The idea wasn’t really intended to be anything more than a diversion as he tried to figure out his next career and fight off the indoor isolation of COVID lockdowns. Five years later, that quest has become his career.

Melia, a 41-year-old who lives in Charlestown and played on the golf team at Holy Cross, is the man behind Baystate Golf, a burgeoning multimedia company that centers on Melia’s documentation of the wide variety of courses in the Commonwealth.

“I think of them as restaurant reviews,” Melia said as he played Crystal Lake in Haverhill, course number 145 on his list. “Sometimes you go to a steak house and get filet, sometimes you go to a regional chain restaurant like the ‘99’ and get chicken fingers.”

Sean Melia recorded himself on the tee box at the New England Country Club in Bellingham. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

That’s what Crystal Lake feels like to Melia: chicken fingers. At just $40 for 18 holes on a weekday, he’s not expecting the best course he’s ever played. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with chicken fingers.

Melia grew up in Acton and learned to play golf when he was eight, when his mother bought golf lessons for him and his father for Christmas. Though both of his parents were from the golf mecca of Ireland, his late father had never really played, and the game became the thing they shared. Melia cherishes the memory of his father watching him make his first hole-in-one.

After leaving his job at Shore Country Day School in Beverly, where he was dean of students for the elementary school, Melia — who was toying with the idea of a career in writing — began posting his golf course reviews on a jokey Instagram account and newsletter he called StayHomeHusband. “It was tongue-in-cheek writing about what life is like as a guy who is married and has no kids and quit his job to stay home and write.”

But soon friends told him that his best content was the stuff that centered around his attempt to play every course in Massachusetts, which (to his knowledge) had never been attempted before.

In 2022, he changed the newsletter and Instagram account to focus on golf, and added video and voice-overs to his posts. Slowly, his following grew, and now Baystate Golf — which includes a YouTube channel and a newsletter — has become his job.

“The whole thing is kind of accidental, but it’s been incredible in so many ways, including finding new parts of the state that I’ve never been to before, and discovering a charming course,” he said. “And then I’ll post about it and people will say ‘That’s my spot. That’s where I enjoy playing. That’s where I find joy.’”

Melia’s rise in popularity has coincided with a general boom in golf, particularly in Massachusetts. Mass Golf, a 125-year-old nonprofit that oversees competitive golf in the state, saw its membership jump from 85,000 before COVID to 133,000 last year, though that’s just a fraction of the estimated 500,000 to 600,000 golfers in the Commonwealth.

Those golfers are hungry for content and new courses, which Melia feeds with videos like “6 Courses You Should Play in 2025″ and “3 courses for under $60.”

Melia teed off on the course.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

But the heart of his content are his restaurant-review-ish takes on each course, a system he devised to keep everything organized and (somewhat) fair. Every course is assigned to one of eight categories — dive bar, fast food, fast casual, regional chain, neighborhood joint, farm-to-table, steakhouse and, at the very top, Michelin Star.

“That gives people a sense of place, so your expectations are adjusted before you get there,” he said. “I’ve found that so many golfers are interested in learning about new courses to play, and this helps them when they send out that text to their golf buddies on Monday asking: ‘Where are we playing this weekend?’”

Within each tier, he gives each course a rating from 1 to 5, that is his gentle way of saying whether he would want to ever play there again. A “one” is one-and-done; a “five” is “Can I please speak to someone about a membership?”

Thus far, only seven courses have achieved a five-star rating: Concord Country Club, Vesper Country Club, Winchester Country Club, Whitinsville Golf Club, Salem Country Club, Taconic Golf Club, and The Country Club in Brookline.

All but one of those is private, which is a challenge for Melia’s quest, but he’s managed to find ways onto the courses through charity auctions or by getting invited by members who are following his quest. To keep things objective, he always pays and, whenever possible, walks the course rather than taking a cart, because he wants to feel every detail of the layout.

And what he’s looking for is more than just “is this a great golf course?” It’s that sense of place, of how it feels driving in, of the people who are playing there and how they appreciate it. For Crystal Lake, he’s giving the course a 1 rating in his “regional chain” category, but, again, there’s nothing wrong with chicken fingers.

“When I finished on 18 you could see the tee box jammed with all these guys waiting to play in their Monday afternoon league, and they clearly love that course and the social aspect,” he said. “That’s not something I can bottle up playing a course once.”

Because for those who love the game, golf is not just about golf. It’s about friends, memories, the feeling of touching grass as you walk through a manicured garden, and how one person feels about a course, or even a single round, is entirely subjective.

“That’s what’s great about golf, and this quest I’m on,” Melia mused. “You have all these different courses in all these different places, and they all have people who love them.”

Billy Baker can be reached at billy.baker@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @billy_baker.