The Fringe
The exclusive golf mailing list you probably don't know about
The Masters invite is the most coveted piece of mail in golf, one that even prompts veteran tour pros to share its delivery on social media every year, but there’s another special delivery that has regular golfers checking their mailboxes each January. Sent from Franklin, Tenn. instead of Augusta, Ga., John Minnium’s “Year in Review” has become a cult classic among golf sickos in recent years. After all, no one appreciates a true golf nut more than a fellow golf nut.
“I get 10 to 15 messages every day for a two-month period,” Minimum said in late January of interested golfers reaching out about his yearly book. Last year, I wrote about Minnium’s 2023 review and to my pleasant surprise, he sent me a copy and added me to his annual mailing list. The 2024 edition, all 16 entertaining pages of it in color, was even better. I reached out wanting to learn more about this fun, quirky pamphlet.
“I would say at least 90 percent of people get it,” said Minnium, 61, who retired in 2024 after working in pharma sales for 30 years. “They pick it up, they laugh at it, but 10 percent of people are like, It was just stupid. This guy's not any good. And I'm like, Yeah, that's the point. It’s just me chronicling my golf for 22 years.”
That doesn’t do it justice. The Year in Review is a deep, deep dive, tracking Minnium’s stats—from scores for every round he’s played (his scoring average of 84.0 was up 0.7 from 2023 but he made a career-high four eagles), to where he’s played (there's a map and a brief description of every course), to how many people he played with (an impressive eight percent of his rounds were fivesomes), to who he played the most rounds with, to even how much he paid per round. There’s one section that highlights his “Career-high 17 free rounds,” in which he makes sure to thank all his gracious hosts. At first glance, the Year in Review might seem like one of those braggy Christmas cards, but it’s really a love letter to the game.
It’s also as thorough as a media guide, tracking Minnium’s driving accuracy, greens in regulation, putts per round, number of double bogeys and number of lost balls (121 total in 2024, up 6 percent from 2023). There are lifetime stats as well, including how many rounds he’s played at his two home courses at Vanderbilt Legends Club (766.5 at the North Course and 396.5 at the South). Plus, there is other fun stuff like a sad photo of him noting his “longest stretch with no golf” (seven days) and a smiling photo of him holding up a bloodied wrist and a handful of golf balls. “Ball hawking injury,” he writes. “It was worth it for five Pro V1s.”
What weekend hacker can’t relate to that? We might never get a Masters invite for playing the game at the highest level, but we’re all capable of loving the sport as much as Minnium. And he senses a special bond between golfers, from those on his mailing list to those with whom he gets to tee it up.
“I always say I can play with anybody for four hours,” says Minnium, who also documents his golf experiences on Instagram. “Most of the golfers you meet are good people. You can show yourself to them. You can yuck it up.”
Showing himself as a golfer is exactly what Minnium has done through 23 editions of the Year in Review. So how did this whole thing start? Minnium was living in Pittsburgh in 2002 when a college buddy, Steve Iannarelli, didn’t believe he had played more than 100 rounds of golf throughout the year without belonging to a private club. “So I said, ‘Well, I'll tell you what, I'll track this year how many rounds I played,’ ” Minnium said. “And then I just tracked a few stats on the stuff, and I sent it to him.” He was surprised when Iannarelli, a graphic designer, sent back a one-page PDF that included the stats as well as a photo of Minnium swinging a club at a Rutgers alumni golf tournament.
Minnium liked it so much that he made 30 copies and sent them out to friends. The next year, he made 50 copies, taking Iannarelli’s file to Kinko’s for better printing quality, and it took off from there. This past year, Minnium mailed over 350 printed copies, the exclusive list reaching as far as places like Perth and London. He says that even with Iannarelli’s free services, the yearly project costs him more than $1,000, but it’s well worth it.
“It’s really about sharing my golf journey with others,” he says. “And there’s a lot of people on some crazy golf journeys.”
A lot more people have followed Minnium’s golfing exploits in recent years as various golf media outlets began sharing these rundowns of this random—but relatable—avid golfer.
“Sometimes a person will reach out wanting to complete their set [of all 23 editions], although I’ve never done an audit,” says Minnium, whose wife, Ann, has become a sort of gatekeeper of the annual mailing list. “Last year, a girl reached out asking for one for her boyfriend’s birthday. I told her you don't have to worry about getting him any other present because this is going to be the best one, just kind of teasing.”
Minnium got a nice gift himself when he turned 60 last year thanks to Ann and Steve teaming up to create a framed poster that shows all the Year in Review covers throughout the years and is proudly displayed in his house. But for the most part, he’s not a keepsake guy, just a keeper of memories. As the years fly by, documenting each round—first by tracking his stats on a scorecard and then inputting the info into a spreadsheet after—has been a great way to organize his memory bank.
After playing 151 times during his first year of retirement (he walked 46 percent of the time), he hopes to play 100-plus rounds until he’s in his mid-70s. He notes his Handicap Index surprisingly went up from a low of 7.0 to start the year to ending at a 9.5 and mentions that peculiarity more in his closing “18 Questions.” (Yes, there’s a closing Q&A where he answers mostly his own questions, possibly the highlight of his yearly missive.)
Any insight into why the cap went up?
Not really sure. I have a senior analyst at Deloitte who has offered to “dig into the data.” I just need to pay him in beer!
Whatever the reason, those higher scores didn’t keep him from making his first-ever hole-in-one last year (Congrats, John! Same here!). He describes it in great detail, obviously, on Page 2. Yet it’s his philosophy on the game that all golfers would do well to copy.
“I've learned that there are four things that can happen every time you play golf,” Minnium says. “You can get some exercise, you can have some camaraderie, you can commune with nature and you can play well or shoot a good score. But if you only tie your enjoyment to the score, you'll quit. So I always say you can do the other three things every time, and I'm a scratch golfer at those three things.”
I’d argue Minnium is also a scratch golfer when it comes to keeping track of his stats, but he says he sometimes struggles at the end of the year to find enough good golf photos to fill his busy booklet. And he admits his record-keeping of the Year In Review mailing list is spotty—not that that’s a bad thing for those who enjoy receiving them.
“Once you're on the list,” Minnium says, “you ain't coming off it.”
Good to hear, John. Keep ‘em coming.