About

The mark, the money, the memory. Three lenses into the courses, characters, and craft that keep us coming back to the unconquerable game of golf.

In practice: the mark is why a course presents itself the way it does, down to the crest on the scorecard. The money is who owns the place, what it charges, and whether the economics hold. The memory is the hole everyone argues about, the staff member who cares so deeply about the experience, and the technology quietly changing both.

Why I started this

I stopped playing for 12 years and came back in the summer of 2026, after telling my wife I wanted a sport to put my competitive energy into. It turns out this was when our club was about to raise the dues so she was fully supportive. By late 2026, I needed foot surgery, and the recovery has been long enough that I have spent the season going deep about golf instead of playing it.

I wanted to know how a course makes money and why so many of them barely do, why a hole that frustrating was designed that way, how a game this attached to tradition absorbs new technology, and who drew the crest on the scorecard and why the brand mark ended up that way. That means reviewing municipal budget lines and state filings, understanding the focus of a centennial course redesign, and discovering the history of a course in online archives. It turns out that every course has a story worth exploring, not just the famous ones.

About me

I invest in early stage technology companies where I help talented people build something that does not exist yet, working out whether the economics hold, and pushing people to decide with incomplete information. The work rewards being curious and decisive at once, and it is hands-on by design.

I was a casual golfer even when I played, and then not one at all for over a decade. Three places survived that anyway.

The fairways at Bethpage Black, which roll enough that a public course somehow feels found rather than built. The vistas at Metedeconk National, which I can still see more clearly than any hole I played there. And Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, in a wind that put my good shots and my bad ones in roughly the same place. Not one of those memories is a score.

Now, I play with my kids and with friends, and I'm too competitive to not keep score, even when it isn't pretty. Coming back also means learning fundamentals that I skipped the first time, so I am working with a coach who cut his teeth at one of the nation's top courses and has been patient as I find my swing. What he tells me does not change. Focus on the basics. Stop compensating. Practice. And accept that this is a game nobody masters, which is either the discouraging part or the whole point.

Say something

If you run a course written about here and something is wrong, tell me and it gets fixed. If you run one that should be written about here, tell me that too.

If you're curious about the same things, or you work in golf and the software is failing you, tell me.

Written by Santosh Sankar (you can call me Tosh), hello@localrulesgolf.com.