Hi, I'm Michael Aroyan
I came to golf late. Three, maybe four years ago — give or take a few shanked drives and rounds I'd rather forget. And yet somehow, in that time, this game has become the most important thing in my life outside of school. I'm a junior at UC Santa Barbara, I work at The Valley Club of Montecito, and I'm completely, irreversibly hooked on golf.
It started the way it always does: a casual round with friends, a score I'd rather not share, and that inexplicable pull to go back out again the very next morning. Something about this game got inside me and refused to leave. The precision. The silence. The way it humbles you differently every single time, no matter how many rounds you play. I didn't choose to fall in love with golf — it just happened, and I have no interest in fighting it.
"Golf is the only sport where you can play the same course a hundred times and feel like it's humbling you in a completely new way each time. There's no ceiling to how much you can learn — and that's exactly what keeps pulling me back out every single week." — Michael Aroyan
The Valley Club of Montecito
Working at The Valley Club of Montecito has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Nestled into the sun-drenched foothills above Santa Barbara with views of the Pacific that make you forget whatever you shot on the back nine, Montecito is the kind of place that deepens your respect for what golf actually is — not just a sport, but a culture, a craft, and a community.
Every shift there teaches me something I couldn't learn from a textbook or a stats spreadsheet. The rhythm of a golf course through the day. The way morning dew changes how the ball rolls out. The culture of the clubhouse, the conversations between members, the quiet professionalism that goes into making a great golf experience feel effortless. I want to spend my career in this industry, and working at Montecito has only made that desire stronger.
Going to the Events
I don't just watch golf from a couch — I go. And those experiences have shaped how I think about the game more than anything else. Standing inside the ropes at Riviera during the Genesis Invitational, one of the most architecturally perfect golf courses in the world, gives you a reverence for the game's history that no broadcast can replicate. Walking those fairways, you can feel why the pros love it here.
The Waste Management Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale is a completely different beast — the loudest, most unhinged atmosphere in professional sports, where the 16th hole turns into something that belongs more at a concert than a golf tournament. It's electric in a way that makes you understand why people fall in love with this sport from a completely different angle.
Pebble Beach during the Pro-Am is something else entirely. Standing on the clifftops watching fog roll in off Stillwater Cove while the Pacific glitters below — it's the most beautiful place I've ever watched golf, and I've thought about it nearly every day since. And then there's the U.S. Open — the most demanding, unforgiving major in the sport. Watching the world's best players fight impossible rough and lightning-fast greens gave me a profound respect for what these professionals actually endure. That respect bleeds into every pick and every word on BogeyBeats.
Why I Built BogeyBeats
I built BogeyBeats because I was frustrated. Most golf coverage is either too technical for casual fans or too shallow for people who actually want to understand what's happening on the course. I wanted something in the middle — smart, data-backed analysis written by someone who plays the game, loves it, and has stood on those fairways.
The analytics side of golf is what really captured me. Strokes gained is one of the most powerful tools in sports analytics, and once I started seeing the game through that lens — understanding not just who won, but why, and what the numbers were actually telling us about who should win — I couldn't stop. I started building models. I started making picks. And I started realizing I was actually decent at it.
BogeyBeats is the natural output of all of it. I'm a junior at UCSB with a golf bag in my car, a shift at one of California's great private clubs, and a tab permanently open to the latest SG data. I want to spend my life inside the ropes — working in professional golf, following the tour, building something in this sport. This site is chapter one of that story.
Thanks for being here. Now let's go find some winners.