Geno Bonnalie And Three Other PGA Tour Caddies Sign Underwear Deal With SAXX

The prop bet ‘who will the winner hug first,’ often excludes caddies for good reason. Professional golfers value their caddies, who are more than just club-carrying assistants, but trusted teammates who provide invaluable support on the course.

While individual agreements vary, PGA Tour caddies typically receive 10% of their player’s earnings for a win, 7% for a top-10 finish and 5% of what comes in from a made-cut plus a weekly base salary. Their worth to corporate interests is far less commensurate and when caddies do land a sponsorship deal, they are often just tagging along with their player and are relegated to the background.

Vancouver based underwear brand SAXX has inked an endorsement deal with a foursome of PGA Tour caddies and have created a campaign that puts loopers front and center.

“We felt they are an unrepresented, unsung hero of the game. In particular, if I can play on a pun, they spend a lot of time taking care of golfers’ balls and we are really focused on taking care of guys’ balls too. So we loved that angle in and also looking at how integral they are to supporting the game made it the perfect fit for us,” Shawna Olsten, SAXX’s vice president of brand marketing, said.

Geno Bonnalie, Aaron Flener, John Limanti, and Joel Stock ham it up in a series of digital ads that play on caddie responsibilities from keeping equipment in tip top shape, to reading breaks on greens and keep their player’s mental game dialed-in.

“Treat you balls well and they will soar like eagles. Ignore them, and they end up scuffed and in the rough,” Bonnalie deadpans in one spot. “As caddies we must protect our golfer’s balls at all costs; keeping them from getting wet or from getting lost in the brush—protection from all hazards.”Wondering how many takes it took Bonnalie to go through all the balls deep verbiage in the script?

“Just one. He’s a pro,” Olsten said.

SAXX has pledged to donate up to $10,000 to the Testicular Cancer Foundation for the remainder of the season, contributing $100 for every birdie scored by one of their caddies’ players. This charitable initiative mirrors a previous partnership in which SAXX donated $1,000 per sack made by seven members of the South Carolina Gamecocks secondary.

The company is also providing luxury accommodations for their looper pitchmen during the U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club in June. The ‘Caddie House’ promises to be a major upgrade over their typical tournament week housing situation.

“When caddies are on the road they are often left to fend for themselves. What tipped us off was a Twitter post by Geno Bonallie that was a fake MTV Cribs where he did a humorous tour of a real awful motel,” Olsten explained.

SAXX sees the opulent digs, as a way to solve a pain point on tour, pamper their pitchmen and also provide a homebase for activations and cocktail parties where they can shoot content and promote their brand.

While turning caddies into underwear models is certainly a new tack, they’re certainly not the first company to see caddies as marketing vehicles. Jani-King, a commercial cleaning franchiser have a towel deal with the Association of Professional Tour Caddies and Valspar, part of Sherwin-Williams, has run a Caddie Hat Program for a number of years that distributes a prize pool of $550,000 to PGA Tour caddies who wear logoed headwear during events.