Cardiff resident and avid golfer Ryan Walsh has launched a new app that makes it easier for golfers to snag a tee time.
Walsh’s Fairway Finder simplifies the somewhat cumbersome process of finding a tee time by aggregating all 55 public golf courses in San Diego into one spot—from the popular Encinitas Ranch to hidden gems like Rams Hill in Borrego Springs, “the best local course you’ve never heard of.”
With his app that has now served over 10,000 golfers since launching earlier this year, Walsh is taking a swing at disrupting one of the biggest tech companies in the golf industry.
“Our goal is to modernize the tee time booking experience, eliminating the longstanding friction in an industry notoriously slow to innovate,” said Walsh, 31.
Walsh has lived in Cardiff for the past seven years, planting roots with his wife and two-year-old baby, with another on the way. A native San Diegan who grew up in La Jolla, he was introduced to the game of golf by his father Gene, a scratch golfer who has played competitively throughout most of his life.
“I had no choice but to get into it,” Walsh says. “A golf club was in our hands pretty early.”
Now boasting a one handicap, one of the highlights of Walsh’s “very amateur” golf career is when he and his dad won the Encinitas Ranch Men’s Club Championship and Senior Club Championship in 2022.
Since graduating from the University of San Diego, Walsh has worked in marketing and started his own digital marketing business. An entrepreneur at heart, he was always coming up with ideas for products and companies. “(Fairway Finder) was one of my ideas on my Notes app on my phone and the one I kept coming back to,” he said.
Fairway Finder was a solution to his own personal tee time troubles—the pandemic had brought a ton of new people to the sport and courses needed a way to handle that increased demand: “In San Diego it was just really, really hard to get a tee time,” he said.
He landed at the idea for the app in somewhat of a roundabout approach.
In 2022, Walsh and his wife were looking into getting new ports with Global Entry when they learned that the process involves getting an interview appointment that is fully booked about 14 months out. He heard about an app service that alerts you when people cancel their appointments, to get in sooner. “It felt like magic but I was able to get an interview spot within a few days versus a year,” he said.
Around the same time, he was taking golf lessons at Crossings in Carlsbad and talking to them about cancellations. He crunched the course’s data and learned there was an average of 40 to 50 cancellations a day and a ton of turnover.
“Thinking of this app I used to get Global Entry, I thought this clearly needs to be created for golf so I can get tee times for courses that sell out immediately,” Walsh said. “I couldn’t resist the urge to create something.”
As Walsh doesn’t have any experience in tech, he found a full-stack developer online to help him build a prototype app that did exactly what he wanted it to do. That first iteration came out in May 2023, a one-stop shop where a golfer could go and search for all tee times around and see if anything is available and set up alerts for cancellations. After he was able to quickly get tee times for himself, he wanted to get it into the hands of more golfers.
There is another similar product in the marketplace, but it has been around for over 20 years and Walsh said the technology hasn’t evolved with the times. Additionally, that app only lists courses they partner with while Fairway Finder lists all public courses.
While his app started with just San Diego courses, his goal is for the app to find tee times across the United States. Once he realized his bigger vision, Walsh raised a small round of funding from family and friends, giving Fairway Finder a shot to go big this year.
Walsh’s marketing background is direct-to-consumer and since launching in January, he has been working to get the app in front of as many golfers he can. Through social media, he promotes the app with content from golf outings with his buddies, shining a spotlight on local courses he has partnered with, including Rams Hill, Carlton Oaks in Santee, the Loma Club by Liberty Station and San Vicente in Ramona.
Due to the frustrating nature of researching tee times, Walsh said people often end up just going back to courses they are familiar with. His app allows people to really explore all of the options around them and, in turn, helps those courses to fill their tee sheets.
“Fairway Finder has helped us stay top of mind with San Diego golfers and has significantly elevated Carlton Oaks’ profile in the highly competitive San Diego market,” said Mike Aiken, general manager at Carlton Oaks.
Walsh is gearing up to relaunch the second phase of Fairway Finder at the end of the month and will expand into states such as Colorado and Texas. He aims to be across the United States by the end of the year.
The app is available to on Google Play and the Apple App Store. For more information, visit fairwayfinder.io and follow their journey on Instagram at @fairwayfinder.io
