Eastside Golf’s logo is immediately recognizable: It’s a likeness of the brand’s founder and Chief Creative Officer Olajuwon Ajanaku wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, a cap, white kicks, and a Cuban link chain hanging from his neck, swooshing through the air as he takes a swing with a golf club. It stands out for not only speaking to the sport’s tradition, but also being unapologetically Black.
When Ajanaku designed the logo in 2018, he was at a crossroads in his commercial finance career. Despite a VP job waiting in the wings in beautiful San Diego, he knew that wasn’t the path he truly wanted to follow. Instead, he wanted to return to the pro golf circuit, which he’d been a part of since his college days at HBCU Morehouse. Competing at the pro level in golf is expensive because of tournament entry fees and travel, so Ajanaku initially created the Eastside Golf logo to attract the right sponsors.
“I showed it to Earl [Cooper, the company’s co-founder and CEO], and he was like, ‘Yo, you need to put that on a T-shirt.’ So I did and ended up going downtown Detroit and maybe got stopped a hundred times in two hours, like, ‘Who are you? What’s that logo? Where can I get it? Do you play golf?’ From there, I knew I had something,” Ajanaku tells Complex. Thus, in 2019, Eastside Golf was born as a full-fledged label.
The Atlanta-based brand produces a wide variety of lifestyle clothing, from hoodies and joggers to snapback hats, alongside traditional golf gear. The idea is to create comfortable, casual garments that are appropriate for the green course and beyond. Ajanaku and Cooper’s mission is to raise awareness about the gentlemen’s sport among the youth, while inspiring the culture, promoting diversity within it, and attracting new potential non-golfers and fans.
Eastside Golf is not the first Black-owned brand to merge the worlds of golf and fashion. Brands like California’s Urban Golf Gear, which was launched in 1998 by Craig Tanner, blended hip-hop and golf during TigerMania before ending its run in 2006. Then there was Trophy Hunting, who partnered with NBA superstar Stephen Curry to outfit Howard University’s golf team for last year’s Bison at the Beach Inaugural Golf Classic. Most recently, another Atlanta-based brand Iron Kings produced the HBCU Golf line, which currently supplies clothing to 34 of its teams. But Eastside Golf’s trajectory is wholly unique in that the brand branches out and thrives beyond golf itself.
To say that Eastside Golf plays outside the realm of most golfwear brands is an understatement. In just over five years, the label has partnered on a myriad of collaborations with the likes of the MLB, NBA, Mercedes-Benz, Mitchell & Ness, and Nike Jordan Brand. Several high-profile athletes have proudly rocked Eastside Golf gear including former Yankee great CC Sabathia and the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum. And in March of this year, the PGA Tour officially partnered with Eastside Golf. “We like to go to where golf has never been and legitimize it in that area,” Ajanaku says.
Cooper believes that all of the traction the brand has established outside of traditional golf circles will achieve its goal of driving grassroots community engagement and outreach to new consumers.
Cooper, who is from Wilmington, Delaware, and Ajanaku, who hails from the Eastside of Atlanta (hence the brand’s name), met and became friends at HBCU in the late 2000s. The two quickly bonded over their lifelong love of golf, which, as fate would have it, both started at age six. They would go on to have monumental moments at the age of 13 that really cemented their passion for the sport. Together, as players of the Morehouse College golf team, they won the 24th Annual PGA Minority Collegiate Golf Championship in 2010. Authenticity and genuineness not only feed the cultural cache surrounding their brand, but resonate with their personal histories.
As kids, the Eastside Golf co-founders were inspired by the ascent of Tiger Woods, who, like themselves, did not come from an affluent background. It took Cooper in particular some time before he could take a liking to golf, because not too many people from his area who looked like him—Black people—played. What changed his mind was winning the Golf Channel’s Drive, Chip & Putt competition in 2005.
“I was on TV. I finished second. Once I got to see it, I was like, ‘All right, I can [do this],’” Cooper says. Now, Cooper is one of the most sought-after PGA instructors in the world, and helps operate Eastside Golf out of his home base of New York.
While it took some time for Cooper to find his footing in the game, Ajanaku, who started playing golf at the same time as basketball, gravitated towards it quickly. His attitude on the links was the same as it was on the hoop court—healthy intensity with a good mix of trash talk. “I mean, it’s competitive nature. I love the strategy of it,” Ajanaku says. “It taught me how to strategize a lot of things around life, around work. Golf helped me with that.”
When Ajanaku was 13, he was sponsored by Nike to travel to Chicago for a 20-minute lesson from Tiger Woods. “I met Earl Woods at the same time. I remember he shook my hand and it felt like I almost broke it,” Ajanaku recalls. “He looked me and said, ‘You going to be somebody.’ I still grip [my golf club] the same way Tiger Woods [taught me] to this day.” Needless to say, the ongoing Eastside Golf x Nike collaboration has been a full-circle moment for Ajanaku.
Eastside Golf’s mission of diversifying the game isn’t just lip service; the brand produces several free community days with the help of Bridgestone and the PGA. This year, the Eastside Golf Community Day hit Jacksonville, Memphis, Atlanta, Augusta, and Detroit, where attendees were offered free rounds of golf, quick lessons, ball fittings, food, and music. The brand also currently sponsors three pro golfers, as well as four promising amateurs.
This week on October 18, Eastside Golf is also launching an apparel collection through Complex Shop. The lineup includes cozy cold-weather layers such as a Quilted ‘Swingsuit’ Hoodie and Jogger sweat set, an Applique Eastside Fleece Crew, a cardigan sweater, and more. There will also be T-shirts and hats alongside club headcovers and alignment stick covers. Prices range from $55 to $180.
Eastside Golf is in a position to revolutionize the game of golf in the 2020s the way Nike and Tiger Woods did in the ’90s and early 2000s. The brand is on pace to hit $10 million in sales this year. It’s a mark that Ajanaku never believed they would achieve so rapidly, but one that he says will help fund his and Cooper’s dreams. “If we continue being purpose-driven, that number eventually may get through a hundred million, and that’s the only way for change,” he says.
The brand’s genuine approach to apparel and community is different from anything the golf world has seen. And as successful as 2024 has been for the Eastside Golf—launching new partnerships as well as their ultra-successful women’s line—2025 is anticipated to be an even bigger year with the first Eastside Golf flagship store scheduled to open at Detroit Metro Airport.
“If we need to make money to actually make a change in the sport that’s done so much for us, so be it,” says Ajanaku. “But that’s just a part of the change of golf, and that’s why we’re here.”
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