Golf’s best players are often described as artists playing the game on some of the best canvases in the world. Especially so when it comes to the major championships, the pinnacles of the sport.
Many of those major championships over the past two decades have been captured by Lee Wybranski. Not as a player, but an artist who’s grown his business to a point he has agreements in place with most of golf’s major governing bodies.
Wybranski started out sketching prints of classic golf clubhouses in the 1990s. Now, he’s painted the official portrait for most of the men’s major championships dating back nearly two decades.
“If you do a job for a club, you might make 100 prints and I might spend 100 hours on something that only 500 people will see in the next five years,” Wybranski said. “And the poster kind of tickled me because of the populist art form. You do a poster, and 10,000 people might see it over the course of a weekend.” Wybranski Art & Design, based in Arizona, has five employees. Wybranski’s first tournament poster was at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, and he’s now painted many of the game’s cathedrals, including St Andrews, Augusta National, Pebble Beach and more. Recently, he traveled to the headquarters of the United States Golf Association in Southern Pines, N.C., to unveil his official poster for the 2026 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island.He has a unique way of capturing the spirit of the host club, and it’s a little bit different every time,” said Mary Lopuszynski, the USGA’s longtime head of licensing. “He’s also very engaging, and everyone loves working with him.”
Most of Wybranski’s tournament posters seen in merchandise tents are smaller, at 18 by 12 inches, because of their popularity, but they also come in larger sizes. The posters retail starting at $30.
Wybranski’s work is not limited to paintings, though. His company has designed logos for major championships and other merchandise, including T-shirts, mugs, club headcovers and more. At the U.S. Open, he can usually be found in the merchandise pavilion signing portraits for fans throughout the tournament.
Wasserman’s Barry Hyde works with Wybranski. While his work has largely centered around golf, Wybranski hopes to branch out more into other sports such as tennis, horse racing or even baseball.
“My entire network is within the golf world, so I’ve been very keen to try to plant some flags elsewhere,” he said. “I’d love to get into major cultural avenues; music, big festivals, things like that. Things that just sort of have a larger audience than golf. An artist’s great vanity, I think, is eyeballs, and so I’d love to get in front of different or other people.” Credit:sport business journal
Courtesy of Lee Wybranski
