[ Case Study ]

Fairway Finder

From MVP to Nationwide Platform - Engineering America’s Smartest Tee Time Tool

May 1, 2025

Sanket Rajeev Sabharwal

Approx. read time: 2 minutes

[ Overview ]

Fairway Finder gives golfers a simple, elegant way to discover and book tee times across the United States. What started as a single-purpose alert tool evolved into a nationwide product platform that connects golfers with thousands of courses, surfacing real-time availability in one seamless experience.

[ Client ]

Ryan Walsh - Entrepreneur, Golfer, Founder of Abyssal Digital

[ Sector ]

Sports, Real-time Discovery, Web & Mobile

[ Platforms ]

iOS, Android, Web

[ Budget ]

Confidential

[ Timeline ]

Ongoing

[ Launch ]

June 2025

Capabilities

  1. Product Strategy

  2. Full-Stack Development (Web, iOS, Android)

  3. Systems Architecture

  4. Data Infrastructure

  5. UX/UI Design

  6. Real-Time Data Engine

  7. DevOps

  8. Observability & Automation

  9. Testing and Quality Assurance

  10. Growth Enablement

The Challenge

Reimagining a broken tee time experience through a unified, high-performance platform.
While many golf courses offered online booking, the experience was inconsistent and often frustrating. Users had to juggle multiple websites, dig through clunky interfaces, or miss out on open slots entirely. The goal was to create a centralised platform that offers real-time discovery, mobile booking, and smart alerts - all while scaling to serve a nationwide user base with minimal friction.

Watch Ryan explain the vision behind Fairway Finder


Our Approach

From alert tool to full-stack tee time platform that is built for speed, reliability, and scale.

We collaborated with Ryan to rebuild the product from scratch, transforming a lightweight prototype into a robust, production-grade experience.

We delivered:

  1. A highly parallelised, robust, and scalable backend architecture to power live tee time discovery

  2. A seamless iOS and Android mobile experience using shared infrastructure

  3. A performant web interface for golfers who prefer desktop planning

  4. An observability platform with embedded deep analytics to provide a holistic view of the platform, user activity, ad management, performance, and much more.

Fairway Finder works across all devices, providing golfers a fast and intuitive way to find and book their next round.

Features

Consumer App

The mobile experience was designed to let users find, favourite, and book tee times with zero friction. Users can browse by location, course, or date, with personalised alerts helping them secure spots at their preferred times.

  1. Simple, map-based, and list-based discovery

  2. Secure, in-app booking experience

  3. Custom course alerts & favourites

  4. Cross-device continuity via web and mobile

Admin and Operations Dashboard

We developed a dedicated web-based admin interface for Ryan and his team. This tool allows operators to manage partnerships, review analytics, and oversee nationwide expansion, all from one central hub.


  1. Partner onboarding & management

  2. Visibility into user trends and engagement

  3. Integrated marketing workflows for scaling outreach

Unified Backend Architecture

The system is powered by a scalable backend designed to handle high volume and adapt to different data sources with minimal manual effort. This makes it easy to expand into new markets and onboard new golf courses quickly, without reengineering the platform every time.

Technologies

  1. Mobile

    1. iOS (Swift + Turbo Native)

    2. Android (Turbo Native)

  2. Web & Backend

    1. Ruby on Rails

    2. PostgreSQL

    3. Redis

  3. 3rd Parties & DevOps

    1. Sendgrid

    2. Firebase

    3. Sentry

    4. Cloudflare

    5. Heroku

    6. CI/CD Pipelines

Impact Created

A Confident Path to Nationwide Discovery

Fairway Finder has rapidly evolved from MVP to a trusted discovery platform that is now live in multiple U.S. markets. By building a scalable, unified infrastructure across web and mobile, we’ve helped Ryan and his team focus on what matters most, which is partnerships, user growth, and product innovation.

The platform is now positioned to expand nationwide, with a clear roadmap and the foundation in place for long-term scale.

[ LEARN MORE ]

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