What Is Sun Day Red? Tiger Woods' First Brand After 27 Years at Nike

Adam R. covers apparel, accessories, and golf culture for DORMIED. He has been tracking brand drops and collaborations since 2018.

Sun Day Red is Tiger Woods' apparel and footwear brand, created with TaylorMade and announced on 12 February 2024, five weeks after Woods ended a 27-year partnership with Nike. It is named after the red shirt he has worn on Sundays since his amateur days, the tiger in its logo carries 15 stripes for his 15 major championships, and it operates as a standalone business inside TaylorMade with its own president, designers and headquarters. Product reached the market on 1 May 2024.

In one sentence: Sun Day Red is Tiger Woods' apparel and footwear brand, built with TaylorMade and launched in 2024, named for his Sunday red shirt and run as a separate business unit rather than a sponsorship.

What Is Sun Day Red?

Woods announced the brand at Palisades Village in Los Angeles on 12 February 2024, the day before making his season debut at the Genesis Invitational, the event he hosts at Riviera. He had announced his departure from Nike on 8 January, ending a relationship that began in 1996 and defined golf's visual language for a generation.

The framing from both sides was that this is not an endorsement deal. TaylorMade chief executive David Abeles called it "a full-blown unequivocal partnership" and said the two parties make every product decision together. Woods put it in more personal terms: "It's the right time in my life. It's transitional. I'm no longer a kid anymore."

Structurally, Sun Day Red is its own business unit within TaylorMade rather than a line inside the existing apparel range. It has separate headquarters, its own design team and its own staff. Brad Blankinship, who previously led the surf apparel companies Quiksilver and RVCA, was appointed president to run day-to-day operations. Abeles was explicit that TaylorMade would keep its hands off: "The brand stands alone, it will have its own identity."

That distinction matters commercially. Woods had options after Nike, and the reporting at the time noted he went where he had the most control and, plausibly, the largest financial stake.

Why Is It Called Sun Day Red?

The name comes from the most recognisable habit in golf. Woods has worn red on the final day of tournaments since his amateur years, a practice that began with his mother, Kultida, who believed red was his power colour. He has rarely played a competitive Sunday in anything else.

"Sunday red, it's me," Woods said at the launch. "I've worn red on Sundays, it's just become synonymous with me."

The odd part is the spacing. The brand splits one word into three, which drew immediate comment. Its own explanation is that there is a particular power in threes, and that separating the words was a way to make something unexpected out of a familiar phrase. Whether that reads as considered or as a stretch has been a matter of opinion since launch, and not everyone landed on considered.

Who Owns Sun Day Red, Tiger Woods or TaylorMade?

Both, and the precise split has never been made public.

Sun Day Red was created by TaylorMade, and TaylorMade holds the trademark filings through an entity called TaylorMade Lifestyle Ventures. Abeles has described the brand as a completely separate vertical of TaylorMade's holding company. So on paper it sits inside TaylorMade, which in turn is owned by Centroid Investment Partners, a Korean private equity firm that bought it from KPS Capital Partners.

Woods is not a paid ambassador in the conventional sense. He is a partner in the venture with direct involvement in product decisions, and the brand exists because of him rather than alongside him. What has not been disclosed is his equity position, the revenue share, or the length of the arrangement. Neither party has put numbers to it.

The honest answer to the ownership question is therefore: TaylorMade owns and operates Sun Day Red as a separate business unit, Woods is a partner with significant control, and anyone stating a specific ownership percentage is guessing.

What Does the Sun Day Red Logo Mean?

The logo is a tiger in silhouette, with the letters S, D and R set above and below it.

The tiger carries 15 stripes, one for each of Woods' major championships. That is the detail the brand has led with since launch, and it is also the design's most obvious constraint: it fixes the mark to a number that Woods himself has spent years trying to increase.

Reception was not kind. MyGolfSpy noted publicly that the logo patch on the launch product was not centred and that Sunday had become two words. Today's Golfer was blunter, comparing it unfavourably to a Slazenger knock-off and suggesting it looked rushed. For a brand built on one of the most valuable personal identities in sport, the launch mark landed softer than the name did.

The tiger has also drawn serious legal attention, twice.

In September 2024, Tigeraire, a Louisiana company that makes cooling products for athletes and whose own logo features a leaping tiger, filed a notice of opposition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, alleging that Sun Day Red had "unlawfully hijacked" its design. Sun Day Red countersued, and the matter moved into federal court.

Then on 2 January 2025, Puma filed its own notice of opposition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, arguing the tiger is too close to the Leaping Cat mark it has used since the late 1960s and registered in the United States since 2010. Puma's filing claims both likelihood of confusion and dilution, and targets two Sun Day Red applications covering eyewear, bags, towels, clothing, footwear and equipment. TaylorMade's response was brief: "We feel very confident in our trademarks and logos."

Trademark lawyers took it seriously. Josh Gerben called the Puma challenge significant and described it as "a real fight", noting that any open litigation can be lost. Harvard's Rebecca Tushnet observed that while Tigeraire's mark looks more similar, Puma's is far better known, and fame tends to matter more at the trademark office.

What Does Sun Day Red Sell and What Does It Cost?

The range launched with men's golf apparel and footwear sold online in the United States and Canada from 1 May 2024, with women's and children's ranges stated as the intention from the start. Two years on it is a substantial catalogue, with more than forty footwear styles alone.

Prices as of September 2026. Polos run $115 to $135, hats $48, T-shirts $58, hoodies $160 to $195, and merino knitwear $185 to $200.

Footwear is the deeper category and the more expensive one. The Osprey sits at $175, the Presidio at $198, and the Pioneer line from $250 to $275, with the Jupiter slide the entry point at $60. Several styles come in women's fits.

That puts Sun Day Red polos above J.Lindeberg, where the range runs $90 to $125, and its footwear alongside premium shoe specialists rather than apparel brands making a shoe. A collaboration with Vessel adds quilted headcovers from $75 to $125.

Our coverage has tracked several of these lines in more detail, including the growing presence of the brand in women's golf coverage, the quilted jacket and polo range, and the Open Championship capsule, which tested whether the brand can sell on occasion rather than on Woods alone.

Is Sun Day Red Working?

The fair answer is that it is established but not yet compounding.

Two years in, Sun Day Red ranks 8th of the 215 brands DORMIED tracks, with 90,500 searches a month. That is a top-ten position from a standing start, which almost no apparel brand achieves, and it is entirely attributable to who is behind it. The footwear has won a category on merit rather than on the name, which is the harder test.

Against that, the brand still faces the problem it was born with: its founder plays very little competitive golf. Woods had played only five official PGA Tour events in the three years before launch, and the injuries behind that have not resolved. A brand built on Sunday red depends on Sundays that keep happening. The women's coverage is the most interesting counterweight, pointing to a customer the launch did not obviously target and a route to growth that does not require Woods to tee up.

How Is Sun Day Red Trending on the DORMIED Index?

Source: DORMIED Index, August 2026 snapshot. The DI score is a brand's global search interest relative to the most-searched golf brand, which scores 100.

The year-over-year figure is the one that matters. Up 22.3 percent over twelve months means the brand is still gaining ground on where it was, which is what a two-year-old company should be doing.

The monthly and quarterly declines are the counterweight, and both are steep. Interest in Sun Day Red spikes around events and capsule releases and falls back between them, which is the profile of a brand whose visibility is tied to a schedule rather than to a steady retail presence. Eighth of 215 is a strong absolute position. Holding it through a quiet stretch is the test.

What Do People Ask About Sun Day Red?