On Sundays in the pro shop at Santa Teresa Golf Club, an hour south of San Francisco, you can buy a sleeve of balls, grab a bag of tees and pose for a selfie with the “Glove Father.”
That’s what a customer recently dubbed Tyler Nguyen, which made him laugh.
At 26, Nguyen isn’t a father to anyone. Nor is he a powerful industry figure. He’s the founder of a bootstrapped golf-glove startup, Forelinksgolf, that he runs from his bedroom in his parents’ house. Sales are picking up. But Nguyen still works three jobs, including a weekend shift at the public facility where he first learned the game, his green fees subsidized by Youth on Course — the same junior-golf program his company now supports.
“Aside from a quality product, I’ve realized that my biggest asset is my story,” Nguyen says. “And a big part of that story is giving back.”
The narrative starts when Nguyen was 13, the older of two boys born to Vietnamese immigrants. His father worked construction and swung a golf club the way a lot of busy parents do, in stolen hours between work and family time. Nguyen tagged along. Before long, his parents were dropping him at Santa Teresa at dawn and collecting him at dusk. By industry standards, the course was not expensive. But $40 a day still added up.
“There were days when I could only hit balls on the range instead of playing,” Nguyen says. “It was just too much money for us at the time.”
The financial strains ended a few months later, when Nguyen heard other kids talking about Youth on Course, the nonprofit that lets juniors play rounds at thousands of courses in the U.S., Canada and Australia for $5 or less. The calculus changed.
“[Youth on Course] gave me a chance to keep showing up without financial barriers,” Nguyen says. “Without it, I don’t know if I would’ve stayed in the game.”
He stuck with it enough to play on his high school team alongside Justin Suh, who went on to the PGA Tour. Nguyen could golf his ball as well, but he had no illusions. He would have to find a different path into the game.
At San Jose State, he studied economics while indulging an entrepreneurial streak, orchestrating drop-sales of cat beds, alarm clocks, hoodies — anything he thought might sell. Only some things did.
After college, he landed a job in marketing and launched a side hustle: an online golf-apparel shop called Forelinksgolf. Like a rough day on the course, the business taught hard lessons. Chief among them: cutting corners on quality was a great way to get stuck with a stash of ugly shirts.
Through contacts he’d maintained at Santa Teresa, Nguyen also had a part-time gig working the pro-shop counter. It came with perks (free golf) and something else: a front-row view of how merchandise moved. After golf balls, nothing moved faster than gloves, which, like balls, golfers blew through, just in a different way.
Around that time, Nguyen was reading Phil Knight’s memoir, “Shoe Dog,” absorbing its message about brand-building and risk-taking. He tried having gloves made overseas. The first run, manufactured in China, wasn’t up to snuff. It made him think of something else he’d noticed in the pro shop. Most high-quality golf gloves were made in Indonesia.
Nguyen cold-called manufacturers there. A few replied. One invited him to visit. Nguyen booked his first international flight, heading to Jakarta with a notebook, samples and a camera to document the trip — partly for posterity, mostly to show customers that he wasn’t slapping his name on a generic import. He wanted people to see the craft.
In July 2024, Forelinksgolf morphed into a different enterprise, focused only on gloves. Sales trickled in. Then came a buoyant review from a golf website. Orders surged. Inventory vanished.
The product itself was a point of pride: full-grain cabretta leather with a slightly thicker cut — around .50 mm — than the industry standard of .40 to .45 mm.
Courtesy
“On paper, that probably doesn’t sound like a big difference,” Nguyen says.
On a hand, though, he says it translates into durable glove still fine enough to feel “like a second skin.” Nguyen won’t promise a specific lifespan, but he expects his gloves to last longer than leading brands. They retail for $27.99.
Nguyen thinks a lot about his business. He also thinks a lot about the boost he got when he was a kid first falling for the game. About a year ago, he reached out to Youth on Course, pitching a partnership through which he’d donate $2 from every sale to the organization. As Youth on Course has grown, so has the volume of such inquiries. Most don’t pan out.
“But Tyler’s was different,” says Michael Lowe, Youth on Course’s head of impact. “We serve so many young people, and we hope it has a positive impact on all of them. But his journey is truly remarkable. What’s better than an alumni starting his own brand? And donating so early in the company’s life. That’s not an easy thing to do.”
For Nguyen, it feels like a debt paid forward. And there’s more in his coffers than there once was to fund it. In 2024, Forelinksgolf did $10,000 in revenue. This year, Nguyen says, the company is on track for $150,000.
“We’re not trying to outpace the giants in this space,” Nguyen says. “We’re just trying to carve out our own lane, building on our story of community and trust.”
By “we,” he means himself. Though his parents sometimes pitch in with boxing and shipping, Nguyen is Forelinksgolf lone employee.
For now, he’s holding on to his other gigs as well, keeping a firm foothold in reality even as he pursues his dream. The company’s gloves are sold online and in three brick-and-mortar shops, including Santa Teresa. But Forelinksgolf’s logo — an infinity symbol — reflects the outlook of its founder, who sees golf as a game of endless possibility.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are or how big or strong you are,” he says. “You can make it a game for your life.”
You might even turn it into a business, one robust enough to outgrow a bedroom, replace the side gigs and inspire a nickname that isn’t meant entirely in jest.
Someday, Glove Father might actually fit.
