Part 1 of Cascade Golfer’s UK GOLF EXPERIENCE
A father-and-son duo take a once-in-lifetime trip to the home of “gawff“
By Dick Stephens, CG Publisher
Gary and Dick Stephens stand atop the famous Swilken Bridge at St. Andrews’ 18th hole.
For a golfer, there’s one true place where time has stood still for centuries. It’s in a Kingdom where all are invited to enter, witness and — most importantly — experience all its royal riches. The Kingdom I am referring to is Scotland’s Kingdom of Fife, home to the world’s oldest golf courses and the center of the golfing world – the links of St. Andrews.
During the long, hot, muggy summers of my childhood in Kansas, I fell in love with the game of golf largely on the passion of the most influential and important golfer I have ever met — my father, Gary Stephens. His lust for golf, and the time we spent at our local public golf center chipping, putting and driving second-hand golf balls planted a seed in me that has grown to a full-blown obsession — and in the form of this magazine, a career.
For much of the last 30 years, we talked of taking a golf trip together to a special place like Pebble Beach or Palm Springs, or in our wildest dreams, Scotland. I wanted to make sure we did this before his competitive game began to taper, but as commitments to a career and family built year by year, that dream steadily slipped onto the back burner.
Then one day, Dad said he had cancer.
As he talked about the many months of radiation and other procedures he would soon have to endure, my eyes brimmed at the thought of losing my father, and at a father and son’s golfing dream that I never made happen.
So, while he was battling the cancer — which he eventually beat after seven months — I put the golf-trip planning into hyperdrive. I tracked down Rich Golish, a noted American golf tour designer with a company called Golf Scotland, who helped me design a trip that fit our interests, goals and pocketbooks. Having always figured the Scotland trip would cost a fortune, I had never seriously considered it. But, after working with Rich to pick the right mixture of courses and choosing a time of the year that was slightly off-peak, the pieces of the puzzle began to take shape – at a cost thousands less than anticipated.
Our dream was now a reality. Golf Scotland took our desire to play multiple days in and around St. Andrews, our wish to stay on the beach coastline in the Kingdom of Fife and our budget all under consideration and designed a trip that delivered luxury, value and a lifetime of memories. The following jottings are some of the highlights of the father-and-son golfing dream we designed in the Kingdom of Fife, which we could have sworn was the Kingdom of Heaven.