Founded in June 2016 by TJ Forbes and Jermaine Dacres as a small men’s golf group, The Honorables has become a 14-player field, two majors a year, an annual South Florida Invitational that hosts the Ryder Cup, and a running badmind chat that now sits at tens of thousands of messages. This is how we got here.
The Honorables starts with two co-founders: TJ Forbes, Bahamian, South Florida, and Jermaine Dacres, American-Jamaican, also South Florida. A handful of weekend rounds, a group chat, and no structure beyond a shared appetite for trash talk that draws on Caribbean English, sports column cadence, and ten years of inside jokes layered on top of inside jokes.
The first three years are casual. There is no Classic, no handicap system, no Commissioner, no trophy case. The group plays golf and talks badmind. Dipset Lue joins in October 2016. Lamar Currey follows in December. Dave Forbes comes in through Dipset in January 2017. The culture gets set long before the competition does.
In 2019 the group runs its first Honorables Classic in Orlando. Ron wins it. That one tournament forces everything the group is now: a handicap system so the Classic can actually be a fair fight, a ledger so wins get remembered, and a Commissioner to run the ship. Shawn Paleveda takes that role when he joins a few months earlier (the Kevin Durant moment), and he has never given it up.
Every active member came in through one of three lines: the TJ line, the Jermaine line, or the open field. A full interactive tree ships with Phase 2 of the members area.
Co-founder. Recruited Zair Mardio in January 2019 and Shawn Paleveda the next month, both inside a four-week window that changed the group's trajectory. Zair later recruited Mike Osouna, TJ's first second-generation line.
Co-founder. Brought in Dipset Lue in October 2016, which opened the whole second wing of the group. Dipset then recruited Dave Forbes and Lamar Currey, giving the Jermaine line the deepest second-generation roster in the group.
Players who came in through the group as a whole rather than a specific founder line: Travis Brown, Ali Aladin, Junior Walker, Emerson Pimentel, Bryan Landon, Scottie Walker, Chase Griffiths.
The chat is where the jokes live. The ledger is where the record lives. These are the years that shaped both.
TJ Forbes and Jermaine Dacres start The Honorables in June. Four guys, one chat, no trophy, no structure. The golf is casual. The badmind is immediate.
Dipset Lue brings in Dave Forbes in January. The chat volume triples overnight.
The inaugural Honorables Classic in Orlando. Ronald Chin wins it. The group immediately realizes it needs a real handicap system. The next decade of record-keeping starts here.
TJ recruits Shawn Paleveda out of a rival golf group in February. Inside the Honorables chat, it gets called the Kevin Durant to the Warriors moment. Shawn takes on the Commissioner role and has never stopped running the ship.
At plus 6. Still the only Bahamian-born champion in group history. The Port Charlotte trophy is the one he talks about least and means the most.
No Honorables Classic this year. The group runs the Boca Championship instead, and Travis wins it at minus 15 with a 10-stroke margin that Shawn's writeup compares to peak Tiger. The group does not love the comparison at the time. It sticks anyway. The same year, Ron takes the inaugural Jacaranda Open at minus 1.
Ali Aladin wins the Atlanta Classic at minus 7, a 14-stroke margin of victory. Still the group record. The frenemy dynamic with Zair starts the same week.
Dipset leads 63 holes. Collapses on the final nine. Travis Brown picks up his second title at Fort Myers at plus 10. The Dipset heartbreak becomes its own entry in the Dictionary.
A second Atlanta title, a second time Dipset leads late and loses it. The Atlanta residency narrative becomes permanent: three of the last four Classics have been here.
The 2025 Atlanta Classic is a war of attrition. Jermaine Dacres wins at plus 18, the worst winning score in group history and also the most earned. The co-founder finally gets his first trophy.
Seventh Honorables Classic. Fourth Atlanta running. 14-player field. April 30 through May 3. Defending champion Jermaine. Ali the oddsmaker's favorite. Chase is the rookie. Dipset is playing through recovery. Everyone is here.
The Honorables is Bahamian, Jamaican, Indian, Dominican, and American. It is a men’s group that behaves like a family WhatsApp with better callouts. The chat is where Taxi got coined. Where Need More Truffles got invented. Where Barry! and Rory! became the two most common words spoken on any tee box.
Every callout, every nickname, every running joke is archived in The Dictionary. The group writes in it every weekend. If you see a teal-underlined term anywhere on this site, it lives there.
The competition backbone is two majors a year plus the South Florida Invitational, which hosts the annual Ryder Cup against the Bogey Boys. Handicaps get run by Shawn. Tournaments get run by Shawn. The record is a record. The Honorable 10 gets published after every major. Tankgate is still a live conversation. Most of the jokes are punching down and punching up inside the same sentence.
Six Honorables Classics played since 2019. Five unique champions. One group record margin. One group record worst winning score. The seventh is in play now in Atlanta.
Full Hall of ChampionsNot everyone on the recruitment tree is still in the active field. The record keeps them both.
Founding-era member brought in by Dipset, his cousin. Inactive on dues and tournaments but still in the chat, so the group treats him as part of the family. Read-only access on the site.
Early-era member, two trophies including the inaugural 2019 Orlando Classic, the group's first tournament. No longer a member of the Honorables and removed from the chat. Remains a historical figure in the Hall of Champions.