Former CHS standout set to launch world’s 1st portable GPS golf tablet

Matt Buckley (center) with Pinned Golf co-founders Alec Lorenzo and John Rowell

Massachusetts-based golf technology company Pinned Golf has created The Caddie, a tablet for golfers who want to know the distance from their ball to the pin as they play. The Caddie was selected as the Best New Product in the New Product Zone at the 2025 Professional Golf Association (PGA) Show in Orlando in January. Matt Buckley, a co-founder of the company and the company’s vice president of sales, is a 2010 graduate of Canton High School. He is in charge of 30 sales representatives who work around the country.

Buckley grew up in Canton, attending the Luce School and Galvin Middle School before moving on to CHS, where he was a senior captain of the school’s 2010 state champion ice hockey team. He continued to play hockey at Bridgton Academy, and later at St. Anselm College, where he graduated with a degree in business. He played golf in elementary and middle school, often playing with his friends at Ponkapoag Golf Course, where his family had a junior membership. He also went to golf camps and took lessons.

Buckley founded Pinned Golf with his friends Alec Lorenzo and John Rowell in 2018, naming the company after a golfer’s desire to get to the pin. The three friends all played golf, but none of them had a range finder, in part because of its cost. A range finder is a tool that measures the distance between the golfer and the hole.

It was while they were playing at Presidents Golf Course in Quincy that they came up with the idea for what turned into Pinned Golf. “We ended up putting our heads together,” he said. “There’s got to be [a range finder] that’s more for the average golfer, same feels and whistles as the fancy ones, but at a more affordable cost.”

They came up with a range finder called the Prism and then added speakers for people who want to play music while they golf. They followed that with a survey and learned that a number of golfers would prefer to get a distance reading from their golf cart, if there were a screen inside the cart that could do that for them. Buckley, Lorenzo, and Rowell also preferred being able to lean into their cart and read the distance rather than taking out a range finder.

They could not find a product on the market that fit the bill for them, so they set about to create it. “We put our heads together and built something that we would want on the golf course,” he said, “where you’re able to access all the golf courses that you play.”

The Caddie is the first ever portable golf tablet. It has a 72-hole battery life, allows golfers to keep score, has 45,000 course maps, and has a magnet on the back so that it can easily attached to and be removed from a golf cart. “It’s being able to have that easy view,” Buckley said.

Work on The Caddie started about two years ago. The three co-founders worked with a team of engineers to build and improve their vision of the product. “All of that good stuff has truly been built out by us,” he said.

Buckley said that golfers will continue to use range finders to find distance to the pin but feels that The Caddie is easier to use. “As you’re going along the golf course in your golf cart with The Caddie (attached) right on to the post of the golf cart, it’s always going to read the front, back, and center of the green,” he explained. It’s a quick and easily accessible way to get a distance from a ball to the hole.

He added that what’s cool about The Caddie is that golfers can touch the screen if there is water, a small brook, a sand trap or a cart path between the ball and the hole. “It will tell me how far that is,” he said. “I’ll be able to see all those distances right on the screen.”

The Caddie is built to be used outdoors. It has military grade gorilla glass on the screen, a rubberized outer case, is waterproof, and measures about eight inches by five inches. It has a very bright screen with no glare.

Buckley said that the selection of The Caddie as the Best New Product at the PGA show was a defining moment for Pinned Golf. “That just really put the proof and the credibility behind our brand,” he said.

Buckley, Lorenzo and Rowell were working full-time in other professions when they started Pinned Golf. Buckley was in software construction sales. “It all started out as a side business,” he said. “I used to ship every single order out of my house way back when. We all ended up quitting our jobs.”

“A big part of our brand is better vibes, better golf,” he said. “Golf has changed so much in the past few years. It’s not as stuffy of a game. You don’t have to be the greatest golfer to get on the course. It’s cool that a game of golf is accessible to everybody now. What we like to do is support every type of golfer with our products.”

The Caddie is available for pre-ordering at this time, and a few thousand have been ordered to date. The Caddie will be available in May of 2025. For more information on Pinned Golf and The Caddie, go to pinnedgolf.com.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Mar 27 2025. Filed under Business. Both comments and pings are currently closed.