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As Fenway Sports Group’s Boston Common Golf readies for its TGL debut on Monday, a team headlined on the green by four-time major winner Rory McIlroy is getting a little more star power — and a little more local — off the green.
Boston Common Golf announced Thursday that multi-platinum singer-songwriter Noah Kahan is joining the team as an investor, thanks in part to a connection with Boston Common Golf player and fellow Vermonter Keegan Bradley.
“I got to form a really cool relationship with Keegan, and it worked out great that those conversations with Fenway Sports Group and the conversations with Keegan kind of became this opportunity to be a part of this really cool thing happening at TGL,” Kahan told the Globe. “I was really grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it, to invest and kind of my first venture into the golf world in this significant way.”
Kahan, previously a Watertown resident who now splits his time between Nashville and Vermont, has enjoyed a meteoric rise. His double-platinum 2022 release, “Stick Season,” was Spotify’s fourth-most-streamed album in the US in 2024.
After a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2024, Kahan sold out Fenway Park for a pair of shows last summer.
TGL, the tech-infused team golf league featuring some of the game’s biggest stars (including McIlroy, Tiger Woods, and Justin Thomas) debuted Jan. 7.
Fenway Sports Group is Boston Common Golf’s primary owner. FSG’s principle owner, John Henry, also owns the Globe.
Kahan is an avid golfer, even if his drive off the tee isn’t quite as refined as his chord progressions. He’s participated at various pro-ams and played at renowned courses such as TPC Sawgrass, and fans have even spotted him getting a few swings in ahead of sold-out concerts.
“Golf has been something that I’ve been so bad at that sometimes I’ve been reticent to, you know, scream from the rooftops that I love to golf,” Kahan said. “But golf has been therapeutic for me. It’s been really the only thing that stayed consistent in my life the past 2½ years. I could be anywhere, just had the biggest show in my life, but I go out and play a round of golf in the morning — and it would humble me, obviously, because I’m terrible — but also it would just feel like it brought me back to a place of Zen and a place of even ground again.
“It’s something that allows me to stop thinking about the expectation and the pressure and the feeling of being afraid of failure, and these things that I’ve really struggled with, too, this anxiety that’s kind of come along with this massive life change and my career. Golf has been a way for me to kind of disconnect from that, and it’s really been the only thing that my music hasn’t touched in my life. It’s really cool when I’m out there, I’m just a [bad] golfer, instead of, like, someone that’s supposed to be really good at something.”
Kahan isn’t the first musician to come on board with Boston Common Golf. Singer Niall Horan, best known as a member of the popular boy band One Direction in the early 2010s, is already an investor, in part thanks to his friendship with fellow Irishman McIlroy.
“Part of our strategy to [reach younger audiences] was to look at potential partners that we could bring in to the mix as ambassadors/limited partners in the organization,” said Mark Lev, the team’s CEO. “We knew that Noah was a huge golf enthusiast, but in the case of Noah, as we look to really build a connection between the fans, the sports fans in New England with our team, what Noah brings is that local connection.”
Plenty of eyes will be on Monday’s Boston debut, which features a matchup between two of the league’s principle backers on the player side, Woods and McIlroy. Along with McIlroy and Bradley, Boston Common Golf’s four-player roster includes Masters champions Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama.
Kahan had a chance to check out the SoFi Center in Florida, built specifically for TGL, with its state-of-the-art simulators and mind-bending “GreenZone,” which utilizes a 41-yard-wide turntable and more than 600 mechanical actuators to shape the contours and slopes from hole to hole.
“It’s overwhelming,” Kahan said with a laugh. “It also didn’t help that Rory and Keegan were in there hitting shots, and they were like, ‘No, go ahead and hit some chip shots with Rory and Keegan.’ I’m not [expletive] hitting chip shots in front of these guys.
“So I was skulling chips across the green as Rory like, floats over them 10 feet in the air perfectly. So it was an overwhelming day, but it’s absolutely stunning in there.”
For Kahan, TGL’s format is something he hopes can grow the game with a younger audience.
“I was kept out of golf for so long mentally … [and thought] it was just a pretentious, maybe boring game,” Kahan said. “And then I fell in love with it, and I realized that what’s so great about golf just needs to be brought to people more.
“There is really great community in the golf scene. And I think TGL is offering a chance to emphasize that community. Watching the camaraderie of these teams, watching these pros, giving us a look at who these people actually are instead of seeing them as these, like, impeccably-dressed, silent people who play for eight hours over a weekend and they disappear until the next tournament.
“Letting us see who these people are, and showing us if there’s places and moments where they’re relatable to us as an average golfer, as an average person, I think it’s really cool.”
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