About This Site
My name is Dave. I'm 53, and I've spent more of my adult life thinking about golf than I'd care to admit in mixed company. Back Nine Living is a project I built to make sense of where I am, where a lot of people my age are, and where we might be heading next.
A quick word about me, because credibility matters even on the internet. I've spent decades in leadership roles, the kind that involve a lot of meetings, a lot of decisions, and a lot of helping people work through change well. Along the way I developed a habit of paying close attention to how technology reshapes the way we live, work, and unwind. I'm equally at home talking about a new putter as I am talking about an AI tool that might genuinely save someone an hour of their day. The combination feels useful at this stage of life, when so much around us is shifting and most of the loudest advice is being delivered by people half our age.
Golf is the thread that runs through it all. For me it's never been only a sport. It's been a teacher, a refuge, a frustration, and the reason I've made some of my closest friendships. The course has a way of stripping things back. You stand over the ball, the world goes quiet, and whatever you brought with you that morning gets exposed pretty quickly. After more than forty years of playing, I've stopped being surprised by what golf reveals. I've started writing it down instead.
Why Back Nine Living
The name is a golf reference, but it doesn't need much translation. In golf, the back nine is the second half of the round. It's where the game gets played for real, where the early excuses fall away, and where rounds are won or lost. If you're lucky, it's also where you stop fighting the course and start playing it.
Life works in similar ways. The second half isn't a slowing down. For most of us in our fifties and beyond, it's the part where the noise gets softer and the picture gets sharper. We have a clearer sense of what we actually care about, who we want to spend time with, and what we're willing to stop pretending to enjoy. That's not a small thing. That's perspective, and perspective is the rarest commodity going.
So Back Nine Living is built on a simple idea. The years ahead can be the most interesting years of our lives, but only if we're intentional about them. Not in a vision board kind of way. More in a "what would actually make this better" kind of way. That means taking our health seriously without becoming insufferable about it. It means staying curious about technology instead of waving it off, especially as it starts to reshape everything from how we manage our finances to how we work on our golf swings. It means thinking honestly about the years leading up to retirement and the years after we’ve said goodbye to our day jobs. It’s about friendship, purpose, and what we want the next thirty plus years to feel like. And yes, it means playing more golf and doing more things, in more places, with amazing people.
The site is also a response to something I noticed a few years ago. A lot of the content aimed at people our age either talks down to us or treats us like we're already done. We're not. Many of us are just hitting our stride in different ways, reinventing parts of our lives that no longer fit, and asking better questions than we've ever asked before. There's room for a space that takes that seriously.
What You'll Find Here
The site will grow over time, but the shape of it looks something like this.
You'll find articles on staying active and playing better golf at this stage of life, written for the body you actually have, not the one you wished you'd kept. You'll find honest gear reviews, including the ones that didn't fix my slice (a list that grows annually). You'll find travel pieces about courses worth the trip, both the famous names and the local spots that turn out to be the best round of the year. You'll find reflections on what golf keeps teaching me about patience, attention, and how to handle a hard day with some grace.
You'll also find pieces that wander beyond the fairway. Conversations about health, friendship, money, and time. Practical thinking on how technology and AI are quietly changing what's possible for people in their fifties, sixties, and beyond. Reviews of tools and ideas that earn their keep. Occasional stories that don't fit anywhere else but feel worth telling.
What you won't find is a steady diet of motivational filler. No "live your best life" slogans. No pretending that aging is easy or that every season is golden. Some days the back is sore, the swing is off, and the news is bleak. I want this to be the kind of place that holds the whole picture, with a little humour where it helps and a lot of honesty when it matters.
If any of this resonates, I'd love to have you along. Read what's useful, ignore what isn't, and send me a note when something lands or misses. The plan is to build this slowly and well, with real people in mind.
The back nine isn't where the round ends. It's where the round gets interesting.
See you on the back nine.
Dave