The Loop

Do Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson make for good superheroes? You be the judge

October 25, 2016
WGC-HSBC-Champions-2016-Return-of-the-Superheroes.jpg

Getty Images

Putting golfers on a metaphorical pedestal to help grab the sport some attention is not something that’s beneath us. So we offer a bit of a hat tip to the marketing people with the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai for trying something a little different in promoting their tournament.

To celebrate the strongest field in tournament history—40 of the top 50 players on the Official World Golf Ranking are competing—HSBC’s marketing folks released an "all-action, animated video" that spotlights a handful of the game's stars .

Specifically, five players are singled out in a marketing push that is, well, rather unique. Each player is depicted as a superhero, embodied with their own individual superpower.

The fivesome includes:

Henrik “The Machine” Stenson
Dustin “The Heat” Johnson
Rickie “Eagle Eye” Fowler
Bubba “The Magician” Watson
Haotong “The Force” Li

The video is dubbed "Return of the Superheroes"—presumable since each player has competed in the tournament in past years.

OK, so the X-Men and the League of Justice probably have nothing to worry about from this fivesome. And we’re not entirely sure what these “superpower” actually entail. (Can DJ shoot flames from his hand?)

The video will be used as the opening credits of the European Tour broadcast of the tournament.

The craziest part of all this? This isn't the first time a marketing team has portrayed golfers as superheroes. You might recall FootJoy’s “Golf Gods” campaign from 2002 that turned Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Tim Herron and Vijay Singh, among others, into larger than life characters.

footjoy-golf-gods-trading-cards.jpg