Barry Moroney grew up in Adare, and golf has always been a big part of his life. He started caddying at the world-famous course in his early teens and spent eight summers working there through school and college.

Caddying eventually led to playing, and playing has now led Moroney to a new challenge: becoming a scratch golfer while documenting his progress on social media.

But that’s only one half of the story. The other is that Moroney has recently launched a new business, the ApexGolf game improvement app. He will be using the app to reach his scratch golfer goal while laying bare his progress on Instagram and TikTok.

“I was looking for an app that combined practice with training, but I couldn’t find one that suited my needs and was realistic for my level,” Moroney says.

“Technology has really come into its own in golf in the last number of years, and it’s an aspect of the game I enjoy. I tried a few apps but didn’t enjoy the user experience at all. In fact, it felt like I was suffering the app to get the result, and that was the eye-opener for me.

“It got me thinking about creating an app that would work for golfers who are amateur or casual players, not elite athletes, who simply want to improve their game and get a bit fitter. ApexGolf provides them with a structure for their practice and a routine for their training so they can build up their fitness gently in a way that’s appropriate to their age and ability.”

Moroney says that as golf-related app content is fairly standard, an app would struggle to differentiate itself on content alone. Where it could get the edge over the competition, however, was with the user experience.

“What’s lacking in existing apps is the design and interface, and I put that down to these apps being owned or developed by people who are domain experts,” Moroney says.

“They might be professional golfers or strength and conditioning coaches, and while they know their own disciplines, they don’t know user behaviour, and that was key for me. My competition isn’t other golf apps. It’s the apps people use every day, like Spotify and Instagram and YouTube, because the experience is slick and seamless. They have been my benchmark in creating an app that is enjoyable and engaging to use.”

[ Feeling above par: why golf is good for youOpens in new window ]

Existing apps tend to focus on providing golfers with a set training plan over a set period of time. One size fits all. ApexGolf takes a different approach: it uses AI to adapt a user’s plan to their progress on a weekly basis, Moroney explains.

“It’s easy to be enthusiastic when you download a new app, and for the first while everything is going great,” Moroney says. “But then you miss a few sessions and when you come back there’s a gap, and people don’t like staring at failure, so they disengage. We don’t do rigid plans. We learn the individual’s big-picture goal and week to week we give them a plan.

“So, every Sunday our AI calculates everything you’ve done in the previous weeks in terms of sessions, rounds and areas that are weak or strong, and it tailors your next plan based on everything that has happened up to that point.”

Moroney already has one successful start-up under his belt, a marketing agency called Leadable, which is still operating. He set it up in 2019 after six years working in the United Arab Emirates, latterly as head of business development at hospitality company Maison Privee in Dubai.

“My first sales and marketing manager’s job was with My Golf Group in Ireland, and I played a lot of golf at this time and was also the editor of our annual publication, The Golf Society Bible,” Moroney says.

“Then I moved to the UAE and on to Spain and had an eight-year spell when I played very little. However, since coming back to Ireland, I’ve been immersed in the game and probably play too much now, as my wife will testify.”

At its height, Leadable employed more than 30 people, but in 2022, when AI began to become increasingly accessible to the wider world, Moroney became very aware of its potential to disrupt his business.

“AI started to get really good at what we were doing, to the point where we couldn’t justify the numbers because the AI version was quicker and cheaper,” he says. “We made a couple of pivots but were constantly swimming against the tide, and it was getting harder and harder all the time.”

Moroney first had the idea for ApexGolf in 2022 when Leadable was feeling the heat. He had gone as far as writing a business plan and putting some other elements in place, but then he hit the pause button, as the next step was the really big one: commissioning the development of the app, which was going to be expensive.

“In fact, it paid off to wait, as by 2025, with the advances with AI, I was able to revisit my idea and create a working prototype by myself,” Moroney says.

“I gave it to 30 golfers to use and their feedback gave me the confidence to take the big step of starting the development of the real app. This took nine months and cost approximately €250,000, which was self-funded. I didn’t pursue outside support because as a solo founder with limited time, the process looked like a significant distraction relative to the funding available.”

The ApexGolf app was launched in June and now has users in multiple countries. The marketing focus for 2026 is on Ireland, followed by Britain and the US next year. It costs €19.99 a month.

“Apex Golf has been a really refreshing change of pace for me in the sense that health and fitness in golf is really moving forward, so it feels a lot more like riding a wave rather than swimming against it,” Moroney says.

“Throughout the development process, I focused very heavily on pre-launch marketing from about seven months out to create an engaged audience before the app went live,” he adds.

“Putting myself out there on social media was tough at first, as golf is already a difficult sport, and doing it in public makes it considerably harder.

“However, it has been a successful strategy, and I built up an audience of over 6,000 pre-launch followers. I credit the early success of the app largely to this, with a very strong download-to-trial conversion rate.”