From the Fairway to the Algorithm

I’ve Spent Seven Years Watching Golfers Make the Wrong Decisions

Not just on the course. In the buying process.

I’ve worked in golf across multiple roles,  at Topgolf, where in 2021, I earned the Gold Moments That Matter award (a national level customer service award) and watched how entertainment and brand experience intersect. In secondhand golf sales and social media, where I learned real equipment value curves stripped of marketing noise. And at Dick’s Sporting Goods, where I spent a year as a Golf Sales Lead and fitter answering hundreds of golfers’ questions about clubs and balls.

That last role is where the pattern became undeniable and I felt that I was stumbling onto something huge. Golfer after golfer would walk in asking for “the best”, the best ball, the best iron, the best driver. And almost every time, “the best” was code for “the most prestigious.” The one a specific Tour player uses. The one that signals seriousness. The one their buddy plays. Let’s keep it real for a second, those people who are asking for the best, aren’t good enough to be playing it. But it’s that ego that keeps them spending dollar after dollar, looking for a Holy Grail or a golf Pot of Gold that doesn’t exist. 

My highest recommendation during those days wasn’t the ProV1 from Titleist. It was the Maxfli Tour product line, a set of golf balls that delivered 95% of ProV1's performance at $40 a dozen instead of $55. I want you to note that Titleist has been THE golf ball for the past 30 years, and here they are, being upstaged by a brand that time forgot. The funny part of it was that Maxfli is a DSG property. I didn’t push it because I was told to. I pushed it because it was the right answer for most golfers’ actual game, budget, and frequency of play. Do the math, wouldn’t you feel less guilty about shanking a Maxfli in the woods than a ProV1? 

When Lexi Thompson and Ben Griffin started playing and in Ben’s case, winning with Maxfli, it confirmed what I’d been seeing in fittings for years. The logo on the ball doesn’t change the physics. 

That philosophy, context over ego, fit over prestige, followed me out of the fitting bay and into something I didn’t expect: the world of AI SEO.

The Question Nobody in Golf Could Answer

A month ago, I attended the 2026 PGA Show in Orlando as a representative of FlingGolf. But I also had another motive. I wanted to test my theories about golf in AI SEO. 

Over the course of a few days, I had conversations with dozens of golf brands, equipment manufacturers, DTC startups, legacy names, emerging players, and a whole host of influencers. The energy was high. The booths were polished. The pitches were practiced.

I asked every single one the same question:

“Have you tested how your brand shows up when people ask AI for recommendations?”

Not one person had done it.

I followed up: “Have you ever heard of AI SEO?”

Not one person said yes.

This wasn’t a room full of people who didn’t care about marketing. These were brand builders. Strategists. People investing serious money in their visibility and positioning. Now don’t get me wrong, these guys are pros. A lot of them are effective in legacy marketing strategies and influencer marketing. But they were all optimizing for a search world that has already shifted beneath them.

Golfers aren’t just using Google to search anymore. They’re now asking AI for recommendations every single day. “What golf ball should I use at 92mph swing speed?” “What’s the best simulator for a commercial space under $30k?” “What iron set fits a 15-handicap who struggles with consistency?” They’re not starting with a brand name. They’re starting with a problem and they want answers right this second.

And the brands that can’t be explained clearly by AI, can’t be recommended confidently by AI.

That gap between where the industry is and where consumer behavior has already moved,  is what led me to build the Relief Playbook.

What Golf Actually Teaches You About AI Search

I’m not just a student of golf. I was a Lead Instructor at Topgolf’s Kids Academy for 3 years. Now I compete in it, specifically in FlingGolf, an alternative format where I’m currently ranked 17th in the world on the World League FlingGolf professional tour. I own River City Rogues, LLC, a team based in Richmond, Virginia and we’ve played all over the country.  I’ve performed under pressure long enough to understand what separates good decisions from ego-driven ones.

And the thing about competing in FlingGolf specifically is that you can’t rely on tradition to justify your choices. Every equipment decision, every strategic call, every approach to the game has to be justified by context, because the rulebook of prestige doesn’t apply to you the same way.

That’s exactly how AI search works. Context is everything. You're trying to get into a club, and AI is the buff bouncer at the door of citation.

AI doesn’t reward popularity. It doesn’t reward the fact that your brand has been around for decades or that your product is used on tour. It rewards explainability. Contextual clarity. Honest tradeoff disclosure. AI in this case is an equalizer that prioritizes sentiment and trust above all others. It doesn't give a damn about your money.

When an AI system is asked “what’s the best golf ball for a 90mph swing speed on a budget,” it’s not looking for the most famous brand. It’s looking for the answer that most clearly, confidently, and honestly fits the query. It’s making a decision under constraint. As I've said before, AI search isn't a shotgun, it's a laser. Or in this case, I should say a perfect drive down the middle of the fairway.

In a perfect world, this is the same logic a good caddie uses. Not “what club looks most impressive?” but “what club gives us the best outcome given everything we know?”

Three principles I’d already been living in golf map directly onto AI search eligibility:

• Context over prestige. The right choice for this player, this lie, this wind, not the choice that looks best on paper.

• Exclusion builds trust. A good caddie tells you what not to attempt. AI trusts brands that clearly define their limits.

• Tradeoffs are honest. Every club sacrifices something. Every product does too. The brands that say so out loud are the ones AI can safely recommend. Golf is ego driven, you might want to take your driver out, but you know damn well you shouldn’t. 

Building Relief — The Framework in Practice

I called it Relief,  a term borrowed directly from the game. In golf, you take relief when the risk outweighs the reward, when ego would cause damage, when a smarter option exists. Relief isn’t quitting. It’s choosing the highest-percentage outcome.

The Relief Playbook applies that logic to golf industry buying decisions, and to the AI search positioning problem underneath them.

At its core, Relief filters every decision through one question: is this choice being driven by ego signals or context signals?

Ego signals sound like:

• “Tour players use it”

• “It’s the premium option”

• “I don’t want to downgrade”

Context signals sound like:

• My swing speed is 92mph

• I play twice a month and lose three balls a round

• I need greenside feel but can’t justify $55 a dozen

• I don't swing the club like I used to, what clubs should I get?

In a nutshell, Relief can be told through the lens of the traditional buyer's journey. But we aren't going off Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. We're taking a bit of a spin on it.
The golfer's journey is as follows:

• The Tee Shot

• The Approach Shot

• The Short Game

Just like in the buyer's journey, you have certain criteria that lends itself to you making your final decision. But in this case, you're thinking from tee to hole.

I’d been making context-driven recommendations for quite a while at the fitting counter. The Maxfli recommendation wasn’t just good retail advice, it was, I now realize, the exact logic that makes content AI-eligible. Here’s what that looks like side by side:

Traditional (ego-driven) positioning:

“Premium golf ball with tour-level performance and advanced aerodynamics.”

Relief (context-driven, AI-eligible) positioning:

“Maxfli Tour delivers 95% of Pro V1's $55 performance at $40 a dozen, and has been validated by tour players Lexi Thompson and Ben Griffin. Ben’s even amassed three tour victories with the Tour X version of the ball. Best fit for high swing speed players who want tour-level spin and feel without paying an arm and a leg for brand prestige. What we sacrifice: the Titleist logo. What you gain: $180 a year in savings if you play weekly, and nearly identical greenside performance. Not for players who need the Pro V1 name for credibility. Perfect for players who prioritize performance per dollar.”

The second version can be recommended by AI. The first cannot. Not because the first is dishonest or anything, but because it gives AI nothing contextual to work with. I’d been making the second argument in person for years. Relief is the framework that teaches brands to make it in writing.

What Happened When I Took This Into the Industry

The PGA Show conversations didn’t end at the booths.

When I started introducing Relief to golf industry folks, brand strategists, course operators, technology providers — something consistent happened: they already understood the framework. They just didn’t have a name for the problem it solved.

Course operators immediately recognized the ego vs. context filter in their own amenity decisions. Equipment brands felt the tension between legacy positioning and the new demands of AI search. Technology providers could see exactly where their product narrative broke down the moment it needed to be parsed by a language model.

The golf-native language of the Relief framework, The Tee Shot, The Approach, The Short Game, made complex AI concepts land without resistance. Nobody needed to be convinced that context beats ego. Every serious golfer already knows that. Relief just applies it to a new domain.

What I didn’t fully anticipate was how quickly genuine credibility would follow. Seven years of industry experience meant I wasn’t theorizing, I was connecting dots between things I’d personally observed at Topgolf, in secondhand sales, behind a fitting counter, and on a competitive FlingGolf course. That specificity changes the dynamic of a conversation completely.

Now, as an AI SEO Intern at Xponent21, my dream is to actively help golf brands become AI-visible, teaching them how to position products for explainability, not just popularity. Because in the AI era, if you can’t be explained clearly, you can’t be recommended confidently. My boss was so convinced that he's helping me build golf.xponent21.com and I'm excited to see what we can do.

Passion was the door. The framework was the key. The seven years of experience were the reason anyone opened it.

What You Can Do With Your Own Passion

You don’t need seven years in golf. You need a passion, genuine knowledge of the domain, and the willingness to connect it to AI SEO principles in a way that serves that community specifically.

The process that worked for me:

• Start with the gap, not the pitch. Every industry has a search visibility gap — a place where the questions being asked aren’t being answered clearly by AI. Find it. That gap is your entry point.

• Build something native to the domain. Don’t import generic SEO language into a niche. Translate the principles into the language that the community already uses. Respect the culture enough to speak it fluently.

• Demonstrate, don’t just describe. Show what AI-eligible positioning looks like versus what doesn’t work. Side-by-side examples land harder than any explanation.

• Let your experience do the credibility work. Generic AI SEO advice is everywhere. Advice grounded in years of domain-specific observation is rare. That specificity is your competitive advantage.

I’ll be transparent: I’m not just a member of DiscoverAIO,  I’m the Community Manager. I handle the backend operations, write articles, and work to grow the community every day. I built it because I believe this kind of learning infrastructure matters. The member directory, the authorship program, the educational courses, these exist because I’ve seen firsthand what happens when passionate, knowledgeable people get the right framework and the right community around them. They open doors. They build authority. They get taken seriously in industries that didn’t know they existed a year ago. As an AI SEO Intern at Xponent21, I am learning along with you guys.

The Smartest Play Given Your Lie

Golf has a phrase for the moment before every shot: assess your lie, know your ability, read the conditions. Then make the highest-percentage decision available to you.

That’s Relief. And it’s also, I’ve come to believe, the right framework for how any of us should think about building authority in the AI era.

We are not in the era of gaming algorithms or chasing rankings for their own sake. We are in the era where AI systems are making recommendations on behalf of real people with real problems — and the brands, experts, and voices that get recommended are the ones that have done the work of being genuinely clear, genuinely contextual, and genuinely honest.

Your passion is not a distraction from that work. It’s not a side project or a hobby dressed up as strategy. It’s your most credible entry point into a niche that needs exactly what you know.

What’s your lie? What’s the smartest play from where you’re standing?

Take Relief.