In January 2020, Matt Ginella left Golf Channel after eight years. He launched his own company to continue telling the longform stories that made him a leader in the travel space, with plans to bring back the buddies-trip “Ambush” that was so successful at Golf Digest and a focus on golf course developments and restorations. A couple of months later the pandemic hit, shutting down leisure travel for the foreseeable future. Matt pivoted and created the narrative Fire Pit podcast, launching the first episode in April 2020. Almost a year later, I was leaving Golf Magazine. Like Matt—a close friend going back to the mid-90’s when we were both coming up at Sports Illustrated—I was burnt out on the compromises and inefficiencies of corporate media. For months, Matt had been selling me on the idea of creating our own company, which would combine old-fashioned storytelling with a modern-media approach. We could be an independent voice that golf needed, covering the game without fear or favor. On February 22, 2021, we had a freighted phone call.

“I’m in,” I said.

“You’re in?” Matt shouted. “Fuck yeah!”

Pause.

“Now what?”

The Fire Pit quickly morphed from merely a podcast to a larger collective of voices; we were lucky to have people in the golf world who believed in our vision and were willing to invest in the company, allowing us to hire a talented team of content creators and multi-faceted technical folks. Too big, too soon? Maybe. But Matt and I are decades removed from our 20s—slow, incremental growth is a young man’s game. We were swinging for the fences.

The FPC turned into a content machine. Matt produced rich, immersive travel pieces that focused on culture as much as the golf courses. FirePitCollective.com was the launching pad for my Phil Mickelson biography, which ignited the biggest (non-Tiger) golf story of this century. In addition to the Fire Pit, we established enduring podcast franchises Fire Drill and Need a Fourth?!, giving recurring platforms to one of the wisest voices in golf, U.S. Open champ Geoff Ogilvy. We flooded the zone at the major championships with read-watch-listen content, energized by the addition of Michael Bamberger, the dean of the golf beat. (Our coverage of last summer’s majors recently earned some nice recognition by the Golf Writers Association of America.) We shined a light on the gritty reality of life on the fringes of professional golf with the cinematic docuseries “The Grind.”

Unfortunately, art and commerce don’t always go hand-in-hand. We have spent the last couple of months restructuring the FPC, and it’s been hard to part ways with people we love and admire. But Matt, myself, Michael and Geoff, along with talented technicians Jake Muldowney and Aaron Adkins, will continue blasting out typed articles, podcasts, video storytelling and social media salvos. We’ve gotten leaner with the focus on growing the “business.” We will continue to have a syndication deal with Golf Digest and keep supplying Golf Channel with meaningful features, and we’re in talks with other distribution channels. In addition, we have ambitious plans going forward to create even more of a community with the Fire Pit fans who, collectively, have made this such a rewarding adventure. The grind continues for us, too.

Thanks again for your support. We’ve learned a lot over the last two years. Now, we gotta get back to work.