It’s 7 p.m. on a Thursday on the driving vary on the Westside’s Rancho Park Golf Course.
At one finish of the raised platform, the stalls are largely occupied by polo shirt-wearing males quietly training their swings. However on the different finish, a crowd gathers. Individuals of all backgrounds are vibing to hip-hop and Afrobeats taking part in over two moveable audio system and socializing over beer and snacks from the meals stand. They’re wearing streetwear and classy sports activities attire — Jordan 1s, fitted caps, tennis skirts and saggy pants. One girl, carrying tall platform boots and a patterned skirt, is hugging mates. When somebody steps as much as take a swing, others watch and provide assist and pointers.
“Keep in mind to breathe,” somebody says.
“Calm down your grip,” advises one other.
Aspiring golf professional Rob Perea, proper, teaches starting golfers throughout a Swang golf occasion.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
Not your typical golf meetup, that is Swang, an L.A. golf collective that hosts a daily gathering referred to as Free Vary, the place attendees can obtain informal steerage from longtime golfers — and simply hang around. With the welcoming motto “pull up, faucet in,” founder Modi Oyewole created Swang to offer an area for the golf-curious and those that’ve been trying to find like-minded of us with whom to play within the traditionally white- and male-dominated sport. He says that for generations, getting into the world of golf has been each financially and culturally tough.
“Once I ask folks how they came upon about us, a whole lot of the tales are the identical,” says Oyewole, 38. “Individuals by no means felt like this was a factor they might do. However with this, we’re fairly actually saying, We are able to do that too. You’ll be able to put on what you need. You could be you and nonetheless come play.”
“You’re not going to see this make-up of individuals on this dimension on the driving vary,” says Modi Oyewole. “It doesn’t occur.”
(Beau Ryan)
A small digital camera crew follows Oyewole, who’s carrying a Toro y Moi T-shirt, cargos and Adidas sneakers, capturing content material for Swang’s social media accounts. He takes a strong swing, sending the ball flying onto the vary. You’d assume that he’s been taking part in for years, however golf is a brand new ardour for the multifaceted inventive who’s labored at varied report labels and for manufacturers like Nike and Redbull.
Oyewole’s father launched him to the game about 20 years in the past through the top of Tiger Woods’ profession. “I feel seeing a Black particular person on this sport that’s predominantly white and him dominating it undoubtedly obtained my dad like, ‘All proper, we will do that now. Now we have illustration,’” Oyewole remembers. His dad started taking him and his youthful brother to a public driving vary of their District of Columbia neighborhood till it shut down.
Oyewole didn’t take into consideration golf once more till a number of years later, when one in every of his mates invited him to the Hypegolf Invitational hosted by Hypebeast in Santa Clarita — an invite he accepted begrudgingly, he says. However what he noticed shocked him.
“This was my first time experiencing golf in its entirety, ever. I’d by no means been to a golf course, not to mention a really fancy nation membership, and I’d additionally by no means seen golf offered on this method,” he remembers.
One of many first folks he noticed at Hypegolf was rapper Macklemore, who was rocking a clothes collaboration between his golf line Bogey Boys and Adidas. Each gap on the course was sponsored by a special model. DJs had been spinning upbeat music, and all the attendees had been, in Oyewole’s phrases, “swaggy.”
Blaise Butler, far left, of Los Angeles units up a golf ball on the tee whereas attendees pose for images. Swang’s Instagram bio reads that it’s a group for these “who had been by no means invited — however all the time belonged.”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
He was additionally amazed to run into a number of folks inside his orbit who he didn’t know performed golf. “It was simply a kind of moments the place I used to be like, ‘Wait, I really feel like they discovered a solution to make this digestible to an individual like me,’” says Oyewole. “It was eye-opening as a result of it taught me that the sport was cool, and it wasn’t the sport that I used to be upset at. It was the context surrounding the sport.”
A number of weeks later, Oyewole stop his job because the vp of inventive, experiential and content material improvement at Def Jam Recording. Together with his newfound free time, he began taking part in golf on the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course in South-Central — named after a longtime civil rights activist who helped break the colour barrier on L.A.’s public golf programs — with a pal who gifted him hand-me-down golf equipment. Earlier than lengthy, he was hooked.
He hosted the primary Swang occasion in August 2023 on the Rancho Park driving vary. Oyewole and two of his mates introduced a speaker to play music, together with golf golf equipment and balls for attendees to follow with. About 25 folks confirmed up, together with a couple of golf influencers like Jacques Slade and Loulou Gonzalez — a few of whom had by no means performed golf earlier than and others who’ve been taking part in their entire lives.
“Simply seeing that was magical, however I feel what was extra magical than that was listening to these longtime golfers say, ‘Man, I’ve been {golfing} perpetually and I’ve by no means seen something like this,’ ” Oyewole says. “You’re not going to see this make-up of individuals on this dimension on the driving vary. It doesn’t occur. Golf doesn’t appear like this.”
Swang arrives in L.A. at a time when golf is booming in recognition post-pandemic, significantly amongst girls and younger folks. Though golf has lengthy been perceived as a sport that “older” folks play, the Nationwide Golf Basis revealed that in 2024, the most important group of on-course golfers — practically 6.3 million gamers — had been between the ages of 18 to 34. Since 2019, there’s been a 41% enhance of feminine golfers, the NGF reviews, and yearly since 2020, roughly 3.3 million folks have hit the course for the primary time. The surge could be credited to content material creators and YouTubers amplifying the game on-line, fashionable attire manufacturers, reveals like “Full Swing” on Netflix, nightlife-adjacent institutions like TopGolf and collectives like Swang who’re introducing the game to a brand new demographic.
No tools is required at Free Vary classes, and novices can obtain suggestions from longtime golfers on the best way to play.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
Swang attracts roughly 75 to 100 common attendees at every Free Vary session. Amongst them are creatives, musicians, entrepreneurs, tech professionals, actors, entrepreneurs and extra.
Though some folks deliver their very own golf gear to the meetups, none is required. It’s additionally “a secure place to suck,” Oyewole says.
Previous to discovering Swang, Adil Kadir’s solely expertise with the game was going to TopGolf, nevertheless it was one thing he wished to get higher at. As somebody who labored within the tech trade, he seen {golfing} as a “language” or entry level that would enhance his “means to combine into the world of enterprise.”
However by way of Swang, he found that {golfing} was additionally enjoyable. “Nothing can actually stimulate the quantity of dopamine you get from really hitting the ball the correct method,” he says.
Starting golfers obtain particular person instruction.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
Stacey Esteban was nervous about attending Free Vary for the primary time due to damaging experiences she had at different golf ranges in L.A.
“I’ll hear aspect feedback from different individuals who don’t appear like me, and so they’re attempting to provide me classes that I by no means requested for, and it doesn’t really feel secure for me. However right here, I used to be like, ‘It’s secure,’ ” says Esteban, who began taking part in golf through the pandemic. “These are folks I’d need to discuss to and hang around with.”
Josh Hubberman, 43, who’s been taking part in golf since childhood, says he’s by no means skilled something like Swang earlier than. “Driving ranges are sometimes quiet [with] two folks in a bay, and also you’re type of simply politely ready for a bay to open,” says Hubberman, who’s the co-founder of the inventive enterprise studio Cthdrl. He attended a session after a pal linked him and Oyewole concerning the prospect of working collectively. “Then whenever you present up at Swang, we now have music taking part in. We take over 10-plus bays, and it’s a giant social occasion as nicely, so there’s an power that instantly, you get on web site and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s obtained to be Swang!’ ”
On condition that Oyewole and Hubberman — the latter of whom helped launch the creator program for the golf model Callaway and has shot images for a publication referred to as the Golfer’s Journal — shared a imaginative and prescient for altering the narrative about golf, they determined to work collectively to show Swang right into a viable enterprise.
Swang is already making an influence on the golf trade in L.A. and past. In August, the collective programmed the music at an unique TopGolf occasion that includes rapper Larry June. Earlier this yr, Swang partnered with the Rolling Loud music pageant to co-produce a golf invitational and launch a capsule assortment. Swang additionally hosted a match in L.A. referred to as Spicoli’s Scramble — in honor of Oyewole’s late finest pal — and raised $20,000 for the Grammy Museum and Recording Academy’s Quinn Coleman scholarship.
The bigger imaginative and prescient for Swang, Oyewole says, is to proceed internet hosting the Free Vary classes and finally add a membership part that may permit members to entry unique occasions and experiences comparable to group journeys to golf tournaments across the globe. The collective just lately began creating short- and long-form social media content material, and it’ll debut its first Swang attire piece at Paris Vogue Week later this month.
Again on the driving vary, chill R&B music is taking part in, and a handful of attendees are taking their last swings for the evening earlier than the overhead lights on the vary shut off.
Reni Somoye, 32, was about to go away, however she decides to remain after one other attendee encourages her to hit the ball one final time. She’s been watching different folks all through the evening and realized that she wanted to swing extra powerfully. When it’s her flip, she walks towards the sting of the stall, pauses, swings after which strikes the ball so arduous it flies out onto the vary. The group that was mingling close by begins to cheer.
She turns round, smiling from ear to ear, and daps up the coach.
“All proper,” she says. “All proper, that was good!”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
