Dustin Johnson's TaylorMade partnership has ended

With his name near the top of the leaderboard seemingly every weekend and being one of the best drivers of the ball in his generation, there was a time not long ago when Dustin Johnson was everything a brand could want as an ambassador. The winner of 24 PGA Tour events and over $75 million dollars in official prize money, he was a member of the 2007 Walker Cup team, reached No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking, played on four Presidents Cup teams and five Ryder Cup teams. That translated to tremendous exposure for Johnson, and starting in 2007 when he turned pro, exposure for the club company that sponsored him, TaylorMade.

Johnson wore a TaylorMade hat, played TaylorMade clubs, hit a TaylorMade ball, kept his gear in a TaylorMade bag and appeared in scores of TaylorMade commercials, promotional videos and other projects. However, the 40-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, won't be featured in any more TaylorMade promotions or spotted in new ads because TaylorMade confirmed that his contract with the Carlsbad, California-based brand expired at the end of 2024 and was not extended.

Having signed with LIV Golf in 2022, Johnson has had limited opportunities to play in events that earn him world ranking points, so his ranking has slowly slid down to its current position, No. 578, one spot behind South Korea's Eunshin Park and one better than China's Wu Ashun.

Brands like TaylorMade partner with players to bring more exposure to the company, its equipment and technologies, and to associate the company with winning and excellence. They also bring players to agreed-upon company events, use their name, image and likeness in commercials, and work with players at media events.

Having won the 2020 Masters, Johnson has a lifetime exemption into the season's first major, and his 2016 U.S. Open win at Oakmont gets him into that event through 2026, but his exemption into the PGA Championship and British Open off that Masters win ends after this season.

Last year, Johnson missed the cut at the Masters and U.S. Open, finished T-31 at the British Open and T-43 at the PGA Championship. Combine that decrease in performance in the majors with reduced visibility (only 12,000 people tuned in to the first round of LIV's most recent event in Riyadh), and it is not hard to understand why Johnson would be a less-valuable partner to a brand like TaylorMade, which boasts a Tour staff that includes Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Nelly Korda, Tiger Woods, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Dustin Johnson and TaylorMade's partnership has ended