Founded by a golfer

Built by a Niblick.
Named after a 9-iron.

Mashy was founded by Baker Niblick — an avid golfer whose own name is the old Scottish word for a 9-iron. Every feature in this app is approached the way a niblick approaches a tight lie: with precision, loft, and respect for the short game that actually decides your score.

A letter from the founder

Meet Baker Niblick

I don't remember learning to love golf. It was just always there — the smell of cut grass at dawn, the rattle of a few loose clubs in the back of my dad's truck, the agonizing walk back to the cart after a three-putt. I grew up on the kind of muny course where the "fairway" was whatever the mower missed, and I've been chasing a cleaner strike ever since.

Golf has been the through-line of my whole life: the rounds that turned into friendships, the friendships that turned into trips, the trips that turned into traditions. I've lost more balls than I'll ever admit. And the older I got, the more I realized the part of the game I love most isn't the trophy — it's the people you play it with.

Then one Saturday I looked at my phone and counted the apps.

One app to film my swing. A second to book a coach who could only see me on Tuesdays. A third for GPS and yardages. A fourth to keep my scorecard, a fifth to track my handicap. A separate group text for the boys. A fantasy site for the majors. A news feed for the tour, a leaderboard page, a course-finder for the buddy trip… I was bouncing between a dozen apps before I'd even made the turn. The game I love was buried under the logistics of playing it.

So I built Mashy. Not another swing app. Not another scorecard. One home for the whole golf life — because every piece of it was already a piece of mine. Here's where each part of Mashy actually came from:

“Just film your swing,” every coach told me — but then what? Nobody to watch it, no feedback until next Tuesday. So I built AI swing analysis that grades your motion from every angle the second you record it.

→ AI swing coach

I could only see my coach once a week, and I had questions all week. I wanted to ask how to hit a draw, a fade, a stinger — and get a real answer. Now there's a coach you can ask anything, anytime.

→ Ask-the-coach chat

My scorecard lived in one app, my handicap in another. I merged them into on-course round tracking and a real GHIN-style handicap card that updates as you play.

→ Rounds & handicap

Our group text was chaos on tournament weeks. Endless threads, lost tee times, nobody saw the swing I wanted to brag about. So I built golf groups with real chat, shared swings, and a leaderboard.

→ Groups & sharing

I'd refresh three sites just to follow a PGA Saturday. I wanted the field, the news, and a friendly fantasy league in one place — so that's what the Golf Desk does.

→ Tour news & fantasy

I'd show up to a buddy trip with no idea what to play. Now I drop in a destination and get every nearby course, the yardages, and a trip itinerary.

→ Course finder & trips

I never knew if a drill actually made me better. So I tied a practice log to my swing scores, and now a weekly recap tells me what's working.

→ Practice log & recap

Every one of those was a real moment in my golf life — and I'd bet it's one in yours too. That's the whole point. I didn't want to build an app for golfers; I wanted to build the app I wished existed, and then hand it to the community that taught me the game.

And because my last name is literally an antique 9-iron, I wrapped the whole thing in the golden age of clubs — mashies, niblicks, the hickory era when a club had a name instead of a number. Two short irons, one mission: get you out of trouble and back in the game.

— Baker Niblick

The namesake club

What's a niblick?

Before clubs had numbers, they had names. The niblick was the most lofted of the irons — roughly the modern 9-iron or wedge — and its entire job was to gouge a ball out of a tight lie. That's the shot Baker built this company around: the one that seems impossible until you know exactly how to play it.

The word itself comes from Scottish Gaelic — a diminutive of "nib," meaning nose. A niblick is, literally, a short-nosed club. The name stuck for centuries, across three distinct incarnations:

The Wood-Headed Niblick

Pre–mid 1800s

The first niblicks had hickory shafts and tiny, spooned wood heads — the face was literally concave, shaped like a spoon. It was a small, snub-nosed, steeply lofted club built to swing down into ruts and depressions. On the unmanicured links of early Scotland, finding your ball stuck in a wagon rut was just part of the round.

The Small Iron-Headed Niblick

Late 1800s

Iron heads overtook wood in the latter half of the 1800s, but the niblick stayed small and steeply lofted. Golfers used it to literally dig the ball out of tracks and ruts in the fairway — which is why this version also went by the names track iron and rut iron. A 9-iron, in spirit, born from a bad lie.

The Larger Iron-Headed Niblick

Later 1800s – 1930s

By the turn of the century the niblick began to resemble today's 9-iron and wedge: a larger, rounder, deeper blade, less spooned, built more for rough and sand than for ruts. These stayed in bags until the old named clubs were retired for the modern matched set (3-iron, 4-iron…) in the 1930s — though old hands called their new wedges 'niblicks' for decades after.

Even today the name isn't quite gone — Cleveland Golf has revived "Niblick" for chippers and short-iron hybrids in the 2000s and 2010s. A good 9-iron, it turns out, never really goes out of style.

The whole bag, ca. 1910

A club for every job

Here's how the old named set maps to the numbered irons in your bag today. Notice where Mashy and Niblick both land — the scoring clubs, the short irons.

Old name	Modern equivalent
Driver	1-Wood
Brassie	2-Wood
Spoon	3-Wood
Cleek	1-Iron / 4-Wood
Mashie← the app	≈ 5-Iron
Mashie-Niblick	≈ 7-Iron
Niblick← the founder	≈ 9-Iron / Wedge
Putter	Putter

A mashie is roughly a 5-iron. A niblick is roughly a 9-iron. So Mashy is the company, and Niblick is the man — two short irons, one mission.

Pull the 9-iron.
See where your game goes.

Record a swing, get a full breakdown, and start tracking real progress — the way a niblick gets you out of trouble, one clean strike at a time.

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Built by a Niblick.Named after a 9-iron.