At the end of the 2023 WNBA season, after the Las Vegas Aces had captured their second consecutive title and A’ja Wilson earned Finals MVP, Wilson had a message.

“Whoever you are out there that voted me fourth (for MVP), thank you. Thank you so much,” Wilson said during the team’s championship rally. “I wanna say I appreciate you, ’cause that just means that I got a lot more work to do.”

Although the 2024 Aces have disappointed relative to expectation, Wilson has not. Just as she vowed last October, Wilson returned an improved player in her seventh WNBA season.

Already a two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, Wilson is now the record holder for the most points in a single season. Against the Indiana Fever — and rookie Caitlin Clark, who could challenge these marks in the not-so-distant future — Wilson scored her 941st point in the second quarter, breaking Jewell Loyd’s single-season mark of 939 set in 2023.

941 buckets in 2024 and counting…

Most Points Scored In A WNBA Single Season belongs to A’JA WILSON #WelcometotheW pic.twitter.com/ysR3DWubVz

Advertisement

— WNBA (@WNBA) September 11, 2024

Many single-season WNBA records have been broken over the past two years since the regular season expanded to 40 games. When the league debuted in 1997, the season was 28 games long. The next year, 30, then the year after that, 32, which lasted through 2002. The regular season was 34 games long from 2003-19, during which time Diana Taurasi set the scoring standard that lasted until last season.

Nevertheless, Wilson’s statistics don’t require the extra games to break records. Through 34 games, Wilson had 929 points, more than anyone in league history, comfortably ahead of Taurasi’s 860 in 2006. Wilson was averaging 27.3 points entering Wednesday’s game.

She needs only 83 total points over the final five games to post the highest-scoring average in a WNBA season, passing Taurasi’s mark of 25.3.

In addition to points, Wilson is also leading the league in defensive rebounds, blocks, turnover percentage and win shares. It’s been a tour de force for the runaway MVP favorite.

“I don’t want it to ever get lost on how good (A’ja) is,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said before the Fever game. “She just does it all. She’s in the middle of a run that sometimes I want to shake her and say, do you know how good you are? But then I don’t want to shake her because I don’t want to wake her up. She can just stay in whatever zone she’s in.”

That zone put Wilson in lofty historical company. Through seven seasons of her career, Wilson is also threatening Taurasi’s mark as the league’s all-time leading scorer. She has a better scoring average (20.9 versus 20.7) at this age, and thanks to the WNBA’s expanded schedule, Wilson can get to Taurasi’s total scoring output in fewer seasons.

For now, Wilson and the Aces only have their eyes on a third title. But the all-time great can’t help but set individual records in the process.

Required reading

(Photo: Justin Casterline / NBAE via Getty Images)

By themselves, the pieces of a puzzle reveal very little. But link them together and a clearly defined picture emerges.

Metaphorically speaking, that describes the NFL Draft. After spending months, if not years, gathering information on prospects, teams then connect all the dots — er, data — to create a fuller picture of whom they might be selecting.

Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders should understand that more than any prospect. His father, Deion Sanders, is not only his head coach but also one of the greatest cornerbacks in NFL history. Coach Prime, as he likes to be called, knows the league and its inner workings as well as anyone. He is familiar with the circus that is the draft process and how innocuous incidents can take on a life of their own.

That’s why I’m surprised Shedeur hasn’t handled the spotlight in a more circumspect manner over the past year. It goes beyond him throwing his offensive linemen under the bus after he was sacked five times in Saturday’s loss at Nebraska. It’s also having his work ethic questioned by Miami quarterback Cam Ward, another potential top-5 pick, after the two trained together in South Florida in the offseason. And him making a disparaging comment about a former teammate after the player transferred. And legendary QB Tom Brady joking (?) that he needed to get out of the car showroom and into the film room after he posted pictures in a Rolls-Royce.

“How many times did Raiola get touched?”

Shedeur Sanders putting the blame on his O-Line

Advertisement

pic.twitter.com/5Rnab2BOWS

— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) September 8, 2024

By themselves, these things might not mean a lot.

But when strung together, they could result in uncomfortable questions about his fitness to potentially be drafted No. 1 — which is one of the reasons he returned for his senior season. As one former longtime general manager told me this week: “If you’re asking the question, teams are definitely going to be asking the question.”

At this point, just three weeks into the season, it’s too early to credibly discuss front-runners for the top spot. And though some entered the year projecting 2025 to be a QB-weak draft class, history tells us relative unknowns will be pushed up draft boards by the end of the season, making for a robust discussion about who should go No. 1.

We’re sure to hear names like Texas’ Quinn Ewers, Georgia’s Carson Beck, and Miami’s Ward, all of whom are talented and leading potential playoff squads. USC’s Miller Moss also could join the conversation. None is more physically talented than Sanders, but, to this point, each has handled the spotlight with greater dexterity.

Sanders has to know he is going to be judged differently than others. For one, he is a quarterback, which is the premium position in football. For another, he is a quarterback who happens to be Black in a league that only recently has viewed African Americans as capable of excelling at the position. And thirdly, he is a quarterback who happens to be Black and is the son of Deion Sanders, a man whose confidence, flash and bravado rubs some the wrong way. To think that Shedeur won’t be judged more critically is to be naive.

That said, none of these things will prevent Sanders from being highly drafted. But they could create openings for unnecessary and unwanted drama leading up to the draft, which has a voracious appetite when it comes to inane storylines. See, Cam Newton and “fake smile” for Exhibit 1A.

The Pulse Newsletter

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.

Sign Up

Seeking perspective, I reached out to a couple of former general managers and asked what impact these puzzle pieces could have on Sanders’ consideration as a No. 1 pick. Both were involved in selecting a QB among the first three picks, including one at the very top, and each spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Their views contrasted.

“All of these things do matter,” one said. “We’ve seen some great quarterbacks over the years who are unbelievably talented but they just can’t pull it off. There are many, many like that. … At this point, if I’m coming back to the league and kicking off a new regime, with what I know, I would never have Shedeur kick things off with me. I’m trying to pinpoint why that is, and I just don’t trust everything I’m seeing right now. He’s got some money from the portal and he’s spending it the way he is. … I just don’t trust his maturity. I don’t trust how he’s going to be able to handle the limelight, which sounds odd because he should be able to handle it more than anyone because he’s been around it all his life. I don’t mean handle the limelight; rather, is he going to be a distraction in that building? Is he going to irritate people? Do his teammates like him, or do they resent him?”

Said the other: “During the draft process, everybody pokes holes. Yes, people are going to be looking at that stuff. But I view it differently. Those types of things are all learned, maturing traits. We forget that kids are going to be kids. What you look for is how quickly they will grow up. Obviously, he has grown up in an athletic environment where he’s used to having the best around him. The work ethic will be the most important thing. The stuff about the comments and things like that, people will worry about that a little bit, but the work ethic is the thing. If you don’t think he’s going to have the work ethic, it’s a big red flag. You look at Jayden Daniels and he had the receivers in at 5:30 in the morning for meetings. You look at Matt Ryan, and he used to take his offensive linemen to dinner once a week. That said, I do think you have to be very careful about letting those things build up.”

Both men called Sanders “extremely talented” and said they expect him to be among the top quarterbacks in the 2025 draft. He could have turned pro after last season and possibly been the first quarterback taken after Caleb Williams, who went first overall to the Chicago Bears. But he came back because he said the timing “didn’t feel right,” the season didn’t “end right,” with Colorado finishing 4-8 after a 3-0 start, and because he wants to be the first quarterback off the draft board.

He has the talent, without question, completing 69 percent of his passes for 3,230 yards and 27 touchdowns, with just three interceptions, last season behind an awful line. Scouts speak highly of his accuracy, arm talent and pocket mobility. The tangibles. But the intangibles are what clubs figure to dissect during the draft process. They will want to know about his makeup and leadership skills. So far this year, frustration is seeping through.

He was sacked 56 times last season and has been dropped six times through two games this year. If his protection doesn’t improve in the coming weeks, how will he respond? The answer could be a major piece to his draft-day puzzle.

(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

Editor’s note: This article is part of The Changemakers series, focusing on the behind-the-scenes executives and people fueling the future growth of their sports.

MASON CITY, Iowa — Two 30-something-year-old dudes set up lawn chairs in a garage on a nice little Friday morning in November. The fridge is stocked with celebratory beers. Their laptops are out, if anybody wants to actually buy high-quality golf bags made specifically for preschoolers.

Tyler Johnson is nervous. He usually is. “Nobody’s actually going to buy any bags,” he keeps telling his buddy, Jared Doerfler, there for moral support. The waitlist was plenty long, but still, “Maybe I’ll sell 50 bags,” he says looking around at the 150 bags in his garage.

10 a.m. hits.

Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

The Shopify notifications go off rapidly.

Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

He is not prepared for this. The blue bags are gone in four minutes.

Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

“What the hell is happening,” Johnson says as he runs around the garage trying to get things in order. The gray bags are sold out in 10. Only pink is left. The waitlist was north of a thousand, but he worked the numbers backward and landed on a conversation rate to sell less than 100. Foolish.

Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

Within 28 minutes, all 150 bags are sold.

Johnson, 36, is a former University of Northern Iowa golfer turned software salesman living in Mason City with his wife, Jolene, and their two kids, Charlie and Alivia. He’s the son of a golf course superintendent who was the son of a golfer named Birdie, and one day Johnson wanted to take Charlie to the driving range to keep the cycle alive. But Charlie didn’t have a bag, forced to carry around a few loose clubs because the bags on the market just didn’t make sense. To Johnson, they were poorly made and impractical for a toddler. So Johnson created his own. Out of his garage. He designed these adorable 21.5-inch waxed canvas and leather golf bags made specifically for 2- to 5-year-olds in various colors, and he found an approachable price point. And he named it Charlie Golf Co.

Doerfler has to leave early to get out of Johnson’s hair. The Friday beers will have to wait. Johnson has 150 orders to ship by hand. Within a year, he’ll have shipped thousands. By this November, he’ll be faced with the decision to quit his job and commit to Charlie Golf Co. full time, a side hustle becoming a career.

The golf equipment industry was disrupted by a golfer trying to bond with his family. Now, it’s blowing up because of that very thing. Family.

The clock is fast. No need to stress. But Jolene Johnson throws on some shoes and runs out the garage. It’s a big day in the Johnson household. They just got home from a quick family vacation to Duluth, Minn., with the kids. Now a reporter is in their kitchen asking how their little company bootstrapped out of a garage is blowing up less than a year after launch. A charcuterie board is set up with meats and cheeses. Croissants they brought home from Duluth sit in a glass cake display. But far more importantly, it’s Charlie’s first day of preschool.

Even their 2-year-old daughter Alivia could tell the significance, sadly asking, “Char-lee?” as her 4-year-old brother walked away. Tyler didn’t cry, but it was tough. Jolene absolutely did. But now, a few hours later, they’re in the kitchen talking about whether the day will come for Tyler to quit his job and run this toddler golf equipment company full time.

Before he can finish his thoughts, Jolene notices the time on the microwave.

“I’m so sorry,” she jumps in. “I didn’t realize it was 10:53! I need to go get Charlie.”

Three generations of Johnson golfers.

Packing up and shipping out toddler golf bags and clubs. What a world.

Advertisement

Wonder what my Grandpa Birdie would be thinking about all of this right now.

He would be so fired up. pic.twitter.com/LjB4I2knN9

— Tyler Johnson (@tylerjohnson_59) August 10, 2024

Tyler reminds her the clock is ahead. Nonetheless, she leaves and Tyler makes his way out to the home of Charlie Golf: the garage in suburban Iowa that created a new market in the golf space. Currently, more than a thousand bags in various colors are organized throughout the garage, which gets rather warm on summer days like today. A thousand? That would have blown his mind nine months ago. Then came the sellouts. The wait lists. The national attention. Multiple PGA Tour players outfitting their kids in them at the Masters Par 3 contest. The move to selling kids’ clubs, too. Their first Black Friday is quickly approaching like the nexus point in this family’s life that it is. If it goes as they project, Charlie Golf Co. will suddenly be a legitimate force in the golf space and the focus of Tyler’s life. If it doesn’t, well, their lives are still completely fine.

Golf tends to be about family, as is this story. A chunk of the first $5,000 Tyler put into it began with a bond that Tyler’s grandpa Birdie — not nicknamed because of golf, though it fits! — bought for him back in the 1990s that they only found when Birdie died. Birdie taught Johnson’s father, Doug, the beautiful game. Then Doug taught Tyler, cutting down some old clubs, regripping them and gifting them to Tyler as a boy, a tradition he’s maintained with all his grandchildren, giving them either a blue or pink grip once he knows their gender. The tiny clubs he made Charlie and Alivia hang on the garage wall.

Charlie just wants to hang out with his dad. So when they’d go for some father-son time at the driving range, they’d carry Charlie’s little clubs because the bags just didn’t make sense for a kid that size. They were two-strap bags and had a stand, which was impractical. They were not very nicely made. And they all looked the same.

Deep down, Tyler Johnson is a starter. An entrepreneur. The guy coming up with business ideas with his old Northern Iowa golf buddies. He’s also a salesman, currently working as a general manager at an asset tracking company selling RFID tags, but Charlie Golf Co. is not his first startup. This isn’t out of his comfort zone. Well, yes and no.

He began making sketches on the graphic design platform Canva for prototype bags and working with manufacturers, sending prototypes back and forth trying to nail down all the little details. This had to make sense for kids, for families, for golf. The names of those first three bags? The Charlie (blue), the Livvy (pink) and the Birdie (gray).

Golf equipment is a $15 billion industry, constantly growing and evolving while being pushed by technological innovation in the clubs and balls. Even aside from the Goliaths like Callaway, TaylorMade and Titleist, the kids’ golf club market has been dominated by U.S. Kids Golf. And when these massive corporations are involved, you don’t expect a software salesman in Iowa to throw a wrench into those profits.

But it was some simple advice from his friend Jared Doerfler — who runs the Perfect Putt golf business newsletter and launched a boutique putter company called Hanna Golf — that might be the seed for how this worked so well.

“Just tell a story,” Doerfler told his former Northern Iowa golf teammate.

Johnson’s story was family. It was the bond money from Grandpa Birdie. It was using his Twitter account to let people in through photos of Charlie and Tyler in the garage playing with boxes or Tyler having to chase Charlie sprinting around a course with his bag on his back or highlighting all the extra time spent with his own father.

When the first tweet with a link went up in October, it went viral. Eight hundred on the waitlist immediately, all from organic social media marketing. It was up to a thousand by that launch date in November. The first sellout only seemed to increase demand — the next drop of 300 bags sold out in less than 30 minutes again.

“I think there’s something about a story and relating to the people,” Johnson said. “It’s a family, a small family business, there’s a story behind it. They can connect to it. And now, in the social media age, I think that’s extremely important to know who you’re buying from.”

They had no idea what they were doing in those days. Each inventory drop was a chaotic mad dash. Each extra name on the waitlist a jolt to Tyler’s already high anxieties. Anywhere from 300 to 750 bags would arrive on a Friday, and the cavalry drove to Mason City. Tyler would take the day off work. They’d get a babysitter for the kids. Doug usually drove up that Friday. Grandma and both Jolene and Tyler’s aunts came on Saturday. All hands on deck to try to meet demand.

And Tyler insisted on everything feeling personal, because that’s what the root of this company is about. That story takes longer, though. Each shipment must be delivered with a handwritten note. Early on, he’d hand stamp each outgoing shipping box with the Charlie logo, rolling out the ink, stamping one side, laying them all out overnight to dry and then stamping the other side in the morning. There’s no production facility, and until recently, there was not even a tape dispenser. The waitlist grew and grew.

Deep down, Tyler knew that the scarcity helped build demand and intrigue. But his brain doesn’t always work that way. He hated that people had to wait. Plus, each name on a waitlist is a name not guaranteed to still be a customer when the inventory was ready. They got better, preparing boxes more for each shipment and knocking out inefficiencies. But Tyler also doesn’t really know how to stop, balancing a growing company, a full-time job and a family.

“It’s a lot…” he said.

“He’s probably going to be modest about it,” Jolene joked.

Tyler wakes up at 5 a.m. each day and works in the garage for two hours preparing orders. He gets to work around 8 and is there until he comes home for an hour during lunch. Back to work until 4:30 or so — all while he is still thinking about Charlie Golf — before again returning home for dinner with the family and putting the kids to bed. He’s back to the garage working on manufacturing, new designs or new business channels like club embroidery. Some nights he’s so spent he accidentally falls asleep in Charlie’s bed and has to accept that the garage will wait until morning.

He came home from the trip to Duluth to find his dad — who came up for two days to help while he was gone — had handwritten some of the thank you notes. Tyler interpreted that as a message from Doug saying, “I can take this off your plate, you know?”

It just kept growing and growing, but it was the 2024 Masters that might have sent it over the top. First, Jessica Hadwin, the social media star/wife of PGA Tour golfer Adam Hadwin, DMed Tyler and bought one for her daughter, Maddox. She then told Adam Schenk’s wife, Courtney, who bought one too. Then journeyman Peter Malnati won the Valspar Championship to get into the Masters. His agent was an old Northern Iowa golf teammate. He got hooked up, too.

Tyler was hanging at Doerfler’s shop watching the Par 3 Contest — where players often have their wives caddie and kids run around and even take swings — when ESPN cameras cut to Malnati on the driving range. There was Malnati’s son Hatcher running up to his green Charlie Golf Co. bag.

This was suddenly something real.

Mason City is a small, blue-collar town in northern Iowa built on two cement plants and a door factory. It’s not a huge golf hub, with just two courses and not many resources. Yet every Friday morning at Jitters Coffee Bar, you can find the most industrial minds of Mason City trying to take over the world.

“There’s not much entrepreneurship in North Iowa,” Doerfler said, “but most everyone that’s most involved in entrepreneurship is going to cycle through here on that Friday morning.”

So Johnson and Doerfler make sure they are there most weeks to meet and talk business. They played together at UNI and worked at MetalCraft together until Doerfler took his own leap of faith, quitting his job to buy a mill and teach himself how to make hand-crafted putters. Doerfler is the first to tell you how challenging it is. He has moments where he wonders if he’s an idiot for taking this risk, but he loves it.

Lately, many of these meetings are centered around where Johnson should take Charlie Golf, and by extension his career.

He added kids golf clubs in the spring, which immediately took off by staying true to the company’s core principles. He insisted on them being stainless steel clubs that look like real, adult clubs but much lighter than others in the market. “The kids just want something to swing,” he said. “They’re not gonna hit the ball much. It’s not about that. It’s not about launch angles and ball speed. It’s about having a golf club in their hand they can hit a real ball with.” He’s certainly not inventing the wheel with kids clubs, something that’s been around forever and dominated by U.S. Kids Golf, but he’s also developing a strong, family-based brand. If people know Charlie Golf, they know it’s authentic. So if people are searching for toddler golf clubs, maybe the tie goes to the company they feel a connection toward.

(Courtesy Charlie Golf Co.)

His Google Analytics tools tell him more people search for clubs than they do bags, which makes sense. Having a cool bag is additive. Getting your kid into golf certainly starts with the clubs. That may be the future of the company.

Johnson is long past the phase where this is all just a hobby. The next step is figuring out how to make this a sustainable company. The self-sustaining business now projects to reach seven figures in revenue with a good holiday season, Johnson said.

And within that contrast between CEO and normal dad, there are little choices Johnson has to make. Like the price: $88 for a bag.

“I’ve had so many people tell me, ‘You’re not charging enough.’ But it wasn’t about that. In my mind, when I was growing up, there was no way my dad was gonna spend $100 on a 2-5 year old bag. It wasn’t gonna happen. So, ‘OK, what can I do to make this somewhat attractive for all families and not let the money aspect restrict them?’”

Even that price has family meaning. His uncle’s old Iowa dirt track race car number was 88, and at their home course driving range Doug took a side panel from the car and set it up at the 88-yard mark. Johnson spent his whole youth trying to hit three-quarter wedges to 88 yards, bouncing off the panel. When it was time to pick a price for the clubs, he went with $188.

As the market grows, so does the competition that didn’t exist when he started. “Well, you would imagine once people see the success of it…” Johnson joked as he prepares for the reality that those major corporations will begin to sell their own toddler bags.

If this Black Friday is the test for what his company will become, the 2025 Masters might be a little marker for where they stand. Last April was such a moment for the Johnsons, and the hope is to build on it. Can he get the prodigy of the top names in the sport to run past the azaleas with a Charlie bag? Or will the brands that sponsor these star golfers try to use the moment to jump in and outfit the kids in their own merch?

Johnson wrestles with these future challenges while still working another job. He primarily works alone at the company’s Mason City office, making it even easier to get distracted by Charlie Golf.

“I’m on my computer so much, and I have the tabs of the other stuff, checking it periodically,” he said. “It’s hard. It’s very, very challenging. That’s how I know I need to do one or the other.”

So much of this is built on projecting the future for a company there’s no projection for. It’s all new. Each inventory purchase is another risk that maybe people will one day just stop buying. This latest drop was for 1,700 bags. If Johnson used to stress about people on the waitlist not buying, he has shifted that to the stress of not selling out. That’s generally a good thing, as his manufacturing and scale has caught up with the company and now sales are steady and not dependent on chaotic drop days. But he has to walk out to the garage each day and see all these bags that need to be sold.

He knows the numbers better now and knows that the last few months indicate he can support his family with the company. That’s why Black Friday is the big moment. It’s his first real holiday sale season to find out if Charlie Golf is here to stay.

Then maybe he’ll quit his job. Then maybe they’ll expand. Maybe they’ll move into a real facility.

Whatever happens next, he can lean back on this. That it all started with a father and a son in a garage.

The Changemakers series is part of a partnership with Acura.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Top photo: Brody Miller / The Athletic)