in Seattle, he took up golf only after getting cut from his high school baseball team. The first sticks he owned were a hodgepodge second-hand set that his mother bought at a church rummage sale.
“And I played with those same janky clubs for years,” Coyne says.
During college, where he studied graphic and web design, Coyne stopped playing golf altogether, an abstinence he stuck to throughout his 20s, when he got married, had four children and made his mark on a series of successful startups. He was well into his 30s, and living in Chicago, before he dusted off his sticks again.
Knocking it around with friends and colleagues at the local muni, Coyne reestablished his casual — but joyful — connection to the game. He wasn’t cutthroat about it, but he wanted to get better. He decided it was time for an equipment upgrade, if only he could find clubs that appealed to him.
“I didn’t want a cheap starter set, but I also wasn’t up for spending tons of money buying golf clubs a la carte,” Coyne says. “The market seemed to either cater to beginners or avid golfers, with a huge gap in between.”
Many of his playing partners felt the same.
The entrepreneur in Coyne saw an opportunity: golf clubs aimed at the Goldilocks middle. In late 2019, Stix Golf was born, producing graceful-looking, high-quality clubs, sold directly to consumers at a modest price. Coyne and his co-founders had tapped a sweet spot in the market that was even larger than they imagined.
In the four-plus years since its founding, Stix has established a respected place in the industry with its “less is more” approach, marrying sleek, minimalist designs with maximum engineering prowess: easy on the eyes, easy to hit and easy on the wallet. In 2022, Stix earned an international product-design accolade — the Red Dot Award — and the innovations haven’t ceased. The company’s offerings have expanded to three different series, including a newly launched women’s line.
And now comes another notable reveal: a collaboration with Nicklaus Companies to create a Nicklaus-branded line of clubs by Stix. The two brands announced their partnership this week, emphasizing their complementary goals.
“Stix haș quickly turned heads in the golf industry by making remarkable products that not only meet our high-performance standards but also provide fair pricing, helping to make golf more accessible to more people,” Andy O’Brien, president of Nicklaus Brands, said in a statement. “The loyal Stix customer has a youthful and energetic demographic, for both men and women of varying handicaps. It is important for the Nicklaus legacy to reach this audience and meet the needs of this growing demographic of new golfers entering the game.”
For Stix, meanwhile, the collaboration confers the credibility long enjoyed by the Nicklaus name.
For more on the Stix-Nicklaus partnership, click here.
“For all our success, we are still a new brand,” Coyne said. “You join forces with the revered global brand of Nicklaus™, and people realize, Oh, I’d heard of Stix. But I didn’t realize they were this legit.”
The first Nicklaus™ sets by Stix are now in the design and engineering phase and will debut at the 2025 PGA Show in January. They will be available to the public in April, in time for the spring golf season.
And there is more in to come, as the two brands plan to collaborate on a variety of golf products in the years ahead.
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