Riggs Barstool: The Harvard Hockey Player Who Became Golf Media’s Most Recognizable Face (And Still Can’t Break 80)
Here’s the part that genuinely doesn’t add up on paper: Sam “Riggs” Bozoian played Division I hockey at Harvard University, studied sociology, went to one of the most elite prep schools in the country, worked a corporate sales job afterward — and the thing that made him famous is being bad at golf on the internet. Like, not pretend-bad. Actually bad. And somehow that’s the whole point, and somehow it works completely.
You couldn’t have scripted this career path if you tried.
Quick Bio
| Info | Detail |
| Real Name | Sam Bozoian (goes by Samuel Riggs professionally) |
| From | St. Louis, Missouri |
| High School | Choate Rosemary Hall (elite Connecticut boarding school) |
| College | Harvard University — Sociology, Division I Hockey |
| Pre-Barstool Jobs | Manager of Operations at Larkin Services; Sales at Chase Technology Consultants; political blogger (unpaid) |
| Joined Barstool | 2016 |
| Podcast | Fore Play — launched February 2017 |
| Podcast Co-Hosts | Trent, Frankie Borrelli, Kevin Kisner, Dan Rapaport |
| Title at Barstool | Commissioner of Barstool Golf |
| Sponsors | TaylorMade (athlete), Adidas (athlete) |
| @riggsbarstool — 214K+ followers | |
| Based In | Scottsdale, Arizona |
| Signature Moment | Tiger Woods outdriving him from his knees |
| Self-Described As | “Moral Compass of Pinehurst,” “Not actually an athlete” |
Before All This, He Was Just Sam — Working in Sales
Here’s the thing nobody tells you first: before Riggs was Riggs, he was a guy named Sam grinding through a day job in sales at Chase Technology Consultants and writing political blogs in his spare time. For free. Nobody was reading them. Or at least not enough people to matter.
That’s the foundation this whole thing is built on. A Harvard sociology degree, a D1 hockey career, a prep school pedigree — and then a sales gig and anonymous blogging. Life doesn’t always go in the direction you expect.
He wanted into Barstool badly enough that he kept writing, kept producing content, kept trying to get Dave Portnoy’s attention through sheer volume. Eventually it worked. Portnoy gave him a trial run to blog on the site. A few weeks later it was his full-time job. That’s 2016 — nine years ago now, and the rest of this story writes itself.
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Harvard Hockey. Yes, That Harvard.
Let’s just sit with the credential for a second. Choate Rosemary Hall — one of the most prestigious prep schools in America, in Wallingford, Connecticut — and then Harvard University. Division I varsity hockey. Sociology degree.
That is not the background of your average sports blogger. That is not the background of most people, period.
He’s talked about the hockey-to-golf transition and why it resonates with people. He grew up on ice rinks. Golf came later in life — picked it up the way a lot of people do, casually, and then found himself completely addicted. His whole point is that because he came to the game late and was never a prodigy, he represents the actual experience of most golfers better than some former champion turned commentator ever could.
That argument holds up. It really does.
Fore Play and What It Actually Built
February 2017. That’s when Fore Play launched. Nearly a decade ago now. The premise was almost aggressively simple: regular guys who love golf, talking about golf the way normal people talk about golf — arguing, complaining, joking, geeking out, none of the stuffiness that traditional golf media insisted on.
The show has Riggs, Frankie Borrelli, and Trent (of “Luggage Guy Trent” fame, a whole other Barstool lore situation), plus PGA Tour player Kevin Kisner as a full co-host, and Dan Rapaport on the media side. It’s twice a week. They put out at least one full YouTube video every week on top of that. They sell merchandise. It has become the most prominent golf podcast in a landscape that now has more golf podcasts than you can actually count.
Riggs put it simply in an interview: they do the podcast, the YouTube content, the merchandise. That’s the business model. It’s not complicated. It’s just incredibly well-executed.
The Tiger Moment That Defined Him Forever
If you know one Riggs story, it’s this one.
He interviewed Tiger Woods at Shadow Creek — which, for the uninitiated, is one of the most exclusive private golf courses in Nevada, essentially a personal playground for casino high rollers. Getting Tiger on camera is already a career moment. But what happened after the formal interview is the part people remember.
Tiger dropped to his knees. Hit a drive from that position. The ball flew past Riggs’ drive hit from a full standing position.
Tiger Woods. On his knees. Outdriving Riggs. TaylorMade’s own official bio now describes Riggs as “the guy that Tiger Woods outdrove from his knees.” He didn’t fight it. He leaned into it. That’s actually the right move — own the thing that makes you relatably human and it becomes a brand asset.
Pinehurst: The 99 Days That Turned Into Golf Media Legend
When COVID hit in March 2020, Riggs did the math on his situation — a small apartment in Manhattan, total shutdown, no golf within reach — and immediately decided that wasn’t going to work.
He booked a $60 one-way flight. Showed up at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. Checked in. And didn’t leave for 99 days.
Pinehurst has nine golf courses (plus The Cradle short course and newer additions). Riggs played them all, rotated through them, filmed Daily Nines, kept the content machine running through the entire pandemic shutdown when basically every other sports media outlet was scrambling and dark. He got equipment fittings. He set up putting drills. He played a match against a 12-year-old named Petey — lost a bet to the kid — and paid it off by buying lunch for 128 front-line workers the next day. He drove up to Washington to meet Mike Pence’s chief of staff for a conversation about whether golf courses should be considered essential businesses.
Ninety-nine days. He didn’t leave until it was over.
The match against Kevin Kisner on Pinehurst No. 2 — one of the most storied courses in American golf, a U.S. Open venue — happened during this stretch too. The ForePlay crew played Kisner, an actual PGA Tour player, in a scramble format. Riggs walked in a par on 18 to force Kisner to need birdie to avoid losing to a bunch of podcasters.
Golf Channel covered it. Of course they did.
He now calls himself “the Moral Compass of Pinehurst.” It’s on his Twitter bio. It’s on his Instagram. Pinehurst No. 11 — a new course — is set to open in March 2027, and Riggs has been involved in the excitement around it. The place basically adopted him.
The Barstool Golf Classic: Selling Out in Minutes
Here’s where the business side of the Riggs story gets genuinely impressive. He created the Barstool Classic — a competitive amateur golf tournament series that runs across multiple cities, at top-tier courses, where regular fans can actually tee it up.
In its first year, it was a one-day championship at Liberty National. Then it grew to 16 qualifying events. Then 26. The St. Louis edition sold out within minutes. The final event moved to Pinehurst itself for a four-day championship.
That’s real event-production growth. That’s not just a podcast host slapping his name on something. That’s building an actual golf product that people want to be part of badly enough to compete for limited spots.
Video Games, TaylorMade, Adidas, and the Sponsorship Stack
In 2022, Riggs, Frankie, and Trent were added as playable characters in PGA Tour 2K23. You can play a round of golf as Riggs in a video game. That is either the most absurd milestone in modern golf media or the most inevitable one, depending on how you look at it.
TaylorMade made him an official athlete. He gets fully equipped — entire bag, full fitting, the works — by one of the two biggest equipment companies on the planet. The logic he explained makes complete sense: TaylorMade’s biggest market is ordinary golfers who wish they played like tour pros. Riggs is exactly that demographic. The partnership is authentic because the brand alignment is real.
Adidas is on his apparel side. Same logic applies. His bio now reads “#TaylorMadeAthlete | #AdidasAthlete | Not actually an athlete” — and the self-aware joke is the whole point.
He also co-captained the Internet Invitational in August 2025 at Big Cedar Lodge — a 48-person content creator golf tournament organized alongside Bob Does Sports, with a $1 million prize split among winners. He drafted and captained one of the two 24-person teams. The tournament featured Paige Spiranac, Grant Horvat, Wesley Bryan, and a full roster of the new golf media landscape. That’s Riggs in a leadership role over the entire space he helped create.
The NCAA Episode That Showed a Different Side
In May 2021, the NCAA cancelled women’s golf regional championships due to COVID protocols. Several college golf programs — athletes who had worked their entire careers toward competing as seniors — were suddenly shut out with no recourse.
Riggs stepped in. He organized an alternative tournament for those athletes through Barstool, essentially giving them a competitive send-off that the NCAA had denied them. His comments to Golf Digest were genuine: he talked about what it means to compete alongside your teammates, to not end your athletic career on a negative note, to have people in positions of power who were supposed to protect you fail at the critical moment.
This is a side of Riggs that doesn’t fit the pure “funny golf content” box, and it matters. The Harvard hockey player who knows what it means to pour yourself into a team sport — that guy understood something in that situation that the NCAA administration clearly didn’t.
Scottsdale, Not Manhattan. Not Pinehurst. Arizona.
His Instagram bio currently says Scottsdale, AZ. He’s based there now — not New York, where he lived before the pandemic, and obviously not Pinehurst permanently despite the 99-day saga. He still travels constantly for content — golf courses don’t come to him — but Scottsdale is home base. Perfect year-round golf climate, center of a growing golf content ecosystem, far from the $60 one-way flight days.
He calls himself the Duke of Hazard on his Twitter bio, which is another layer of self-deprecating golf humor that requires some context. At the Masters — one of the most prestigious tournaments in golf — Riggs was hazard-adjacent in some capacity that generated its own content moment. The nickname stuck. He kept it.
Final Words
Here’s my honest take on Riggs Barstool: he’s one of the more interesting media success stories of the last decade, and it gets underplayed because the packaging involves jokes and bad golf shots instead of traditional credentials.
But think about the actual trajectory. Harvard sociology degree. Zero golf background. Turns a free political blog that nobody read into a corporate sales career detour into the most-listened-to golf podcast in the country. Gets TaylorMade and Adidas to sign him as an athlete — as a person who explicitly brands himself as “not actually an athlete.” Gets Tiger Woods to interact with him in ways Tiger doesn’t interact with most legitimate journalists. Gets added to a video game. Runs a multi-city amateur golf tournament series. Co-captains a $1 million content creator tournament. Is identified by Pinehurst Resort itself as a core part of their public identity.
That’s not luck. That’s someone who understood early that the gap between golf’s traditional media and what actual golfers wanted to consume was enormous — and then built the thing to fill it, brick by brick, podcast episode by podcast episode.
Golf is genuinely better for having Riggs in it. Whether he ever breaks 80 consistently is, at this point, almost beside the point.
FAQs
1. What is Riggs’ real name?
Sam Bozoian — professionally Sam “Riggs” Bozoian. He goes by Samuel Riggs on Instagram (@riggsbarstool) and lists his name that way on some platforms, but Bozoian is his actual last name.
2. Did Riggs really go to Harvard?
Yes. He attended Harvard University and played Division I varsity hockey there. Before Harvard, he attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a top-tier boarding school in Connecticut. He studied sociology.
3. What is the Fore Play podcast?
Barstool Sports’ flagship golf podcast, launched February 2017. Hosted by Riggs, Frankie Borrelli, Trent, PGA Tour player Kevin Kisner, and Dan Rapaport. Covers golf news, tour gossip, course reviews, and interviews with professional players. It’s widely considered the most prominent golf podcast in the market.
4. Why does Riggs call himself the Moral Compass of Pinehurst?
He spent 99 days at Pinehurst Resort during the COVID pandemic in 2020, playing golf continuously while quarantined there. The “Moral Compass” designation came out of that experience and the community he built with the resort. It’s both a genuine title and a very Barstool-style joke.
5. Did Tiger Woods really outdrive Riggs from his knees?
Yes. During a content shoot at Shadow Creek in Nevada, Tiger hit a drive from a kneeling position that flew past Riggs’ standing drive. TaylorMade’s official bio for Riggs describes him as “the guy that Tiger Woods outdrove from his knees.”
6. Where does Riggs live now?
Scottsdale, Arizona, as listed on his Instagram bio. He previously lived in New York City before the pandemic.
7. How did Riggs get into Barstool?
He spent years blogging independently — thousands of articles, largely political content — while working sales jobs. He persistently pursued Dave Portnoy’s attention until he got a trial run blogging on the Barstool site. Within weeks it became his full-time position.
8. What is the Barstool Classic?
A competitive amateur golf tournament series Riggs created and runs as Commissioner of Barstool Golf. It spans multiple cities across the country at top-tier courses, with fans competing in actual competitive formats. It grew from a one-day event at Liberty National to a four-day championship at Pinehurst.
9. Is Riggs a TaylorMade athlete?
Yes — he has an official TaylorMade athlete sponsorship and an Adidas apparel partnership. He was among the first golf media personalities to receive this kind of equipment company designation as a non-professional golfer.
10. What is Riggs’ handicap or skill level?
He’s a recreational golfer who is candid about not being particularly good. His entire brand is built around representing the average golfer experience. He can shoot in the 80s on good days at courses he knows. His self-description is “not actually an athlete.”
11. Did Riggs play in the Internet Invitational?
He co-captained it. The inaugural Internet Invitational took place in August 2025 at Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri. Riggs and Bob Does Sports’ Robby Berger captained opposing 24-person teams of golf content creators in a three-day event with a $1 million prize pool.
12. What was Riggs’ connection to the NCAA situation in 2021?
When the NCAA cancelled women’s golf regional championships in 2021, Riggs organized an alternative tournament through Barstool for the affected athletes — college seniors whose competitive careers had been abruptly cut off. He referenced his own experience as a college athlete in justifying why he felt compelled to act.
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