A few hours before hosting a live episode of his “Shotgun Start” podcast earlier this year at Evanston’s SPACE music venue, Fried Egg Golf founder and Lake Bluff native Andy Johnson is enjoying a homecoming as he recounts how his deep local roots helped shape his golf media company into one of the most knowledgeable yet irreverent voices in the sport.
“Chicago golf is home,” he said. “Everything I’ve done in golf has been built on Chicago golf.”
Johnson, 40, founded his Fried Egg Golf company in 2015 out of his one-bedroom apartment in Chicago. (Having spent the last four years in Northern California, he and his wife and their daughter were planning to move back to the Chicago District at the time of this writing). With no writing experience, but a passion for the sport, Johnson painstakingly typed out a single newsletter and emailed it off to everyone on his contact list.
It was a humble start to today, where Fried Egg Golf - a name taken as a nod to the dreaded bunker lie - has grown from that one newsletter into a company that has 17 full-time employees spread out coast-to-coast, creating five podcasts, a newsletter, a trove of video content and a thriving events business. His thrice-weekly “Shotgun Start” podcast created with Brendan Porath, a longtime golf writer who now leads Fried Egg’s golf content division, is widely listened to within the golf industry. The company’s other podcasts and signature Fried Egg newsletter focus on professional golf and on-course architecture.
Fried Egg also sells a membership-based offering costing $120 per year that gives buyers exclusive content and early access to company-run premium events, such as golf outings at premier golf courses around the country, many of which are otherwise inaccessible. Other revenues are derived from sponsorships and advertising and through an online Fried Egg “Pro Shop,” which sells company-themed merch.
“What we want to do is to build the best golf community we can,” Johnson said. “We want people to think that if you're really into golf, there's no reason why you shouldn't be a member of Fried Egg Golf because we are going to provide a lot of di erent services in a great community that is super passionate about golf.”
Fried Egg’s success and Johnson’s ambition can be traced to his love of the game, which began at the Lake Bluff Golf Club in the North Shore community of Lake Bluff. Johnson played all kinds of sports as a kid, but he became a golf rat at his hometown's public course.
“The club had an incredible junior membership program so me and a buddy would just live there in the summers,” Johnson said. “We’d chip and putt and we play golf and when we weren’t doing that, we were playing whi le ball golf in our front yards. Eventually, golf became my thing.”
Johnson played on the Lake Forest High School golf team, worked in the bag room at Knollwood Club and caddied at Conway Farms and at Glen View Club. He also competed in Illinois Junior Golf Association (IJGA) and American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) events.
After graduating from the University of Illinois in 2009 (his academic stint in Champaign was interrupted by a year of playing golf at Division III North Park University), Johnson initially did not focus on a career in golf. Instead, he worked at various sales and corporate development jobs, including a stint with a few start-up companies where Johnson was increasingly drawn to the entrepreneurial nature of growing a business.
“What I loved about startups was that my work 2015 when he found himself at a career crossroads; accept another corporate job or take a risk and create Fried Egg Golf. Backed by $50,000 from an investor friend, Johnson chose golf, and he founded Fried Egg Golf with a deliberate strategy.
“All I focused on for two years was building a loyal audience, focusing on the content and building my voice,” Johnson, who around this time was also competing in CDGA-conducted tournaments, said.
Fried Egg’s growth was boosted when Johnson and Porath teamed up to start the “Shotgun Start” podcast in 2018. Initially, the pod was created separately from Fried Egg’s-then newsletter driven model, but as Shotgun Start began to make a name for itself, the pod was folded into the company with a mandate from Johnson to uphold its independent style.
“We’ve always had this deep-rooted policy in the company that nothing infiltrates our voice,” Johnson said.
Fried Egg’s provocative style is bolstered by Johnson’s deep knowledge of the game and smart approach in creating content. This proved critical in convincing Porath, who had covered golf for the New York Times and SB Nation, among other outlets, to join the company in 2022 on a full-time basis.
“Andy was passionate about building a company, not just his own media brand,” Porath said. “He’s entrepreneurial, has a good nose for media and content, has a great golf IQ and he’s an extremely ethical person. Golf is rife with conflicts of interest, but Andy serves the audience first. That was very evident to me early and has been reinforced over the years.”
The Fried Egg network continues to grow with its podcasts, newsletters and subscriptions attracting an ever-increasing audience. But don’t expect Johnson to shift anytime soon from hosting his three-days-a-week Shotgun Start podcast or back off on any of the company’s other offerings.
“When we launched the Shotgun Start, everybody was like, ‘How are you possibly going to talk about golf three days a week?’ And we laugh about it. We make fun of it all the time. Because we are talking about golf. We could do it five days a week.”
John Lombardo was a long-time golf writer for Sports Business Journal.