Sketches, Sketches, Sketches! The Creative Foundation Behind PGA Tour Merchandise Design

Every great design project has a starting point. For me, that point almost always involves putting pencil to paper and letting the ideas flow.

Sketching is where concepts come alive, where a blank page becomes a testing ground for possibilities. It is the unpolished beginning that shapes the polished final product. For the 2025 PGA Tour season, my sketchbooks filled up faster than ever. Dozens of tournaments, each with its own unique personality, required deep research, creative exploration, and plenty of page after page of sketches. These drawings may never see the shelves of a merchandise tent in their raw form, but they are the foundation of everything that follows. This article gives you a look behind the curtain into that creative process. It is about more than the sketches themselves. It is about the mindset, the research, and the storytelling that fuel them.

Why Sketching Matters in the Design Process

When people see a finished piece of PGA Tour merchandise, what they often notice first is the polish. The bold lines, sharp colors, and production-ready details. What they don’t see is the hundreds of sketches that came before it. Sketching matters because it is the quickest, most direct way to generate a large volume of ideas. Some of those ideas are rough, half-baked, or experimental. Others might be the exact seed that grows into the final design. But none of them would exist without getting those early marks on paper. This stage of the process is about exploration. By sketching quickly and frequently, I can test dozens of concepts before committing to any single direction. It is a way of clearing the creative fog and seeing what stands out. Sometimes the simplest pencil sketch can carry more weight than an overly polished digital draft because it captures the raw energy of an idea.

Research as the First Step

The PGA Tour is not one-size-fits-all. Every tournament has its own story, and that story informs the design work. My sketches for the 2025 season began long before I ever opened my sketchbook. They started with research.

I look at the host course, its landscape, signature holes, and historic features. I look at the city and region, the skyline, the culture, the landmarks that locals and visitors immediately recognize. I look at the tournament title sponsor and what they represent. Each of these details becomes fuel for the creative process.

For example, a tournament set in a desert course might inspire sketches featuring natural rock formations or desert wildlife. A tournament in a coastal city might spark ideas tied to the ocean, harbors, or historic architecture. By studying these elements, I ensure the final merchandise feels authentic to its location. Fans should be able to look at a design and immediately connect it to their experience of the event.

The Scope of the PGA Tour

Here in Jacksonville, people often think first of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. It is an iconic event, and for good reason. The island green at the 17th hole is one of the most recognizable visuals in golf. But the PGA Tour stretches far beyond Ponte Vedra Beach.

For the 2025 season, the Tour calendar features 39 events across the United States. That means 39 distinct opportunities to tell different stories through design. From California to Florida, from Texas to the Carolinas, each stop requires a tailored approach. The sketches I created for this season reflect that variety.

Some are inspired by natural landscapes. Others pull from urban skylines or cultural icons. Some lean heavily into golf-specific visuals, while others nod to regional traditions. The breadth of the Tour creates endless opportunities for creativity, and sketching allows me to chase them all before refining the best ones into final artwork.

From Rough Sketch to Merchandise

One of the most rewarding parts of this process is seeing a sketch transform into something fans can wear or take home. What begins as a quick pencil drawing often evolves into a digital illustration, then into a screen-printed shirt or an embroidered hat. The process of refinement involves multiple steps. After narrowing down the strongest sketches, I bring them into digital form. This is where line weight, proportion, and balance start to solidify. Colors and typography are explored, and what was once a rough idea becomes a polished visual system ready for merchandise. But the sketch always remains at the core. Even in the final product, you can often trace the DNA back to that first hand-drawn concept.

A Season Full of Stories

Here are a few of the creative directions explored in my sketches for the 2025 season:

• Local landmarks — Incorporating skylines, bridges, and historic buildings unique to each host city.

• Geographic details — Rolling hills, coastlines, forests, and deserts that define the character of each course.

• Course features — Signature holes, stone bridges, or distinctive course architecture that fans recognize instantly.

• Cultural elements — Regional traditions, wildlife, or patterns that reflect the host location’s identity.

• Sponsor influence — Visual nods to the companies that bring each tournament to life.

Every sketch represents a piece of research translated into a visual experiment. Some made it into production, and others stayed in the sketchbook. But each one contributed to the process.

Looking Ahead to 2026

The sketches you see here represent only the 2025 PGA Tour season. But the work never stops. The 2026 season is already underway, and my sketch books are filling up once again. Each year builds on the last. The challenge is always to find new ways to represent familiar places while keeping designs fresh. Fans want something that feels authentic and collectible, not just a repeat of last year’s merchandise. That means constantly pushing the creative process, experimenting with new approaches, and letting sketches lead the way.

Why Share the Sketches?

So why show sketches at all? After all, the finished merchandise is what fans actually see and buy.

For me, sketches are worth sharing because they reveal the thought behind the art. They show the raw, unfiltered side of the creative process. They are proof that good design is not magic or luck. It is work. It is research. It is trial and error. And most importantly, it is about having the courage to put every idea down on paper, even the ones that never leave the page.

By opening up this part of the process, I hope to give people a deeper appreciation of what goes into PGA Tour merchandise. It is not just a logo slapped onto a t-shirt. It is storytelling through design. It is about connecting fans to their favorite events, their favorite courses, and their favorite memories.

The Bigger Picture

At 63 Visual, sketching has always been the backbone of our process. Whether it is for a major national sports event like the PGA Tour, or for a local business here in Jacksonville, the philosophy remains the same. Ideas come first. Execution follows.

The sketches for the 2025 PGA Tour season highlight the importance of slowing down before speeding up. They show that even in an industry dominated by digital tools, the simplest act of drawing can spark the most powerful ideas.

As the Tour continues into future seasons, I am excited to keep filling sketchbooks with new concepts, refining them into artwork, and ultimately creating designs that fans will connect with for years to come.