August 2024 - Having a Field Day

Son of a PGA professional taking golf fashion decidedly Uptown
Photographs by Charles Cherney
This article appeared in the August 2024 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
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Patrick Keegan, founder of Field Day Sporting Co., at his brick-and-mortar store in his hometown of Morris, Illinois, which opened in 2021.

Morris, Illinois hardly seems a hotbed of the golf fashion world, but Patrick Keegan is looking to put his native far-southwest suburb on the industry map with his upscale Field Day Sporting Co. brand that increasingly is making its way into prestigious pro shops in the Chicago District and beyond.

Keegan, 31, a CDGA member who previously worked for some of the industry’s leading golf apparel brands, including Ralph Lauren, Greyson Clothiers and Linksoul, always knew he would return to his Midwest roots and create his own brand.

“I had a very specific career path in mind, and I was very focused,” Keegan said. “I was the only 15-year-old who knew what his life was going to look like.”

Keegan was raised in the industry. His dad – John – was the director of golf at Morris Country Club, where he owned the club’s pro shop. Keegan grew up not only playing the game but also absorbing the business aspects of the sport. Annual trips to Orlando for the PGA Merchandise Show were highlights of his childhood, as was his aptitude for playing the game at a high level.

Keegan was a promising junior golfer at Morris High School and was set to play at the University of St. Francis in Joliet for legendary coach Paul Downey, only to shift his focus off the course and into the design world.

“I had signed to play at St. Francis and had a list of majors in front of me and didn’t know what to make of it,” Keegan said. “I went to the PGA Show that year, got on the plane back home and decided I wanted to own my own apparel brand someday.”

Keegan applied and was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, holding fast to his vision of creating his own apparel company.

Inspired by legends of the game, Field Day prides itself in texture and Jacquard knitting techniques, as found in the items above, versus the printed industry norm.

After graduating from the Art Institute with a fashion degree in 2014, he took a job sight unseen with Ralph Lauren in New York where he worked on the Ryder Cup apparel design team. He left Ralph Lauren in 2015 to help founder Charlie Schaefer – whom he met at Lauren – start up the Greyson luxury golf brand, then moved on to work for Linksoul in Southern California before eventually founding his own apparel design consultancy.

All roads of his coast-to-coast professional journey led Keegan and his wife, Kristen (they were high school sweethearts), back to his hometown in 2018 where they run his up-and-coming Field Day brand out of his flagship store called Field Day Social in downtown Morris. They have two children.

“That was always the dream,” Keegan said. “I had a ton of experience and a yearning to open my own store.”

The Field Day Social retail store is prospering, but it’s the wholesale side of the brand’s golf apparel launched in 2023 that continues to find its way onto the shelves of high-end local clubs such as Beverly Country Club, Butler National, Knollwood, Old Elm and North Shore, as well as in some of the country’s most prestigious clubs, including Oakmont, Hazeltine, San Francisco Golf Club and a host of others.

Though Field Day products are featured at high-end clubs, prices also are surprisingly accessible with polo shirts under $100 and fashion layering products under $200.

“We are based in Morris,” Keegan said of his local roots. “We try to speak to everyone.”

To Keegan, the strategy and passion is to position Field Day as a menswear brand as much as a golf apparel brand. Think of the classic look of Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and other 1940s, 50s, 60s golf legends combined with a contemporary approach. 

Field Day Sporting Co. founder Patrick Keegan reviews his 2025 spring collection.

“We are tapping into that ethos,” Keegan said. "Anything we are doing blends yesteryear with modern functionality such as hoodies and quarter zips with inspired patterns.”

The brand is also winning accolades from national experts who see Field Day’s upside in the market.

“What is unique with Field Day Sporting is its fresh look in assembling a wardrobe of pieces that have incredible utility because you can wear these items on the course and off the course,” said Marty Hackel, former fashion director at Golf Digest. “One of the unique features of Field Day is that Patrick has a wonderful appreciation of an era gone by. He’s absorbed so much from his prior jobs and he’s developed a very discerning and seasoned eye.”

Keegan – still a talented golfer, having won Park Ridge Country Club’s Champion of Champions event in 2020 – has a deep background in both the business and the game of golf that he sees as crucial to surviving the roller-coaster nature of the golf apparel industry.

“It’s never been more saturated,” Keegan said of today’s industry. “There is a mix of people who know what they are doing and there are a lot of little guys who are starving and trying to figure it out. It’s kind of like the Wild West and everyone wants their little piece. But I have a pedigree in this and a lifetime of being behind the golf shop counter.”

Keegan won’t disclose Field Day Sporting Co. revenues, but the brand has expanded to shipping to more than 50 accounts with 100% sell-through in the company’s first season. The goal, Keegan said, is to grow with partners that will tell the company’s story whether it is with the small-town Morris Country Club or through nationally known courses.

Despite Field Day’s promising product line, Keegan said his goal is to meet the company growth while maintaining its independent hands-on approach.

“We don’t have a board of directors and investors that are demanding us to grow,” he said. “We will always take on more if it makes sense. But you can grow too fast and then need someone else’s resources. We are happy to have our hands on every layer.”

John Lombardo is a Chicago-based journalist who covered the golf industry for Sports Business Journal.