This muni’s weekly golf league represents what’s great about the game

Last month, as the FedEx Cup Playoffs were winding down, another season-long golf competition drew to a close. But unlike Tommy Fleetwood, its winner did not receive an eight-figure paycheck. What he earned were high fives, hearty congratulations and the promise of a commemorative fashion accessory that has not yet been manufactured.

So it goes.

The pros play one game for a living. And the rest of us play another for rewards that can’t be measured in standard currency. We play for the fresh air and the exercise, for the camaraderie, community and quirky collectibles — and, of course, for the bragging rights. It’s hard to put a price on beating your buddies.

Jeff Pelizzaro understands this. It’s what the league he co-founded is all about. 

“There’s just so much more to golf that trying to post a score,” he says.

Pelizzaro, 47, is a relative latecomer to game. Born and raised in St. Louis, he focused on soccer growing up and didn’t swing a club in earnest until after college, when the game hooked him. A physical therapist by trade, he soon merged his passion with his profession through 18Strong, a golf fitness and training company that he runs with his business partner, Ryan McMullen. For about a decade, the two also co-hosted a podcast of the same name, which drew guests from across the industry to talk about the link between golf and fitness, and the other way around.

One of the podcast’s sponsors was Linksoul, the golf apparel brand whose founder, John Ashworth, champions a weekly tradition at Goat Hill Park in Southern California called Mandatory Golf Fridays — the gist being that life shouldn’t be all work, all the time, and that getting out at least once a week is good for your body and your mind. Pegging it is pretty much required.

Pelizzaro shares that view. Inspired by Ashworth’s weekly mandate, he mustered something similar, rallying friends to join him for nine holes on Friday mornings at Ruth Park, a St. Louis muni. These breezy daybreak loops became a welcome weekly breather in a schedule crammed with work and family obligations.

In the early goings, Pelizzaro and his buddy, Brian Daniels, borrowed Ashworth’s verbiage. They called the outings Mandatory Golf Fridays. But when they learned that Linksoul had a copyright on the name, they changed theirs to The Friday Loop.

By any label, the concept appealed. It gained in popularity in the wake of Covid. Last year, as many as 50 golfers turned up at one time or another for The Friday Loop, ranging in age and ability from plus-index teenage collegiate players to 50-somethings who struggle to make bogey.

As attendance swelled, gatherings grew more formalized, with tee times blocked out at Ruth Park from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. every week. For the 2025 season, Daniels also cooked up a FedEx Cup points system and a friendly, 12-week handicapped competition called The Chase for the Buckle — as in a belt buckle, the commemorative prize that the winner would receive.

(Why a belt buckle? Long story short, the idea was born during a golf trip Pelizzaro and Daniels took to Nashville, where belt buckles are as common as country music stars.)

Two weeks ago, after a full summer of competition, The Chase for the Buckle concluded, and The Friday Loop anointed its Tommy Fleetwood. His name is John Mossotti, though his playing partners call him “Mossy.” (According to Pelizzaro, all the regulars in the The Friday Loop have nicknames, which, like the monikers dolled out by Tiger Woods, seem to involve little more than adding a “y” to a player’s actual name.)

Mossy entered the season with a 9 index, but more than once this summer, he shot 9-hole rounds of even par that raised some eyebrows among his competition. It wouldn’t be a handicapped event if there weren’t whispered sandbagging allegations.

“I told him, every champion is going to take arrows in the back,” Pelizzaro says. “That’s just the way it goes.”

All of this, of course, is meant in fun, in the grief-giving spirit of golfers everywhere.

Mandatory Golf Fridays. The Friday Loop. Outings of their kind aren’t hard to come by. They crop up from coast to coast, in nearly every corner of the country where the game is played. The prizes vary. The participants do, too. But the ties that bind them are the same. They’re the reason most people play the game.

As for the buckle, Mossy hasn’t received it yet because the buckle still does not exist. It is being manufcatured by a company that Pelizzaro and Daniels found online. Mossy will have to wait. But no matter. As every golfer knows, winning something like the buckle is far more important than actually wearing it. Sandbagger or not, Mossy has bragging rights.

Now, with fall approaching and The Chase for the Buckle in the rearview mirror, The Friday Loop is done for the season. But, Pelizzaro says, he and his friends will continue sneaking out whenever they can until cold weather settles over St. Louis and their course shuts down for the year.

In the pro ranks, meanwhile, Fleetwood and 23 of his peers will soon be going at it at the Ryder Cup, a biennial competition for which members of Team USA will be getting paid. That’s nice work if you can get it. But there are many other ways to enjoy the game.