Get in the Hole

This one started with me rather than a client. I play golf, I like the people it puts you next to, and I'd got fed up with how much of the organising happens across four different apps and a group chat nobody can follow.

Golf has picked up a lot of new players over the last few years. The digital side hasn't really kept pace with the kind of player it's picking up, someone who's social, on their phone constantly and quite used to decent software everywhere else in their life.

So I wrote the problem down properly before I drew anything. How might we connect socially-driven golfers in a way that improves playing, preparing and talking about the game, on the course and off it? Three things kept surfacing. Planning a round is spread across tools that weren't built for it. There's no dedicated social space for golfers that isn't either a forum from 2008 or a general feed where the golf gets lost. And if you want to find players outside your usual four, either locally or somewhere you're travelling to, you're mostly on your own.

The name arrived early and I never found a better one. Get in the Hole has the humour of the game in it, which felt like the right note to open on. From there I built the identity: a logo and visual system that had to hold up at app icon size and inside the product, a palette and typeface picked for legibility first, and a tone of voice that's friendly without being laddish. I wanted it to read as a lifestyle platform rather than a utility, and to land with a younger player without making an older one feel they'd wandered into the wrong place.

Then the experience. Wireframes, user flows and feature mapping around four pillars. A social feed for posting a round, a swing tip, a course photo or just banter. Group chat and round planning, so availability and tee times sit in one place instead of four. Competitions and challenges, with scoring and leaderboards. And player discovery, for finding people nearby or wherever you're headed next.

I should be straight about where this got to. Get in the Hole is a concept. I defined the problem, built the brand and designed the experience, and that's where it sits. It hasn't been funded, built or put in front of anyone, so there's nothing to claim about how it performs. I do still think the gap is real, and of everything I've started on my own time it's the one I'd most like to pick back up.