I’m standing in the archive of my own experience at Sheridan Heights Golf & Country Club still warm, looking at what the official highlight reels leave out. They show the swing, the follow-through, the ball dropping into the heart of the cup. They don't show the man pulling a glossy photograph from his bag right as a pro is lining up a high-stakes putt, admiring it like he’s reclining in his living room, oblivious to the fact that his peripheral presence is a breach of protocol. They don’t capture the casual, mid-backswing chatter, a full-volume monologue that broke the rhythm of the day. It wasn’t malicious but it was definitely a misalignment.

Golf is a sport architected on the bedrock of precision. Mainstream narratives forget to mention that precision doesn’t only live in the athlete’s hands or the trajectory of the ball. It lives in the acoustics of the crowd, at the times when the pace of the movement, the soundscape, and the collective behavior are in sync. It’s like a symphony. When they aren't, the break is visceral. You feel the dissonance in your teeth.

Right now in women’s golf, that alignment is inconsistent.

There were the usual "Quiet Please" placards, those cardboard sentinels of etiquette. There were the requisite pauses. And yet, the environment remained jagged. You’d hear the crunch of mulch underfoot during a crucial setup, the aggressive crinkle of a plastic snack bag, the shifting of bodies during a swing that demanded absolute, frozen stillness. I’ve learned that golf is quiet until it isn’t. And when it isn’t, the sound carries with a terrifying intimacy.

Most people don’t grasp this weight. In most sports, the crowd is an accelerant; they add energy, they fuel the fire. In golf, the crowd is the condition. The audience is an active component of the terrain. That is a heavy, unspoken responsibility, and I’m watching it struggle to settle into the culture of women’s golf. What caught my eye, the detail I logged in my mental ledger, was that the most frequent offenders were men. It wasn’t a lack of access; it was a lack of relationship to the moment.

I spent the bulk of the day trailing a group that commands my respect: Lydia Ko, Jeeno Thitikul, and Linn Grant. I was watching their strategy, observing the ecosystem surrounding them. At one point, I was standing close enough to see the ink on Lydia’s arm. Small, intricate, intentional.

For generations, the golf establishment has sold us a very specific, sanitized image of the athlete: the clean, the polished, the "untouched” presence of men. And here was one of the greatest to ever do it, carrying a different visual language on her skin. No press release, no announcement, no disruption. Just presence. As a tatted athlete myself, I felt that. It’s a quiet rebellion. The culture shifts by existing so fully that the old standards begin to look flimsy by comparison.

Sheridan Heights itself? It’s a masterclass in composition. It was my first time navigating those grounds, and you could feel the intent in the earthworks. The scale, the spacing, the fluid transition from hole to hole—it was designed to feel composed and elevated. There were mechanics that worked in the flow of movement, the accessibility of the amenities, the way you could follow a group without feeling like you were being herded through a cattle chute. This matters. For a long time, golf hasn’t been designed with ease in mind- certainly not for women, for the diaspora, or for anyone who doesn't come with the pre-packaged "member-guest" aura. So, we give credit where it’s due. There is progress in the floorplan. However, access is not attunement.

You can throw open the gates. You can make the experience navigable, comfortable, and glossy. And you can still fail to shape how people show up once they pass through those gates. That is the cultural work. And culture—whether the observers realize it or not—is designed. It is curated. It is built in the spaces between the events.

As a Black lesbian woman moving through this space, wearing the hats of both fan and founder, I’m seeing something else layered beneath the surface. It’s the nuance of the "how." How people take up space. Who feels entitled to disrupt a shared moment. Who moves with a heightened, studied awareness. There is a specific cadence to how we move when we’ve spent our lives having to read rooms, calibrate our energy, and navigate spaces that weren't built with us in mind.

I caught the eye of the only Black man working as a volunteer—a nod, a blink, an "I see you" acknowledgment that traveled across the green. It was a reminder that we don't take environments for granted. We study them. We feel the texture of the difference between being permitted to be in a room and actually being considered in its design. Women’s golf is currently living in that friction—expanding the invitation while still fumbling with the cultural architecture.

I didn’t rush for the exit when the final putt dropped.

I let the day decompress. I walked out slowly, letting the air settle, and slipped into an Uber Black for the drive back across the bay. Quiet. Controlled. A necessary return to myself.

This part is the ghost in the machine of the sports industry. The experience doesn't end when the scoreboard changes. It ends when you return to your own skin. Most systems, most corporate monoliths, stop their responsibility at the exit gate. They wash their hands of you the second you’re out of their jurisdiction. That is not what we do at PARLO.

What I saw at the Founders Cup wasn't a "problem" to be fixed; it was a signal to be read. Women’s golf is evolving in its stature, its visibility, and its access. But the audience is still in the "forming" stage. It’s still learning how to be present, still deciding what kind of collective it wants to be. And until that presence becomes intentional, the experience will remain uneven.

If the athletes are operating at a level of absolute, surgical precision, the environment must meet them there. If the space is elevated, the behavior of the crowd must rise to meet the elevation. That doesn't happen by accident. It is shaped through the cues we leave, the culture we model, and the standards we reinforce—day by day, tournament by tournament, in every archive we build.

You get to be a part of shaping that evolution right here at PARLO.

Not just the game. But the architecture of how it’s felt. The way we honor the stillness. The way we choose to be present.

Reflection Prompt

So whether you’re a PARLO member, a founder, or a fan (or a combo of the three),  I leave you with this question: As someone engaging at the intersection of culture and sport, what is the one element of the current women’s sports environment you feel is most in need of a design overhaul? Write your response to this question, share on Instagram, and tag @joinparlo.