Golf meets art in new boutique on Las Olas
Entrepreneur who made Drake’s 24-karat gold Air Jordans opens boutique in Fort Lauderdale
A new boutique golf shop, Senna Made Clubhouse, just opened on Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard, offering sculptural, one-of-a-kind head covers, gloves, gear and apparel with a modern, youthful flair.
But beyond the game, golf is about having a story to tell while you’re shooting the shinola with pals between strokes.
Here’s one: The guy that created those head covers, multimedia artist and designer
Matt Senna, of Fort Lauderdale, is most internet famous for creating a 24-karat gold sculpture of Air Jordan 10 sneakers for rapper Drake, and similar pieces for Jay-Z, DJ Khaled, rapper-actor Common and others.
Common’s gold sneakers, a gift from his manager on the eve of the 2015 Academy Awards, made an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” after Common won the Oscar for Best Song. Those shoes, Senna says, cost $25,000.
In an Instagram post, Drake said the shoes Senna made for him were “solid gold” and weighed 100 pounds.
All Senna will say about Drake’s shoes, created with the rapper’s favorite Jordan sneaker in a private commission in 2016, is that they were “special” and the most expensive he’s ever done.
“People were like, ‘He bought them for like $2 million’ and this and that. It’s become this crazy thing. So I don’t disclose how those are made,” Senna says.
Senna produced those pieces in Los Angeles, but when he opted to transition that creativity into his other passion, golf, he and wife Anny DeBooth decided the first retail store would be in Fort Lauderdale, near where she grew up in Weston.
Three spaces
Located on the funkier east end of Las Olas, next to the iconic Floridian restaurant, Senna Made Clubhouse is a three-part operation and more than meets the eye from the
street.
The front of the store is retail, offering Senna-brand pieces — from hats ($65) and club head covers ($115-$175, sets of 10 $550) to leather shoe bags ($240) and duffel bags ($450) — along with men’s and women’s fashion from like-minded designers who spin the classics and a little rebellion, including G/ Fore, Manors and Random Golf Club. T-shirts start at $35.
Toward the back of the shop is a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that opens into a large room with a tiered, turfed putting green on the floor and a massive golf simulator on the east wall. The back wall has a door that leads to a small lounge, with sofa seating and a large TV.
The simulator costs $50 for 30 minutes, $80 for an hour. If a foursome wanted to play 18 holes it would cost $300-$350 and would include lounge access.
Another opening in the back wall leads to Boketto Lab, where DeBooth, an aesthetician, will offer facials and other skin-care treatments when it opens in April.
Senna acknowledges it made sense to open such a business in a “golf mecca,” but says one of his goals with the simulator space is to reach the non-golfer.
“It can be scary being on the first tee for the first time, so we wanted to create an environment where people can come and experience golf in a fun way, a new way, where there’s not so much pressure on them,” he says. “Hit a few balls into the simulator, have a drink, hang out in a relaxed environment and realize how much fun the game is.”
Senna Made Clubhouse will have local professionals rotating in to provide basic lessons and specific instruction. Simulator sessions can be packaged with visits to Boketto Lab, another place to alleviate first-time fears among men reluctant to talk about skin treatment. Senna was not a consistent user of sun block on the course when he met DeBooth.
“I feel like there is an opportunity to educate golfers more. Matt and I watch a lot of golf [on TV], and a lot of them have so much sun damage. And there is no advertising about sun protection. They really don’t even talk about it,” DeBooth says.
“When you tell a guy, ‘Do you want a facial?’, he’ll say, ‘Uh, I’ll pass on that,” she says. “So we’ll call it skin treatment. It will be a learning curve to make men more aware.”
Gotta be the shoes
A 36-year-old New Jersey native, Senna worked the cart shack at Baltusrol Golf Club as a kid and played baseball at Kean University, where he studied graphic design.
It was while mulling ways to pay homage to a grandfather, whose ever-present white Chuck Taylors had been handed down to him by an uncle, that Senna cast his first sneaker sculpture.
In 2012 in Los Angeles, looking to escape his job at an advertising agency, Senna created several sculptures in resin of his favorite shoe, Air Jordan 11. A friend blogged about them, creating a stir in the sneaker-head community. Another 2012 series, cast in bronze, attracted attention from galleries and people such as Drake and Jay-Z.
Senna still creates gold and bronze sneaker sculptures by commission, as well as lower-priced versions in resin and concrete. The pieces in his online shop at msenna.com — metal cost $8,000-$10,000 each, resin and concrete $450-$550 — are all sold out.
“We do special drops. I’ll do a Jordan 3 in resin, it’s limited to like 200 pieces or 100 pieces, and they’ll sell out that night,” Senna says.
Shoe releases have been fewer, Senna says, as he’s been focused on opening his store, which was inspired by a golf club cover that once belonged to his other grandfather.
“I loved the story that it told, and I decided I wanted to create something that’s high-end but gets better over time. A product that could be passed down through generations like the game is itself,” Senna says. “Some of the best stories I’ve heard with my dad have been walking down the golf course with him and just talking.”
Jonah Yonker, a 23-year-old software developer in Orlando, never received either COVID-19 stimulus check, but that’s about to change.
Last year, Congress passed two relief packages that sent $1,800 in two waves to taxpayers. However, college students who were dependents of their parents did not receive the money.
Now, almost a year after the first wave of stimulus checks, people such as Yonker will see that cash come through as they file their tax returns for 2020.
Yonker graduated from the University of Central Florida in May 2020. He never received a stimulus check despite working full-time for the majority of 2020 because Yonker’s parents claimed him as a dependent in 2019.
Now, he’s filing his taxes independently and will receive the money through his tax return.
Yonker said he did not immediately need the money when it was being sent out. He found a job right out of college and lived at home.
“The money is meant to go to bills that might go unpaid otherwise and keeping families afloat,” Yonker said. “I didn’t feel like I was missing out really.”
He moved out in November, so getting the stimulus this spring through his tax return is better timing for his situation, he said. Living on his own now, Yonker said he can now use the money toward rent and groceries.
More college dependents should be eligible for the next stimulus checks, Yonker said. However, he said it should be based on need and not on dependency status. In May, the U.S. House passed the HEROES Act, which expanded stimulus eligibility to include full-time college students. But the bill died in committee in the Senate.
However, not everyone who missed out on the checks will be able to get them.
Mike Salmon, a certified financial planner at Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo LLC in Orlando, said it takes specific criteria to qualify for the $1,800 through a tax return.
Eligibility for the first two stimulus checks was based on the most recently filed taxes, which could have been 2019 or 2018 taxes.
The group most likely to be able to get the stimulus in a tax return are people like Yonker who graduated college in 2020, Salmon said. Because these graduates are no longer full-time students, they could file this spring independently and receive the money.
A full-time student who graduated in late 2019, then got a job in 2020 also would now be eligible to collect the stimulus money once he or she files a tax return for 2020.
Salmon recommended caution for current college students who want to take advantage of this opportunity.
The American Opportunity Tax Credit offers a tax break for those claiming a college student on their taxes. In many cases, the $1,800 stimulus would not be enough to make up for the increase in taxes paid from losing the tax credit, Salmon said.
“Many people who think they have an opportunity to game the system here and get the 21-year-old some money are probably shooting themselves in the foot,” Salmon said.
But there could be more money on the way, even for those still in college.
President Biden’s American Rescue Plan includes $1,400 checks for adult dependents, including college students. The House approved Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan to put it on a fast-track to pass by the end of the month.