Why think before you swing
Who I am and my journey
My name is Laurent Agostini.
I have been playing golf since childhood. I was around ten years old when I first discovered the game in the Yvelines region of France, through school. At the time, I was mostly passionate about soccer. Golf felt strange to me—almost elitist, quiet, slow.
And it was far from home. My parents couldn’t take me there regularly. So golf quietly disappeared from my life, just as it had entered it.
But it stayed somewhere in the background. Like a vague promise: one day, I would come back to it.
That day came in the late 1990s. My father was friends with an architect who had taken part in building the Saint-Marc golf course. We started going there together. Every Sunday, we would take a lesson.
That’s when golf became something more than just a sport.
My father is twenty-five years older than me. We couldn’t play soccer together. Or tennis. But in golf, age fades away. The handicap levels the field. The course brings people together.
We shared much more than rounds: club competitions, trips, beautiful courses. Golf became a shared language, a way of being together.
The turning point: Tiger Woods
In the mid-1990s, a player began to emerge: Tiger Woods.
I’m a business school student. His name is everywhere. One day, I see his photo on the cover of Le Point. At the time, seeing a golfer on the front page of a mainstream French magazine is almost unthinkable.
Tiger changed something.
He made golf more physical, modern, and spectacular. He brought a new level of intensity to the game. On TV, I watched the majors on Canal+. I remember a WGC at Firestone that ended almost in the dark, with spectators lighting the course with their lighters.
At that moment, how could you not love this game?
Golf became a passion.
Not yet a project.
The birth of an independent media
In the early 2000s, the internet exploded. Digital became my profession.
I built websites, observed user behavior, and analyzed strategies. At the same time, I read a lot of golf media. Golf Digest. Mais quelque chose me dérange.
The time gap first: magazines were reporting on events that had happened months earlier.
Then the tone: smooth, commercial, rarely critical.
I saw the marketing mechanics. The storytelling. And above all, the lack of perspective.
In 2010, almost by accident, I created MyGolfMedia. JeudeGolf.org.
No business plan. No media strategy. Just a domain name registered on a summer evening.
The first articles were imperfect. I wrote whenever I had time.
And yet.
Within six months, the site went from zero to 5 000 visits.
En un an, 50 000 visits.
Within six months, the site went from zero to 5,000 visits. Within a year, 50,000 visits. By 2013, more than 110,000 visits per year. 110 000 visites annuelles.
I hadn’t planned any of it.
But the audience was ready.
Fifteen years of golf journalism
Between 2013 and 2021, growth exceeded everything I had imagined.
The site gradually became the leading digital golf media platform in France,reaching nearly 650,000 visits per year..
Without a group behind it.
Without a massive marketing budget.
Simply through a clear editorial vision: independent, well-documented golf information..
Over the years, I published more than 5,000 articles..
I interviewed some of the biggest players and key figures in golf:
Rory McIlroy
Sergio Garcia
Tommy Fleetwood
Phil Mickelson
Thomas Pieters
Raphaël Jacquelin
Grégory Bourdy
I also met with executives from major equipment brands in the United States, particularly in Carlsbad, the global center of the golf industry.
Understanding equipment at a deeper level
Gradually, I began to specialize in equipment analysis.
Searches related to drivers, irons, and golf balls account for nearly 30% of the site’s traffic..
I developed rigorous testing protocols using TrackManI spent hours analyzing data, comparing clubs, and studying settings.
And one day, I realized an uncomfortable truth:
drivers barely improve from one year to the next.
The gains being promoted are often marginal.
What really makes a difference is the settings, the shafts, and the fitting.
I then shifted my editorial approach.
I started talking about fitting rather than revolution.
I started questioning exaggerated claims.
I refused easy rankings.
This independence earned me as many readers… as enemies.
The end of a cycle
In 2022, the site became MyGolfMedia with the ambition of building a European golf media platform.
But the 2020s reshaped the media economy.
YouTubers captured attention.
Algorithms favored short, spectacular content.
Long-form analysis became harder to sustain financially.
In July 2025, a major cyberattack destroyed the site’s infrastructure.
Fifteen years of work disappeared.
More than 5000 articles, 12 000 images, hundreds of videos.
In November 2025, the court ordered the company’s liquidation.
It marked the end of a business.
Why this book
This book is not a monument.
It is a reconstruction.
For fifteen years, I analyzed golf from every angle:
technic, golf equipment, strategy, player psychology
I observed one simple thing:
Most golfers are looking for technical solutions to their problems.
Mais le golf est avant tout un jeu de décisions.
This book brings together what I wish I had understood before I started playing the game.
Because a website can disappear.
But a book remains.