The Public's Major — Two Weeks Out
In two weeks I’m hosting a golf tournament. The inaugural Muni World Championship tees off Saturday, July 18 at North Park, my home muni and the course I’ve played more than any other, over 140 rounds since 2017. Four groups are locked in, a pavilion is rented, the merch is printed, and the custom golf balls are in hand.
I thought about this event for two years before I did anything about it. I built it in two months.
The Gap
If you belong to a private club, the calendar does a lot for you. Member-guests, club championships, flighted match play, a trophy case in the hallway, a board with names going back decades. The competition and the tradition come with the membership.
If you play muni golf, you get a tee time.
That’s the gap the MWC is trying to fill. I wanted to take the experience private club golfers get handed every season and build it for the public golf world: a real field, a real format, awards, merch, a meal afterward, and a title somebody gets to hold for a year. We’re calling it The Public’s Major, and it lives at a county muni in Pittsburgh because that’s exactly where it should live.
The event is invite-only this first year, and the format is net Stableford at 100% of handicap. Stableford matters more than it sounds like it should. One blowup hole doesn’t end your day, aggressive play gets rewarded, and a 20-handicap has a legitimate shot at the title against a 6. Everyone stays in it until the end.
The rules bend on purpose, and they bend the same amount for everybody: preferred lies, putter-length gimmes, and one mulligan per nine. Use it wisely. All of it is written down at muniworldchampionship.com/rules, because codifying the fun is what keeps the competition fair. Municipal rules. Maximum fun.
North Park Golf Course, home of the Muni World Championship. Allegheny County’s finest municipal terrain.
Two Years of Thinking, Two Months of Doing
Here’s the honest version of the timeline. I had this idea in 2024. I talked about it, took notes on it, waited for the right partners, the right season, the right amount of free time. None of that ever arrived, because it never does.
Two months ago I got tired of it. Tired of having ideas and sitting in analysis paralysis, hunting for the perfect time. There’s never a perfect time for much of anything. If you have an idea, find some support if you need it and go do it. And if you can’t find the support, do it anyway. There’s something different that happens when you decide you’re going to do it yourself.
So I did it myself. Since early May: registered the domain, built the website, wrote and published the rules, secured sponsors for the awards, designed the merchandise and had it printed, ordered custom MWC golf balls, built tee sheets, designed winner certificates, and booked the pavilion. Every piece of that was concrete, finishable work, and I enjoyed nearly all of it.
Marketing has been the hardest piece by far. Building things is work I know how to do. Convincing people to give up a Saturday for an event that has never existed before is a different skill, and I’ve had to learn it in public. Four groups are committed, and the goal was five or six. The people who signed up early, before there was any proof this would be worth it, mean more than they probably realize.
The Muni Cam
One more thing got built along the way, and it’s the one I keep grinning about. I wrote an iPhone app for the event called Muni Cam. Attendees can record clips through championship frames with stickers and the inaugural crest, then share straight to Instagram or TikTok. It’s live on the App Store right now.
I’ve been a software developer for thirty years, and for most of them I’ve talked about shipping an app of my own without ever doing it. This is the first one. It exists because the tournament gave it a reason to exist, which tells you something about what deadlines with real people attached will do for you.
I honestly don’t care whether anyone at the event uses it. What matters to me is that the idea didn’t stay an idea. I’m taking these things out of my head, delivering them, and making something a little different than what was there before.
Muni Cam, live on the App Store. Thirty years of writing software, first app with my own name on the ship button.
July 18
The day itself is simple on purpose. Everyone gathers at 9, rolls at 9:30, and four tee times go off starting at 10. No shotgun start, just groups heading out the way a muni actually works. Before the first group goes, I’ll give a short rules speech off bullet-point notes: thank-yous, the ground rules, probably a joke or two that lands at about a 50% rate.
After the round we head to the rented pavilion for a cookout. The grill plan and the food list are still firming up. Doughnuts in the morning are a maybe. Winners get certificates and sponsor-backed awards, and everybody goes home with the merch and a story.
What I want people to walk away with is simple: they had fun, and they can say they were part of the first one. If the story they tell their friends is that it was better than they expected and they’re already planning to come back, the event did its job, and year two fills itself.
In the Golf Business
There’s a bigger thing underneath all the logistics, and I might as well say it plainly.
I’ve considered myself a golfer for a long time, and this site documents that whole journey. Hosting an event is different. People are paying an entry fee. They have expectations. I’m responsible for delivering an experience, from the tee sheet to the last hot dog. That puts me in the golf business officially, and that’s pretty amazing to sit with.
It reminds me of something from martial arts: if you paint, you’re a painter. Nobody issues a license. You do the thing, and the doing is the credential. I’ve spent years saying I wanted to be in the golf game. Turns out the way in was to pick a date and start inviting people.
Two things sit on my mind at two weeks out. The first is filling the last spot or two so the field feels full and the day feels special. The second is building a checklist deep enough that no detail slips on the morning of, because I’ll be player, host, and staff all at once.
There are bigger ideas already forming for what comes after this, more ways to give muni golfers the kind of golf experiences that usually sit behind a membership gate. I’m keeping those to myself for now. The arc matters more than the specifics: this is a first step, and I’m treating it like one.
The MWC tees off in two weeks. Some detail will go sideways on the day and I’ll handle it on the fly. What I care about is that a field of golfers shows up to a county muni in Pittsburgh and finds a tournament that was built for them, on purpose, by someone who finally quit waiting for the perfect time. If it lands the way I think it can, we’ll be back at North Park next July doing it again, bigger.
Muni World Championship — July 18, 2026 at North Park Golf Course. Gathering at 9, first tee time at 10, cookout after. Details, rules, and the Muni Cam at muniworldchampionship.com.
