Our Story: FLAGD Golf
Passion for The Game
Founder and CEO Troy Parish has been passionate about golf since he first picked up a club at age five. He grew up in San Diego playing competitive junior and high-school golf with the likes of Phil Mickelson, Chris Riley, Harry Rudolph, and Todd Demsey—to name just a few—and has remained obsessed with the game ever since.
Passion for Technology
He has also always been a self-proclaimed gadget geek with a passion for technology—not in-your-face, poorly designed, complicated technologies, but products that make everyday life better.
Luckily for him, he built a career out of working for cutting-edge technology companies like Nextel (wireless push-to-talk), ShoreTel (VoIP), and others that kept him close to the latest and greatest technology trends.
His background with technology, combined with an entrepreneurial drive and love for The Game led him and the team to creating FLAGD Golf.
The AHA Moment
One afternoon, Troy was hitting balls at his home club. As he fumbled around once again trying to get the correct distances to the targets, he had an “aha” moment and thought to himself, “There has to be a better way.”
So, he left the range that day and jotted down some notes in a journal where he kept many of his wild ideas—ideas that usually stayed in the chicken-scratch stage.
But this idea felt different. As he dug in deeper, he became more excited to share it with a few trusted friends he knew with backgrounds in golf and product development.
And from there an exciting partnership began...
Partnering for Success
Troy had the conceptual idea for the product, and knew what technology he wanted to use, but he still had some key questions to answer:
1) How to engineer and build the product.
2) Whether members and guests at clubs would like it.
3) Whether clubs would purchase it for their facilities.
So, Troy partnered with a few lifelong friends to get things going: one with an extensive background in the golf industry, one with extensive experience manufacturing high-tech equipment, one with a consultative selling background in technology, and another—a brilliant engineer—who knew how to make it all work!
Design with M.A.Y.A.
As the FLAGD team moved from a concept into a real product, they focused on a design principle that had long resonated with Troy: M.A.Y.A.—Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. The guiding idea encourages designers to push innovation forward while staying within the bounds of what users instinctively feel is comfortable and familiar (in other words, truly good technology).
Troy felt that most golfers appreciated technology enhancements as long as they didn’t interfere with the flow of the game or the environment around them.
Preserving the Pure Golf Feeling
Troy and his peers grew up playing golf with persimmon woods, balata golf balls, and colored yardage stakes for distances to the pin. There were no rangefinders, mobile phones, or technology solutions to interfere with the flow of the game—pure golf at its finest.
So, combining M.A.Y.A. with this pure-golf feeling was—and continues to be—our ongoing goal.
"MODERNZING GOLF WHILE PROTECTING THE AESTHETIC INTEGRITY OF THE GAME"