When is your favorite time of day to play golf?
For me, it is the evening. The sun is setting and you only have time for a couple more holes. The course is mostly empty as you walk alone and the only sounds are golf sounds—the thud of impact, the slight rattle of your clubs, the click of the ball hitting the bottom of the cup.
In those moments, golf is healing. Life’s chaos is replaced by a grounding to the Earth and the humbling game that is played on it.
On some level, we all come to golf for this feeling of connection.
It’s indescribable yet addictive; elusive yet cathartic.
We all want to lower our scores and get the most out of our games. That pursuit is perpetual in its mission, so there will always be more runway to cover.
But when you step back and look at golf from a 30,000-foot view, we golfers are fulfilled by less rather than more.
Our golfing souls are satisfied by the simplest and purest of pleasures. We all just want a sense of belonging—with ourselves, with nature, with our playing partners and with the game.
When it comes to golf products, I am partial to people and companies that recognize this true meaning of golf. They came into business organically because they want to share it with you.
Pine Coast Golf is one of those brands.
A golf bag made of natural materials (and love)
Johan and Lisette Laurin were like a lot of us during the pandemic.
Johan felt trapped inside of their home in Landskrona, Sweden, about 30 minutes north of Malmö. A social person who was used to traveling the world for work, Johan found himself spending endless hours stuck in his office.
“He was at home, but he wasn’t present,” Lisette said. “He started to become gray. I told him he needs to do something to get out.”
But everything was shuttered. He normally played tennis, but the courts were closed.
Like so many others, Johan decided to play golf. Prior to COVID, he had played a few social rounds per year but never considered the sport to be more than that.
Now he was playing with a purpose to cut his handicap in half. He got new clubs for the first time in 23 years and started playing consistently.
“But, after a while, I started to realize that (getting better) was not why I’m here,” Johan said. “I’m here because I disconnect from work. I’m out walking in the fresh air and only thinking about golf.”
That epiphany was the true beginning of Pine Coast.
As Johan found himself getting in as many holes as he could—seven holes at lunch, five holes in the evening or whatever time could be afforded that day—he found himself wondering whether he needed all 14 clubs.
The point of playing was to play. He was here for the mental health reset of being outdoors and enjoying a good walk unspoiled.
Carrying fewer clubs, using a lighter bag, became an intriguing possibility.
By the fall of 2022, Johan started to think about how he would design a Sunday bag that would help him walk the course exactly as he envisioned.
An idea man by nature, he dreamed of a bag made of premium materials that could function seamlessly and have the freedom of being placed on the ground with no concern.
Lisette, who took up golf shortly after Johan was reinvigorated by the game (she now plays even more than he does), agreed with her husband.
“I started to look for a bag to give to him as a Christmas present, and I’m very conscious of what I’m buying,” Lisette said. “I didn’t want to buy a random bag or a small pencil bag made in China where I couldn’t see where the product was coming from.
“There was nothing here in Europe. It was a gap in the market.”
Things moved quickly from there. Lisette’s mom is from eastern Poland, so they went to her hometown where creating leather products is a point of pride.
In January of 2023, Johan and Lisette brought drawings of their now shared Sunday bag concept. Immediately, they struck up a close relationship with a seamstress in town who was able to bring their vision to life despite never having made a golf bag before.
What came into existence was something special: a modern yet timeless handmade Sunday bag constructed of Scottish waxed cotton and Italian leather sourced from a fourth-generation tannery in Tuscany.
Like a cast iron skillet that only gets better the more meals it helps create, the Sunday bag is crafted to be hardy enough for a lifetime in all kinds of weather. It is meant to be used, bruised and loved.
Most golf products lose value over time but the Pine Coast bag gains value over time.
It looks and feels more like the essence of golf with each use.
Bonding with the Pine Coast bag
More than 4,000 miles west of Sweden, I have started to form a bond with the Pine Coast bag at a lovely executive course down the road from me here in Nashville.
The version I have, known as The Pine, is a remarkably enjoyable carry. With a single strap, The Pine rests horizontally across your back—and at just over two pounds, there is not much force needed to lift it comfortably.
Among the defining features of the bag are a stretchable water bottle pocket, a zippered valuables pocket, a skewed rangefinder pocket, two sturdy leather loops for clip-on items and a leather handle at the top for more dynamic maneuvering.
The bag can accommodate all 14 clubs and there is no divider.
When I opened up The Pine, the first thing I noticed was the thickness and obvious durability of the bag. The texture is striking. And, as strange as it is to say, even the earthy, “new car” smell of the bag is intoxicating. There are no chemicals used in construction so that aroma is pure canvas and leather.
It’s clearly made from a place of passion. The Pine looks sharp—a golf bag that could aesthetically fit in the 1920s as easily as it could fit into the 2020s.
Bringing it into action, it becomes apparent how the bag was made with functionality in mind.
Given that you place a Sunday bag on the ground prior to each shot, it only makes sense how the leather handle on the bag allows you to hold it upright while selecting a club and grabbing your rangefinder, which fits into the accessible skewed pocket that forms a diamond shape halfway up the bag. Because of the skewed pocket, which I have never seen on this kind of bag, there is no concern anything will fall out.
The bottom zippered pocket has ample space and the stretchy water bottle holder snugly accommodates whatever size container you want to bring. They are strategically placed on the bottom of the bag as a counterweight for the club heads.
There is no hard spine in the bag so it is easily foldable and storable. The package it arrives in is so small that you will be skeptical there is a whole golf bag inside.
Ultimately, I am surprised how little I missed from my normal stand bag. There isn’t much of a reason for me to walk the course with anything other than The Pine.
I have the privilege of testing out a lot of golf products but this bag has been my favorite discovery of the year. It’s become hard to envision walking the course with my heftier stand bag.
Making mental health a priority
Pine Coast Golf came into existence because of Johan’s search for better mental health so that has become a fundamental value of the business.
After launching in May 2023 and gaining traction through word of mouth, Johan and Lisette wanted the focus to be on creating a community of golfers who value mental well-being.
This mission of service has been carried out in several ways.
In October 2023, a storm came through their local course and blew down a pine tree (the name of the brand comes from how their home course has pine trees along the nearby coast).
Johan found a branch from that fallen pine, cut it into pieces and made bag tags that were sold at the local Christmas market. The proceeds went to the youth section of their club.
That’s a small local example of giving back but Pine Coast is constantly searching for ways to donate time, money and resources to charities that benefit golfers and/or mental health organizations.
They regularly donate a significant portion of their profits to mental health organizations and have run campaigns where anyone donating to a mental health cause gets a bag for half the price.
This is one of the rare brands that truly care about golfers on a personal level.
“There are a lot of golfers who suffer from mental health problems and we want to make sure they are not alone,” Lisette said. “Both of us have gone through different things. We are talking about it. We are not ashamed about it. That makes other people feel comfortable talking to us about it and that is the whole point.”
“Especially with men, we tend to bury things,” Johan said. “Four out of five suicides are men, and golf is a male-dominated sport. So if we bring up these issues and start the conversation, that is really what we want to do.”
Building from the ground up
As you can tell, Pine Coast is a homegrown brand that relies on community. It’s a family business that is not in a race to maximize profits at all costs. The marketing budget is slim. I only knew about them from their wonderful Instagram account and a mutual golf friend.
I feel confident in saying this is a brand you should be proud to support—for the products they make and the reason why they make them.
There are more than a dozen styles of the Sunday bag available for purchase. From order to delivery, the process takes about four weeks due to the handmade nature of the bags.
A Sunday bag is around $500-$600 USD. Considering it lasts forever, that can be a better investment than a $300 stand bag that might break down in a few years.
Pine Coast ships all over the world, including wholesale relationships with golf courses like New South Wales Golf Club in Australia.
While about one-third of the business is in the U.S., most of their customers are in Sweden and surrounding countries.
The brand offers more than Sunday bags—there are headcovers, yardage book covers, shoe bags, ball bags and duffel bags. All are made in that similar minimalist, elegant style. I now use the Pine Coast ball bag to chip at my local short-game area.
There is a minimalism about the products they make that connects back to the goal of mental health awareness.
It’s uncluttered and straightforward, the way golf should be.
To me, using the Pine Coast bag is making a certain statement about myself. That is why I connected immediately to Johan and Lisette’s story.
It says that I value the purest elements of golf—those late evening rounds where all is quiet—and every part of the game that makes us feel human.
It says, unapologetically, that I play this game for more than what appears on a scorecard.
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