I want to tell you about my friend.

It’s a friend I worked with for a few years. I got to know him well. I was in countless meetings with him, saw him interact with the staff we worked with, and watched him lead people through some very trying times.

I saw what he believed in and what he stood for. I learned about him as a father, a husband, a leader and, most importantly, as a person.

He is kind. He believes the game of golf is for everyone, no matter a person’s skin color, gender or sexuality. And he didn’t just say those things because they sounded good. I watched him live them.

My friend got fired in the fallout from the Good Good/Callaway ad.

This isn’t about whether he should have been fired. Although he wasn’t involved in the making or production of the ad, he did sign off on it being released. It went out. And he has taken responsibility for that mistake.

It’s also not about the companies involved. Every opinion, from calling the ad horrifically misogynistic to arguing the consequences went way too far, has been argued and re-argued a thousand times over the last 10 days.

This story is about my friend, Alex Upegui.

Because I think you should know who he was before one bad decision became the thing most people knew him for.

I’m not asking anyone to pretend the mistake didn’t happen. It did. Alex ultimately approved the ad, and his name will forever be attached to it.

But I also don’t think we should define a person by one bad decision they made at work.

If we are going to judge people, we need the entire picture. We should know what they stood for over the years. How did they treat people when nobody was watching? What did they fight for? Who did they fight for?

The mistake is part of Alex’s story. It just isn’t the whole story.

Alex was one of my bosses at Fire Pit Collective. He was a partner in the company alongside Matt Ginella and Alan Shipnuck. The staff grew quickly, and Alex was often the person who kept all of us together as a team.

Alex was instrumental in hiring Jordan Perez, who now works for No Laying Up. She was just out of college and inexperienced. She didn’t have name recognition or much of a following. Few would know who Jordan was when they read her reporting on amateur golf. But Alex advocated for her because of her talent, her writing and her passion for the game.

Her career since leaving Fire Pit has proven him right.

Alex is the father of two young girls and spoke often about being a Girl Dad. Making sure women had the same opportunities in our workplace wasn’t some corporate talking point for him. It was personal. So was creating opportunities for people from different backgrounds.

Alex’s parents are from Colombia, and he is the first generation of his family born in the United States. He talked every so often about what that meant to him. He saw golf differently and valued the perspectives of those who hadn’t spent their lives in the game.

Marco Escalante was one of those people.

Marco had never worked in golf when Alex brought him in as a producer. But he played the game, loved it and was talented. Alex knew that because the two had worked together on projects before Fire Pit, ranging from UFC reality shows to the NBA.

Alex didn’t care that Marco’s résumé didn’t look like a traditional golf résumé. He knew what Marco could do.

“We’ve worked side by side around the globe. He’s one of the most thoughtful, generous, and caring individuals I’ve ever met," Marco told me.

Together they produced some incredible golf content, including multiple segments that aired during U.S. Open broadcasts.

After Fire Pit, I went out on my own and called Alex often. At the time, he was also searching for his next job. He had his own career and his own future to worry about. But he was always quick to help those of us who were suddenly trying to figure out what came next.

Even with something as simple as health insurance.

We were all suddenly without jobs and trying to navigate COBRA and figure out how we were going to keep our families insured. Alex was in exactly the same situation, looking for health care for his own family, yet he was helping the rest of us understand our options too.

I still call him often. I run ideas by him, ask for advice and sometimes just need someone to tell me when an idea is stupid.

He always answers.

And I’m not alone.

I spoke with numerous people who worked for Alex over the years because I wanted to know if maybe my experience with him was different.

It wasn’t. They told me versions of the same story.

Jake Muldowny was a former caddie who Alex helped develop into a producer.

“I owe everything I know about the production business to Alex, and I am forever grateful to call him a friend,” Muldowny told me. That’s what Alex did for people.

He fought for them. He supported them. He gave them opportunities. And long after he had any obligation to help them, he still did.

Alex also made a big mistake.

He approved an ad that never should have been approved, and it cost him his job. Maybe rightfully so. Actions have consequences, and Alex has taken his responsibility for what happened.

But consequences don’t have to mean erasing everything that came before. None of what I’ve written makes the ad OK. And the ad doesn’t make any of what I’ve written disappear, either.

Maybe that’s the part we sometimes lose when someone screws up publicly. We take the worst moment of their career, freeze them there and decide that moment tells us everything we need to know about who they are.

I don’t think it does.

Alex will have to live with this mistake. He lost his job because of it. He will have to explain it in his next interview and probably the interview after that. It is now part of his story.

But it is not his entire story.

I know because I know Alex.

I know the leader. I know the husband and father. I know the guy who fought for women and minorities in a game that hasn’t always made enough room for either. I know the guy who saw talent in people others might have overlooked. I know the guy who picked up the phone when people needed him, even when he had his own problems to worry about.

I know my friend.

And I hope, after all of this, people are willing to know a little more about him too.