Linksoul

Corporate Headquarters: Oceanside, California

Website: https://linksoul.com/

Category: Apparel and Accessories

LEADERSHIP

John Ashworth, Co-Founder and President

Jeff Fitzhugh, CEO

Hank Ashworth, VP Tournament Sales and Marketing

Steve Pirring, National Sales Director

 

Linksoul is a golf lifestyle company founded by John Ashworth, who in the late 1980’s built the Ashworth golf clothing brand into a national name behind the matinee idol popularity of Fred Couples.

Ashworth left leaving the eponymously named business in 1997 and the one-time PGA Tour caddie pursued several creative endeavors – from course design in Scotland to creating another golf apparel line, Fidra, for Quiksilver – before starting Linksoul. Ashworth had coined the term years earlier: “links” referring to the spot where golf began – the sandy dunes that connect the land to the sea – and “soul” relating to the spiritual nature of people. For Ashworth, the name epitomized what he wanted to create in the golf world.

(Photo credit: Linksoul.com)

Linksoul is California hip, a clothing company that’s blended golf and the surfing culture into a popular lifestyle brand. Ashworth says its appeal is transitional, comfortable apparel created for the guys who don’t necessarily want to look like a golf pro.

But Linksoul’s influence and impact extends beyond it’s “Make Par, Not War” t-shirts.

Ashworth and his Linksoul team were the driving forces behind the $3 million preservation and restoration of Goat Hill Park, the local golf course in his hometown of Oceanside, California. It’s an effort that gained national attention and inspired others to pursue similar attempts to halt redevelopment plans at older public golf facilities and instead keep them as places for community recreation and socialization.

For Ashworth and Linksoul, that effort is the extension of a mission to use golf to bring together friends and strangers from different walks of life. A linking of souls.

And not only did Ashworth save and restore the short course, but he created a new home for the North County Junior Golf Association and built a free, three-hole kids course at the facility called the Playground.

These philanthropic efforts were what inspired two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson to become not only a brand ambassador for Linksoul, but an investor as well in 2021.

“This isn’t your standard deal. Normally deals give you money. I’m giving them money,” Watson said at the time.  “But it’s an adventure I love. The mission, what they’ve been able to create with Goat Hill Park and junior golf, and the money they’ve been able to raise for charity through their company, it’s a special thing to be a part of. This is what drew me to it. I’m all about my heart and where my heart leads me, and that’s what I want to be a part of.”