Eastside Golf Opens Its First Atlanta Store at Phipps Plaza

Eastside Golf opened its Phipps Plaza store in Atlanta on Friday, October 30, the brand's first retail space in the city where its founders met. The Nike collaboration release landed the same day, and Community Day followed on Sunday, November 1. Three events, three days, one city.

Second Floor, Between LIV ATL and Sunglass Hut

The Eastside Golf store sits on the second floor of Phipps Plaza, between LIV ATL and Sunglass Hut and across from JoJo's Atelier, according to the shopping center's listing as relayed by What Now Atlanta. The mall covers 823,053 square feet of leasable space. Nobody has published how much of it Eastside Golf took.

The location surfaced in September with no date attached. By late October it had one. After the weekend, the brand's message was short: "Phipps Plaza is OFFICIALLY OPEN. Come through."

Andrew Berg, president of the Luxury, Sports and Emerging Brands division at Centric Brands, has said retail has been a priority in Eastside Golf's growth plan since the joint venture formed. He described the store as a way to bring the brand's idea of a modern golf clubhouse to life. That makes Phipps Plaza the place where the brand controls the whole room: the product, the display, the music and the staff.

It is not the brand's first flagship. Footwear Magazine has reported that Eastside Golf previously opened a flagship in Detroit and expanded into major retail and streetwear locations across the country. What Phipps Plaza adds is the home market. Atlanta is where Ajanaku and Cooper met and where the brand takes its name. The store puts a permanent Eastside Golf room in that market in the market the label is named for.

Olajuwon Ajanaku Named the Brand for the Side of Town He Grew Up On

Olajuwon Ajanaku and Earl Cooper met at Morehouse College in Atlanta and built Eastside Golf, named for East Atlanta, where Ajanaku was raised. A first Atlanta store is a homecoming as much as an expansion, and the weekend was scheduled that way.

Community Day ran Sunday at Charlie Yates Golf Course, according to the event listing. It was open to golfers and non golfers, with golf instruction, interactive activities, music, food and time with Ajanaku and Cooper. Last year's edition sold out within an hour of registration opening, and Charles R. Drew Charter School was its beneficiary, per the brand's own recap of 2025. Eastside Golf credited its partners and sponsors for making the 2026 weekend happen and did not name them.

The scoreboard for the weekend reads simply. One store opened. One shoe released. One course filled with people who may never have held a club.

Three Falls, Three Nike Collections

The Nike release is the third in three years, and each one has had its own name. The first, in fall 2024, put the Air Max 1 '86 OG and the Air Zoom Victory Tour 3 under the Eastside Golf banner as Everyone's Game. The second, Take Flight, added the Air Max Plus G and the Victory Tour 4 in 2025, with early purchase on September 25 on EastsideGolf.com and wider availability on October 2.

The 2026 chapter was teased in September as Zero Gravity, a name pulled from the NKE0GRVTY code printed on a support panel of the Nike NEXT% Tour 3. The earlier reporting on that shoe put it in Fall 2026 at $200, built on the NEXT% Tour platform rather than the spikeless Air Max Plus G.

Do the date math. The 2025 early purchase opened September 25. A release on October 30 lands 35 days later, which moves the Nike drop out of the early fall slot and into the same weekend as the store. That is a scheduling choice, and it put the shoe in front of a mall crowd and a golf course crowd within 48 hours.

One caution on the shoe itself. Eastside Golf's weekend recap says Nike collab release on 10/30 and names no model, so whether the October 30 release is Zero Gravity is unconfirmed. The September teaser placed Zero Gravity in Fall 2026, which fits, but a confirmed model name and a final retail figure will come from the brand or from Nike.

What is confirmed is the sequence. Friday brought a store and a shoe to Phipps Plaza. Sunday brought the community back to the course that sold out its last edition in an hour.