How Abraham Ancer and Mark Wahlberg teamed up in the tequila company

In the era of prodigious purses and savvy strategic thinking, pro golfers are generating it their enterprise to be in business enterprise exterior of their activity, although display-biz stalwarts and celebrity athletes like Steph Curry, Peyton Manning and Andy Roddick are identifying that the sensible income is in golf alone. In our Golfing & Business enterprise package (which you can also uncover in the Jan/Feb 2022 situation of Golfing Magazine), we’ll go inside their wallets.

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Professional golfers and famous people have been ham-and-egging it considering that the days of Bing Crosby and his Clambake. But they aren’t just pairing up in pro-ams any more. There’s real enterprise at hand — combined with legit camaraderie. Witness the scene on this sunlight-kissed afternoon in Beverly Hills, the place Abraham Ancer and Mark Wahlberg are whacking pitching wedges on the sprawling grounds driving Wahlberg’s dwelling.

Even in road clothes, there’s no mistaking Ancer, the bantam-created 30-12 months-previous Tour professional whose experience has grow to be a fixture on Sunday broadcasts. Wahlberg, for his component, would stand out any place, a Hollywood star, continue to ripped at 50, his box-business biceps straining the sleeves of his T-shirt. Correct to reputation, an entourage surrounds him, like several handlers and an HBO film crew. With the cameras whirring, Wahlberg cedes the stage to Ancer.

Or, fairly, the tee.

“Let’s see it, professional,” Wahlberg suggests.

Blanketed in synthetic turf, the elevated perch in which their team has gathered doubles as the launchpad for a quick par-3 that plays across the back again edge of the actor’s estate. Wahlberg experienced the hole set up 5 a long time back, portion of a tricked-out backyard that, in addition to a professional-amount skate park and hoops court docket, consists of a chipping space and numerous observe greens. Its grounds ripple with dramatic undulations. Its phony grass appears to be Augusta-actual.

Club in hand, Ancer measures up, waggles, swings. The shot normally takes off with the oomph of perfect effects.

“That’s this kind of a good seem,” Wahlberg states, as Ancer’s ball handles the pin.

The get-alongside one another has the makings of a casual practice session. But, even as they consider turns lining up pictures, Wahlberg and Ancer are also conversing shop. Far more than taking part in associates, they are organization associates, an A-record golfer and a golfing-obsessed A-lister whose overlapping interests make them emblematic of a bigger craze.

Prolonged long gone are the days when the game’s very best gamers constrained their off-program ventures to architecture and one-dimensional endorsement specials. Although it’s tricky to pinpoint when the groundswell started, it is reasonable to say that it was underway by the late 1990s, when Ernie Els opened a winery and Greg Norman started out selling almost everything from steaks to financial commitment money.

In the decades considering that, it has only picked up pace. The trail blazed by the small business-minded likes of Norman, a previous planet-amount-just one-turned-one particular-male-conglomerate, is trod nowadays by a lengthy parade of Tour-pro entrepreneurs, their facet hustles and holdings spanning from brewpubs and bourbon labels to putt-putt venues.

Over the identical interval, athletes and entertainers who when turned to golfing as a privileged escape, if they bothered with it at all, have deepened their investment in the activity. What they have invested isn’t just their time.

This intermingling of possibilities and interests has provided rise to an eclectic combine of golfing-celebrity enterprises, so that we now stay in a planet the place Peyton Manning is aspect operator of a cult-favourite nine-gap program, Steph Curry’s output business has a information deal with NBC/Golf Channel and Bubba Watson owns a sweet shop.

In this increasing ecosystem, Ancer and Wahlberg have grown close, a bond they formalized into a organization offer in August of this calendar year when Wahlberg bought in on Flecha Azul, the top rated-shelf tequila corporation that Ancer cofounded. The brand name speaks to every guy in different strategies.

For Ancer, who was educated in the United States but lifted just throughout the border in Reynosa, Mexico, classic tequila is a cap suggestion to his heritage and an antidote to the minimize-price things that masquerades greatly as the authentic detail. “I get delight and duty in demonstrating people how very good tequila can essentially be,” he states.

For Wahlberg, a former brawler from South Boston, Flecha Azul matches the cleanse-sipping way of life of the particular person he’s grow to be. He was also taken by the backstory of the brand and its cofounders.

“They’re self-made men,” Wahlberg claims of Ancer and his Flecha Azul lover, Aron Marquez. “I never knock any individual for coming from prosperity or privilege. But I do have an appreciation for individuals who have established their possess future, like Abe and Aron.”

As Ancer tells it, the Flecha Azul thought was practically preordained. It begun having form on the working day he 1st satisfied Marquez, the CEO of Wildcat Oil Resources, at the 2018 Fort Value Invitational, where by the two ended up partnered in a pro-am. Hardly finished with 1st-tee introductions, Marquez pointed to Ancer’s bag and pointed out the Mexican flag emblazoned on it.

“That was it. We had been off and managing,” Ancer states. “The more we talked, the additional we recognized how considerably we had in prevalent.”

Not only did they share a nationality, portions of their childhoods also had overlapped. Both equally were born to family members of modest implies and grew up border-straddling, supported by dad and mom who patched alongside one another employment to make ends meet. Through summertime breaks from substantial school, in Odessa, Texas, Marquez picked onions, pooling revenue he would use to assistance put himself by means of faculty. Ancer understood Odessa. It was where he starred in junior school, an undersized overachiever who’d been bypassed by all the large Division I faculties.

In a single period at Odessa, Ancer produced such a splash — nabbing medalist honors in 6 activities and successful the Jack Nicklaus Award for very best junior higher education participant in the country — that he was snatched up the up coming year by golf powerhouse Oklahoma. To top rated off the connections, Oklahoma was in which Marquez examined organization ahead of making a profitable company from scratch.

Both guys had arrive a long way. But what struck them as their round unfolded was how near they felt to their beginnings.

“We have been just spitballing again and forth, speaking tacos, tequila, all the issues we cherished about Mexican foodstuff and tradition,” Ancer suggests. “It was possibly a handful of holes in when Aron goes, ‘You know, we must start a little something together.’”

In just months, they did.

The tequila Ancer and Marquez experienced in thoughts was not the type you slug and regret later on. It experienced to be the actual offer, created from 100 percent blue agave in a person of the five areas of Mexico that qualify for the “tequila” designation.

“It’s not like you can just say, ‘Okay, let us purchase land and commence distilling,’” Ancer says. “The plants take a long time to expand, and the process by itself can take time. The lifestyle of tequila is as pure as it gets. You have to go to the proper spots and then uncover persons who do it proper.”

Ancer’s childhood close friend produced a mild introduction to a family in Jalisco who had been generating tequila for practically 100 years. The relatives was not significant on working with outsiders. But, in time, a friendship formed. Recipe tests followed. In March 2020, more than two several years right after they’d hatched the strategy, Ancer and Marquez popped the major on their to start with bottle of Flecha Azul. They selected the name in section for its simplicity (“We wished terms that ended up straightforward for absolutely everyone to pronounce,” Ancer claims) but also for its symbolism: Flecha is the Spanish term for “arrow,” a projectile that only flies forward just after getting pulled back. The strategy is that there is power and worth in the past — in humble roots, in tequila built in accordance to tradition. Hold the product pure. No excess sugar. No additives at all.

“There’s a rationale everyone has a bad tequila tale,” Ancer says. “That’s since there is a lot of negative tequila out there.”

Wahlberg could convey to a couple of of those tales. But they are from a previous life. For many years now, he’s been regarded as a health and fitness fiend, even by aerobicized Hollywood benchmarks. His commitment to the gymnasium is matched by his strength for entrepreneurship. Wahlberg’s organization interests — which involve a burger chain, a clothes enterprise and a cluster of car or truck dealerships — are myriad ample to have impressed an HBO docuseries, Wahl Street.

In the throes of a pandemic that battered a pair of his ventures, Wahlberg suggests he was not on the lookout for an additional expenditure. But then a enterprise colleague dropped off a sample of Flecha Azul. Wahlberg is not a monk. He likes to unwind, but with out the morning-after repercussions. He would drink a lot more wine, he says, if it didn’t necessarily mean “consuming a large amount of fluids and a ton of sugar.”

“Then I attempted the tequila,” he suggests. “It’s exquisite. You are sipping it. You enjoy it. And then I truly feel fantastic the up coming day when I wake up.”

Usually, that is just before the roosters. A father of 4 with a complete slate of business obligations, Wahlberg is not just one for throwing away daylight. That indicates predawn workouts and dawn rounds. He made use of to be a frequent presence on the superstar professional-am circuit, but six hours of strike-and-giggle are extra than he can acquire. All over L.A., at two of the leading golf equipment wherever he is a member, he’s well known for sprinting as a result of 18 in fifty percent the time it normally takes to watch 1 of his movies.

“Unfortunately, contrary to Abe, I cannot make a dwelling participating in golf,” Wahlberg suggests. “And I have a large amount I want to get completed so I can get back to my wife and kids.”

Early pace-golf outings are not conducive to cocktails on the study course, but Wahlberg suggests he would not want them in any case.

“I’ve witnessed fellas who are drop-down drunk successful nearby tournaments, but I never see them successful on nationwide Tv,” he suggests. “So individuals aren’t really the examples for me.”

Ancer, on the other hand, helps make a good position model, and on this sun-kissed afternoon at Wahlberg’s estate, the actor is viewing the professional in admiration. The two have performed a handful of rounds together, though never ever very at Wahlberg’s favored frenzied speed.

“That’s just outrageous,” Ancer claims.

Today’s laid-back get-alongside one another is much more his velocity — a opportunity to smack some balls but also discuss some business enterprise, a endeavor that Ancer enjoys as a cerebral balance to his go-go lifestyle on Tour.

“I adore the resourceful challenge,” he claims. “You’re often bouncing close to concepts, attempting to get the job done out complications.”

Flecha Azul is not the only outlet for Ancer’s entrepreneurial push. In addition to owning ties to Black Quail Attire and a distribution deal with devices-maker Miura, he is also the co-operator of a driving vary in San Antonio. But the tequila is the just one that flows most freely from his life outside of golf. And it is about to start out spilling forth in considerably higher quantity. At present obtainable in just a handful of states, Flecha Azul is established to roll out nationally above the future couple of months. This indicates do the job lies ahead.

At the minute, although, it’s all about rest. Ancer whacks a couple of extra wedges, then provides the tee to Wahlberg, who hits left-handed with a stable, compact swing.

“That’s ideal on aircraft,” Ancer suggests. “There’s not substantially to repair than to get more probability to exercise.”

On it goes like this, the two men having turns, chatting, laughing. Wahlberg proposes playing closest to the pin (see online video over). A friendly contest breaks out between a couple of fellas who prosper on opposition. It is not really hard to visualize their tequila using off. But, judging from the arc and dispersion of their pictures, neither the Hollywood stalwart nor the soaring Tour pro will want to quit his day job before long.

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