How I Fell Back in Love With Golf

Bogey Bod started with family, fatherhood, and a game I did not realize I had missed this much.

There was no business plan.

No big lightbulb moment.

No spreadsheet telling me golf was a good niche to get into.

Honestly, Bogey Bod started because I fell back in love with golf.

I had played before. Golf was not completely new to me. But for a long time it was just one of those things that existed somewhere in the background.

Then life changed.

I became a dad.

And not just a dad. A dad to twins.

Life got fuller in every possible way.

The days got busier. Free time started feeling like something you had to schedule three weeks in advance. There was always something that needed done, somewhere we needed to be, somebody who needed something.

I would not trade any of it.

But somewhere in that stage of life, I also started realizing how important it is to have something that is yours.

Not because you want to get away from your family.

Quite the opposite.

Because sometimes a few hours doing something you genuinely enjoy makes you better when you come back home.

For me, that thing became golf.

Again.

It Started With Family

My brother-in-law plays.

My father-in-law had just retired.

Suddenly, there were more opportunities to get out and play.

Nothing serious.

Nobody was talking about handicaps over breakfast or mapping out some five-year plan to make the Champions Tour.

It was just golf.

Grab the clubs.

Find a tee time.

Go play.

And somewhere along the way, those rounds started meaning a whole lot more to me than I expected.

There is something about spending a few hours on a golf course with family that is hard to explain until you have done it.

You talk about golf.

Then you talk about life.

Then somebody hits a terrible shot and everybody laughs.

Then somebody hits a great one and suddenly acts like they have been hiding a PGA Tour card in the glove box.

You talk about work.

Kids.

Family.

Sports.

Whatever is going on.

Sometimes you do not talk about much at all.

You just play.

And that became one of my favorite parts of it.

Life moves fast.

Golf, somehow, slows it down for a few hours.

Then I Got Hooked

At some point it stopped being, “Yeah, I’ll go play.”

It became, “When are we playing again?”

Then came the range sessions.

Then the putting practice.

Then watching golf.

Then looking at clubs.

Then looking at golf balls.

Then reading about golf balls.

Then realizing I had somehow spent thirty minutes comparing two golf balls when I was perfectly capable of losing either one in approximately the same amount of time.

That is when I knew I was in trouble.

I started caring about my swing again.

I wanted to understand why certain shots worked and others absolutely did not.

I wanted to hit the driver better.

I wanted to putt better.

I wanted to know my distances.

I started paying attention to courses I wanted to play.

Gear I wanted to try.

Little things I could work on.

Golf had gone from something I did once in a while to something I thought about constantly.

And the funny part is, I am not particularly great at it.

That might actually be the whole point.

I Am Not Trying to Be a Tour Player

Golf can get weird.

There is a part of golf culture that can make you feel like you need to take everything incredibly seriously.

Your clubs have to be perfect.

Your swing has to be perfect.

Your outfit has to be perfect.

You need to know your launch angle, spin rate, club path, face angle and probably the atmospheric pressure over the 14th fairway.

Relax.

I love getting better.

I like practicing.

I like learning about equipment.

I absolutely want to shoot lower scores.

But I also know what golf is for me.

It is supposed to be fun.

I have a family.

I have a career.

I have responsibilities.

I am not waking up tomorrow and deciding to dedicate six hours a day to rebuilding my golf swing.

I am going to play when I can.

Practice when I can.

Buy some things I probably need.

Buy some things I absolutely do not need.

Hit some good shots.

Hit some truly spectacularly bad ones.

And keep coming back.

That is the golfer Bogey Bod is for.

Golf for the Normal Guys

I kept noticing that a lot of golf content seemed to fall into two buckets.

On one side, you have serious golf.

Everything is technical.

Everything is optimized.

Everything is about shaving strokes.

On the other side, you have golf content that is basically just jokes.

There is room for both.

I like both.

But I wanted something in the middle.

Golf for the guy who genuinely wants to get better but also knows he is probably three bad swings away from questioning every life decision that brought him to the first tee.

Golf for dads.

Golf for guys with jobs.

Golf for guys who get excited about a new glove.

Golf for guys who occasionally spend too much money on a piece of equipment because this one is definitely going to fix the slice.

Golf for guys who know better.

Golf for guys who buy it anyway.

That is Bogey Bod.

The Name Made Sense

The name started as a joke.

Because come on.

Bogey Bod.

It sounds like exactly what it is.

We are not all built like Tour pros.

We are not all shooting 72.

Some of us are just out here trying to keep the ball somewhere in the general area of the hole.

And there is something I really like about owning that.

There is no shame in being average at something you love.

Actually, I think there is something pretty great about it.

You do not have to be elite at something for it to matter to you.

You do not have to be the best golfer in your group to love golf.

You do not have to have a perfect swing to care about your game.

You do not have to shoot in the 70s to get excited about flushing an iron.

Sometimes one shot is enough to bring you back.

Golfers know exactly what I mean.

You can play terribly for four hours.

Lose six balls.

Three-putt from twelve feet.

Hit one drive so far right that it deserves its own ZIP code.

Then you absolutely pure a 7-iron.

Right in the middle of the face.

Perfect flight.

Perfect sound.

And suddenly you are thinking about when you can play again.

This game is ridiculous.

I love it.

Fatherhood Changed How I Look at Time

Becoming a father changed a lot of things for me.

One of them was how I looked at time.

Before kids, a free Saturday was just a free Saturday.

Now time feels more valuable.

There is always somebody I could be spending it with.

Something I could be doing.

Something that needs done.

So when I go play golf now, I appreciate it more.

I appreciate being outside.

I appreciate getting a few hours with family.

I appreciate the conversations.

I appreciate the dumb jokes.

I appreciate the quiet moments walking back to the cart after a shot.

I appreciate having something that can pull my brain away from everything else for a little while.

And I appreciate coming home afterward.

That part matters.

Golf is not an escape from the life I have.

It is part of the life I have.

That distinction probably explains this whole thing better than anything else I could write.

It Became More Than a Hobby

At some point, I realized I did not just want to play golf.

I wanted to build something around it.

Not because I think the golf world desperately needs one more person yelling about equipment on the internet.

There are plenty of those.

I wanted a place that felt like the conversations we have around golf.

Useful when it needs to be.

Funny when golf deserves to be made fun of.

Honest about what most of us actually need.

A place where a golfer can read about a product without feeling like every single item is the greatest technological achievement since the invention of electricity.

A place where improvement matters, but enjoyment matters too.

A place where somebody can be completely obsessed with golf without pretending it is their profession.

That became Bogey Bod.

And the more I worked on it, the more real it started to feel.

What started as an idea turned into a logo.

Then a website.

Then pages.

Then product picks.

Then articles.

Then me sitting here writing this.

At some point, I stopped thinking about Bogey Bod as a little side project.

I started thinking about what it could become.

That is exciting.

And a little terrifying.

Probably a good sign.

What I Want Bogey Bod to Be

I want this to be somewhere normal golfers actually enjoy spending time.

There will be gear.

Plenty of it.

There will be honest product picks.

Training aids.

Golf tech.

Courses.

Practice.

Golf balls.

Clubs eventually.

Probably some clothes once I convince myself I need another golf polo.

There will also be stories.

Opinions.

Rounds that went well.

Rounds that went horribly.

Things I learn.

Things I completely screw up.

The goal is not to pretend I know everything about golf.

I do not.

That might be one of the best parts.

I am figuring it out too.

Bogey Bod gets to grow alongside my game.

Hopefully both improve.

No guarantees.

The Best Part Is Who Got Me Back Into It

When I really think about how this all started, I keep coming back to the same thing.

Family.

My brother-in-law.

My father-in-law.

A few rounds of golf.

That was it.

My father-in-law retiring created more opportunities to play.

My brother-in-law being into the game gave me another person to play with.

And somewhere in those rounds, golf became important to me again.

Years from now, I doubt I will remember what I shot during most of them.

I probably will not remember what club I hit into the seventh green.

I will not remember how many putts I had.

But I think I will remember being there.

That is what makes golf special.

You think you are going out to chase a score.

Then one day you realize you have also been collecting memories.

That part sneaks up on you.

So Here We Are

Bogey Bod is officially underway.

I am a dad.

A husband.

A working guy.

A golfer who got away from the game and somehow came back more obsessed than ever.

I am trying to get better.

I am trying to have fun.

I am probably going to buy too much golf gear.

I am definitely going to hit some terrible shots.

And I want to document all of it.

Maybe you are in the same stage of life.

Maybe you are coming back to golf after years away.

Maybe you just started.

Maybe you have been playing forever.

Maybe you shoot 82.

Maybe you shoot 112.

You are welcome here.

We can argue about golf balls.

Talk gear.

Work on our swings.

Laugh at ourselves.

And hopefully play a little better along the way.

No Tour card required.

Just bring your clubs.

Welcome to Bogey Bod.

Golf for the normal guys.