By Steve Derderian
sderderian@massgolf.org
“How ’bout this, Tate?…Bucket list!”
That is the first thing you hear as John Hadges’ voice begins to settle into the voicemail he left for his daughter Tate, the emotional core of a new Titleist commercial that has aired in recent months.
The message reflects on their trip to Royal St. George’s Golf Club, but it is not really about checking a famous course off a list. It is about how their shared lifelong passion for golf has created moments like this they will remember long after the round is over.
That feeling became the basis for how a father-daughter golf story from Thorny Lea found its way across the Atlantic last fall to the famous English links known for its massive, wind-swept dunes and its legacy of hosting 15 Open Championships.
The instructions given by the production crew were surprisingly simple: Play golf. Talk. Be yourselves.
The finished spot has resonated especially with golf families, though neither John nor Tate anticipated just how personal the project would become.
The opportunity arose from Tate, who had previously been contacted by Titleist for smaller projects and content shoots along with other Massachusetts standouts including 2023 Mass Women’s Amateur champion Rebecca Skoler.
When the locally based company invited Tate to England for another production, she had inquired about her father coming along for the trip, as he had played in the R&A Senior Amateur, and, as Tate confessed, he would be more comfortable with driving on the left side of the road. They were invited along with about a dozen other Americans, including Nashawtuc Country Club’s Colin McMahon-Shea, who was also part of a campaign shoot.
“It just kind of fell into place,” said John, a two-time Mass Amateur winner (2008 & 2010) who won the Massachusetts Father Daughter Tournament with Tate in 2020 and still regularly contends in the event. “I was the father who was just going to give her a ride.”
Then Titleist learned more about John’s own golf background and the way he and Tate shared the game. Soon, he was part of the production, too.
The pair spent five days in England last November, filming for three of them at Royal St. George’s, and quickly learned how much effort goes into one 30-second spot. Every hour seemed accounted for. Drivers moved the group from place to place. Wardrobe teams pressed clothes, cleaned shoes and kept equipment organized. Runners were close enough to solve almost any problem, including one day when they went back to the hotel to recover a hat and protein bar. In all, more than two dozen people helped bring the project together.
“It was like a Tom Cruise movie,” John said. “You put all your gear in the lobby in the morning, and they pack it into one of four cars.”
Yet once they were on the course, the production often felt much closer to a regular round than a scripted commercial.
“The difficulty with the two of us is my emotional state on the course is the same as his,” Tate said. “A lot of what we talk about is, ‘What club are you hitting?’ It was natural because that’s what we do. Being out there with him is like any other day.”
Months later, John received another surprise. The original script called for Jim Nantz to voice the commercial. Then came a phone call over the winter asking if John would record the voiceover himself. Inside The Newbury Boston, surrounded by Titleist representatives and audio specialists from New York, he read through the script, but something felt off.
“I said, ‘It sounds like I’m reading,'” John recalled.
Regrouping, he reached the line thanking Tate for making time to play golf with him. And in that moment his voice cracked.
The room stopped. One member of the production team looked over and admitted, “God, John, you’ve got me going now.”
After a couple of hours, they concluded the read, leaving the rest up to the production team. To keep it a surprise, he didn’t tell Tate about the voicemail until it aired.
“I was shocked. I joke that that part was edited in,” she said upon seeing the commercial for the first time. “But it turned out to be such a great product.”
Since then, the spot has continued to make its way around the golf world — a powerful message of a father reaching out to his child, and a daughter grateful for another day on the course with her dad.
Mass Golf is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is dedicated to advancing golf in Massachusetts by building an engaged and inclusive community.
With a community made up of over 145,000 golf enthusiasts and over 360 member clubs, Mass Golf is one of the largest state golf associations in the country. Members enjoy the benefits of handicapping, engaging golf content, course rating and scoring services along with the opportunity to compete in an array of events for golfers of all ages and abilities.
At the forefront of junior development, Mass Golf is proud to offer programming to youth in the state through First Tee Massachusetts and subsidized rounds of golf by way of Youth on Course.
