Business
How Carry Golf is helping tour pros where they need it most—and you can help, too
Ladies European Tour pro Hannah Gregg is part of Carry Golf's roster of golfers.
Mondadori Portfolio
The 2020 Scottsdale Open won’t be remembered by too many golf fans, but it holds a unique place in the game’s history. Contested two months after the PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship after the first round to join the rest of the sports world shutting down for COVID, it was one of the first sporting events played during the pandemic. Suddenly, this mini-tour stop felt like a big-time tournament, even drawing PGA Tour pros like Joel Dahmen, Kevin Streelman, Nate Lashley and Colt Knost.
Donnie Dotson, then working at a sport-technology company Sport-radar, had his eye on the event, and figured one of those bigger names would run away with the trophy. Instead, it was Zach Smith, a 22-year-old mini-tour player, shooting a final-round 62 to win and earn $20,000 from a $130,000 purse.
”It just kind of ignited this personal curiosity,” Dotson said. “Wow, not only are there guys that can contend with, but they can clearly be players on the PGA Tour.”
Dotson soon realized there was more than one obstacle keeping aspiring tour pros from making it to that level. They weren’t necessarily lacking in talent, but lacking in their wallets. And he wanted to help by starting Carry Golf.
”No matter what your industry is, generally when you, when you're just starting out, there's, there's often more money going out than there is coming in,” said Dotson, whose company has helped facilitate nearly $1 million in funding for golfers since 2022. “You read these stories and then you continue searching and you read about all the stories of players agreeing to these private loans or debt deals that you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy. Players who were giving up 35, 40, 50 percent of their earnings for some extended duration, if not perpetuity. And I thought there's gotta be a better way.”
Dotson, a former marine and CIA-trained operations officer with an MBA at Duke, began creating Carry in 2020. And the more he researched, the more he learned there was a need for funding among aspiring tour pros. Recently, more golf fans have learned about how difficult it is for pro golfers of all levels to make a living based on their various expenses through social media videos from guys on mini-tours to PGA Tour player Ben Griffin.
“It’s a never ending loop of ‘If I play well, I’ll make money, but if I don’t find money first, I can’t play. And if I don’t play well, I won’t have money to learn and play better,’” says Hannah Gregg, a Ladies European Tour pro and Golf Digest contributor who is part of Carry’s growing roster of golfers. “It can be very disheartening.”
Originally started as a way for golf fans to invest in tour pros, Carry Golf officially launched in March of 2023 with a cohort of 10 golfers, including Kristen Gillman, an All-American at Alabama who won two U.S. Women’s Amateur titles. People could buy shares in these players and potentially make a profit from receiving a percentage of their on-course earnings. But when that happened—Gillman, now on the LPGA Tour, and Chandler Blanchet, who won twice that year on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica, produced the biggest returns for investors—Dotson noticed something he didn’t expect.
“ I had to chase people down to actually deposit or redeem the physical checks we sent,” he said. “Most people just liked the stories. I had about a dozen people say, or send me photos like, ‘Hey, I've got this check framed on my desk. And it's the coolest golf souvenir I have. And that’s awesome.”
LPGA player Kristen Gillman was part of Carry Golf's original cohort of golfers.
Julio Aguilar
As someone who invested in an English tour pro named Dave Coupland a few years back, I can attest. I wound up making a few bucks, literally, after three years of buying shares in Dave through his personal website. No, really. I profited $17. But the biggest thrill came in getting to connect with him and follow his progress as he made it from the PGA EuroPro Tour to the European Challenge Tour, and, finally, all the way to the European Tour. At that point, he ended the investor program because he had enough sponsors.
“ Professional golf is set up to support, for good reasons, the established player or superstar,” Dotson says. “And you have this whole swath of talent that are kind of left to figure it out on their own until they break through. And we want to be the vehicle, the resource that helps those players, at least, in terms of funding.”
In early 2025, Carry switched to a different model described by Dotson as “Cameo meets GoFundMe for golf.” With its revamped website, people can find and learn about golfers, and decide whether to provide them financial help. This can be done through either a simple donation or the purchase of an experience involving that golfer, from playing a “personal pro-am” to caddying in a practice round to getting your swing roasted on a video.
There are no potential financial rewards, but Dotson and others like Gregg think the connections and other benefits can be just as valuable.
“I think the new model is a powerful shift in how athletes can monetize themselves without feeling like they are just asking for a ‘handout’ as I’ve heard some internet trolls refer to it,” Gregg says. “In reality, selling shares of yourself as an early athlete is a common practice- but now we can offer something more tangible in return for those partnerships and create a valuable personal brand that will grow as we do.”
Dotson thinks of the Carry as a place for golfers—who have been vetted by Dotson and his team—to have their own “storefronts,” where they can also be contacted about more lucrative corporate branding sponsorships. While the website currently has about 40 tour pros, his goal is to get to 200 by the end of this year and eventually expand into other sports.
“Carry has reimagined the way that us golfers can get in touch with sponsors. Often there are individuals/brands that have a desire to work with athletes, but don’t know where to start or who to start with,” Gregg says. “On the flip side, there are so many athletes that would love to work with the brands/people in sports, but don’t have the connections or the resources to make those partnerships happen. Carry is changing that, and I think it’s incredible what they’ve done.”