Editor’s note: This story, which originally published on Oct. 4, is another installment in our annual Best Of The Year series. Throughout December, we will be bringing you the top GGP+ stories of 2022.
WHISTLER, BRITISH COLUMBIA | Don’t lump her in with the others. In the pantheon of golf’s social-media influencers – an ever-expanding group of young people with cameras and Instagram accounts that range from Canadian brothers posting travel content, to former college players hitting balls at Topgolf and then breaking into hip-hop dance moves – one young woman from New Zealand is actually growing the game with content and messages that appeal to all ages and demographics.
Her name is Tania Tare (pronounced TAR-a), and if you’ve never heard of her, it’s time for a quick visit to YouTube.
I first met Tania at a pro-am in The Bahamas with a slew of LPGA Tour players and a few internet celebrities. Unfortunately, the former looked side-eyed at the latter, and not without cause. During the early days of the social-media boom, which coincided with an identity crisis within traditional golf publishing, female golfers were getting exposure for reasons that had little to do with golf. That created a rift between the best women players in the world and those who ended up on magazine covers for other reasons. While influencers were technically golfers with large social-media followings, they sometimes distracted from the talent at the top of the women’s game.
Tare was never a part of that. When Stacy Lewis asked me who she was, I explained Tania’s college and professional résumé (she played at Florida International University and competed on the Cactus Tour and made a few Epson Tour starts). A couple of minutes later, Tania beat Stacy in a one-shot, closest-to-the-pin contest at The Ocean Club on Paradise Island. That competition meant nothing – Lewis is, after all, a two-time major champion and the former No. 1 player in the Rolex Rankings – but it proved the Tare has some game.
The next day, I watched as Tare stood by one of the greens by the Caribbean, flipped a ball up with her feet, bouncing it onto the face of her wedge. Then she flipped it over her shoulder and into the hole some 60 feet away.
No one who saw that trick in person could believe it. But to Tania, it was just another day at the office.
“I’ve always been doing that kind of stuff since I was a kid, juggling balls and that kind of thing,” Tare said last week at an event put on by Adidas in the Canadian Rockies. “With the trick shots, I really did it for my family because they were all like, golf is so boring, blah, blah, blah. And that’s totally fair. When I was young, I thought the same thing. It took me a while to get into golf because I thought it was boring. So, I got into the trick-shot stuff for them.”
Making a career out of it was an accident.
“I weirdly thought everybody could do that stuff,” Tare said. “I didn’t think it was anything special. Then I realized that things like hitting a ball out of the air required a lot of eye-hand coordination and wasn’t that easy. Then I realized that it was something that people liked.”
She began to post videos and got invited to outings. But at the time, the outings and the sponsorships were a way to help fund her playing career.
“I haven’t totally given up on (my playing career),” she said. “The only reason I haven’t cut that dream completely is because I’ve had so many injuries that walking away has been out of my control and I didn’t get to stop that dream on my own when I was ready. I felt like it stopped me instead of me stopping it. So, if I get a real shot at it, I hope I can give it another shot on my terms.”
When I do shows for kids, for the next hour or two afterward, they’re out hitting balls, first trying to do a trick shot, but they end up just hitting balls. … When I watch that from the standpoint of what I’m doing, I think that’s something to be proud of. — Tania Tare
Like most of us, the 33-year-old didn’t know what a social-media influencer was until she became one.
“I just realized people enjoyed what I was doing with the trick shots, so I kept trying things out and putting them up (online),” she said.
She also gets the rift between tour players and the social-media crowd. As she said in Canada, “There’s a fine line where it’s easy for some of that stuff to cross over into something that’s distasteful. Luckily for the trick-shot stuff I’m always in a safe space.”
Tare is also uniquely positioned to bridge those two worlds. Ping and Adidas, two of her main sponsors, love her. She also represents OnCore, the Buffalo, New York-based golf ball company, and Calvin Begay watches.
“I remember when I first started doing this, I was taking whatever anyone would give me because I was so surprised that anyone wanted to be associated with this sort of thing,” she said. “I thought, ‘Trick shots? You’re going to help me? Really?’ Because at the time all of those things were helping my golf. Having partners took the pressure off trying to buy equipment or clothing or worry about travel. Then I realized that some of the brands I had associated with didn’t really align with me. So I spent some time establishing who I am and what brands matched that. I feel like the synergy now is so easy. I never have to worry about the brands I’m with being in conflict with who I am and where I want to be.”
Where she wants to be is an ambassador for growing the game. This past winter at the WM Phoenix Open, tournament organizers had her in for a pre-tournament clinic with Bubba Watson. While the adults in attendance oohed and ahhed at Watson’s length, the kids, many from the inner-city, went nuts when Tare put on her trick-shot show.
“I love doing it, but when I see people getting excited about it, that’s the most rewarding part,” she said. “I’ll do a trick-shot show and have people say, ‘I want to try it!’ That’s really special. When I do shows for kids, for the next hour or two afterward, they’re out hitting balls, first trying to do a trick shot, but they end up just hitting balls. That makes me think, ‘Man, that feels really cool.’ They had no interest in golf before, and now they’re out here hitting balls. When I watch that from the standpoint of what I’m doing, I think that’s something to be proud of.
“My message is simple: golf is not boring. But young people don’t know that because they haven’t dipped their toes in the water and tried it. Trick-shot stuff might be the way to get them into golf.
“I’ve had a lot of messages from people saying things like, ‘I really wanted my girlfriend to try golf, but she never would. Then she saw some of your trick shots and now she wants to try it. She didn’t realize you could mess around and have fun, that (the game) didn’t have to be all snooty and boring.’
“That’s interesting because that was my take when I was a kid. I looked at (the country club scene) and said, ‘Oh, I don’t belong there.’ I wanted to have fun and golf looked so serious. What I now know is that golf is like 10 percent serious and the rest of the time you’re having a great time with people.”
There has been a lot of conversation this year about the “ecosystem” of the game. While much of that is forced, Tare is an example of a non-traditional player with a niche that makes a difference.
“I am a cheerleader for the LPGA and for the game,” she said. “I never want to get in the way. I just want to help. I want to bring people in and create some excitement and interest where it might not otherwise have been.”