Sunday Golf Is Making the Game Lighter

Music drifts across the fairway. Someone’s in flip flops. The Pacific flashes in the distance. Sun peeks onto shoulders through the palm trees. It’s spring, technically, but the air reads suspiciously like summer. At the par-3 course at Liberty Station, the longest hole barely stretches past 120 yards, and no one looks particularly interested in becoming the next PGA legend.

This is where Sunday Golf was born.

“I got dragged to a par-3 course in 2019 —The Loma Club—and it was way more my jam,” says Ronan Galvin, CEO and co-founder of Sunday Golf, a company that makes lightweight golf bags for players who’d rather carry less and laugh more. “It was a lot different than the stereotypical ideas you have about golf where it’s kind of long, uptight, and exclusive.”

Galvin spent over a decade in the golf industry working in product development, sourcing and manufacturing. But he didn’t grow up swinging clubs. Basketball and football were more his speed. What clicked for him was a simpler, more relaxed kind of play: shorter rounds and weekend games built for fun rather than formality. The kind of golf that resonated for him felt accessible, effortless, and surprisingly his lifestyle.

He noticed something else, too.

On a course where five clubs do the job, players were still lugging 14. So Galvin built something smaller. Lighter. A bag designed specifically for par-3 rounds, the Loma Bag is sleek, functional, and refreshingly unfussy. It’s practical minimalism in a sport known for excess.

Sunday Golf was slated to launch in January 2020. Then, COVID hit. Shipments stalled; lost at sea. The future felt shaky. But the series of catastrophes for the young company turned out to be anything but: By the time inventory arrived that August, golf had become one of the few activities people could safely do.

“It introduced and brought so many people back to the game,” Galvin says. “It created a habit for a lot of people, which is a big reason golf is on its growth trajectory.” 

It turns out Americans can’t get enough of golf. Forty-eight million of them swung clubs last year, a 41 percent jump since 2019, and the National Golf Foundation says the total could top 50 million by the end of 2026.

The brand rode this unlikely momentum. Since 2021, Sunday Golf has expanded into larger lightweight bags and continues evolving from there. A major reason for the company’s success is its approachability, a value so central that it’s literally written on the office walls in the form of the company’s guiding mission: “Get 500,000 golfers having more fun by 2027.” This goal is measured, fittingly, by golf bags sold. 

Sunday Golf has already passed 300,000 bags sold.

But the numbers aren’t the point.

“To remind the world that life is meant to be enjoyed,” Galvin says of the brand’s why. In an era dominated by screens, golf offers something analog. “People are outside, touching grass with their friends. A golf bag is a golf bag, but our products are vehicles to help support that.”

Unlike legacy golf giants promising proximity to Rory McIlroy-level greatness, Sunday Golf leans into what Galvin jokingly calls “diet golf” or “golf light”—weekend rounds, driving range sessions, company scrambles. The bags are built for the casual golfer, and the fit feels obvious.

That philosophy resonates across Southern California, where year-round sunshine means golf courses never really hibernate for winter. As Galvin puts it, “the laid-back lifestyle of San Diego kind of seeps into everyone’s veins.”

Sometimes the validation arrives via email: a 76-year-old customer is able to walk the course again because their golf bag is lighter. Parents are able to take their children out with Sunday Golf’s kids line.

For Galvin, that’s the real win. Not perfection. Not prestige. Just more people outside, enjoying themselves. In San Diego, that might be the most natural mission of all.

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