Nothing about these great minds suggest they were tickled in the least by this game of golf. But Hans Cristian Andersen (“To travel is to live.”) and Mark Twain (“Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”) authored compelling viewpoints that appear consistent with a layer of today’s golf world.
Albeit using a generous portion of literary license, here is a suggestion that Andersen and Twain, at least based on their spirited endorsements, would wholeheartedly approve of what is a strong but unmistakable undercurrent of passion within the golf world today. To wit, the burning desire to pack clubs and go.
To Ireland. To Scotland. To Bandon Dunes or Sand Valley or Pinehurst. To Florida in the winter or Michigan in the summer. To that childhood golf course that brought the game to life. To that bucket-list Top 100 place where your heart has tugged at you to go.
As much as we are incessantly reminded that the ball goes too far (for the best of the best, they conveniently overlooked), we don’t give enough credit to a wider lens – that we want to go further with our golf soul and our love for this game.
Which brings us to the Fliers Club. It came on line 10 years ago and has masterfully formed a national and international membership and molded for its golfers an intriguing travel schedule that has earned rave reviews. “We want to create a golf experience,” said Dave McAdams, chief membership and experience officer of the Fliers Club.
“We look through a cultural lens, because people want that. Always, it’s that cultural lens that you remember.”
On its website – thefliersclub.com – the group’s mission is succinctly highlighted: It is “a collective of discerning golfers in pursuit of genuine experience, craft, and time-honored traditions of the game.”
Kevin Jackson exuberantly affirms that the Fliers Club has checked all the boxes.
“This is a golf-savvy crowd. Traditionalists, very intelligent,” said Jackson, who lives in the Tampa, Fla., area. “With The Fliers, members want to be part of a community and experiences through golf.”
Jackson’s rich golf ties tell the story of a purist who understandably melds in seamlessly even while traveling as a single to his Fliers Club trips. Having caddied in his youth at Camargo CC, a Seth Raynor gem in Cincinnati, Jackson studied architecture in school and mixed that in with his passion for golf when the job market stranded many during COVID in 2020.
“For fun and to make a little money, I made digital yardage books during the pandemic,” he said.
Columbus CC in Ohio and Moraine CC in Dayton were just two of his clients, but Jackson also put his yardage books on Instagram and attracted other buyers. That network of new golf friends led Jackson to investigate a possible membership with The Fliers Club. Everything he read and studied convinced him to join.
“I don’t belong to a traditional golf club, I play wherever I can and that made the Fliers Club a good entry point,” he said.
Jackson’s first trip was to Pinehurst in 2021 and the awe of those four or five days still hasn’t worn off.
“We were strangers, maybe 24 or 30 of us, but we all clicked. It’s a cliché, but we all wanted the same thing. We talked golf – but not PGA Tour golf. We talked about architecture, history, traditions.”
Another memorable Fliers Club excursion was to Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, Kan., and for Jackson – who actually worked a spell with Jim Urbina’s crew at The Loop at Forest Dunes in Michigan and entertained thoughts of a career in golf course design – was enthralled by Perry Maxwell’s masterpiece in Kansas.
From tees to ball markers to world-class golf courses, the Fliers Club is praised for its attention to details.
“The more we played it the more we learned and the more we wanted to play it some more,” he said.
Equally enchanting to Jackson is the byproduct of these Fliers Club trips. “It’s crazy how well we’ve gotten along. But we’re like-minded golfers. We realize golf doesn’t happen on TV and it doesn’t only happen locally.
“You also make friends with the locker room guys, the people who serve the drinks and food. We share stories, learn about one another, and I still connect with some of these people.”
For McAdams, who fell in love with golf as a caddie at Framingham CC, just outside of Boston, the Fliers Club was born out of a collaboration between he and Eric Stepanian, a native of Simsbury, Conn. They met and shared mutual love of those sports that are intertwined, hockey and golf. At the time “Eric worked in the educational travel space,” said McAdams, but golf quickly galvanized them.
For a short time, McAdams, who then was the director of operations, hired his friend to work with him at the New England PGA. Stepanian shifted back into the travel business. Ah, but by then these two lads had a mindset that was totally in synch. They loved golf. They understood travel. They noodled ideas on how to combine the two and what was clear was this – their enthusiasm overflowed.
Refreshingly, though, their approach was always in check, always modest, always committed to staying away from all that noise that sometimes whirls in the golf world. Their focus was on quality trips, attention to details, and a sound philosophy.
“We want to stay on the path, stay true to what we want to be,” said McAdams. “This is not a flash in the pan; we want to be around a really, long time.”
The name Fliers Club was owed to the golf definition of a flier (a lie in golf that causes the ball to travel further than expected) and what stands out when you study the group is this simple motto.
Travel further.
“We go to the UK, to Scotland, to Ireland,” said McAdams, who is proud of the group’s international membership. “There is a better perspective of the game when you play worldwide,” and that means trips to Australia and New Zealand have been hugely popular.
“There is such a charm to seeing four golfers who have never met paired together. They could be in their early 70s and late 20s, separated by a half-century, but united by a love of golf,” said McAdams. “Within four hours, you know they’ll be friends. That’s satisfying.”
Though Stepanian and McAdams have kept the Fliers Club true to its roots, it is a golf club with great vision and a wide scope. In addition to more than 30 annual trips that are made available to its significant membership, stories that represent the charm of those unique places The Fliers Club visits (Myopia Hunt Club, for example) have started appearing on another website, theoldghosts.com.
Trips to elite destinations like Sea Island, Pinehurst, the Bahamas, Ireland and Scotland are staples, of course. But McAdams & Co. demonstrate their great feel for the game’s charm and history by unique trips; for instance, they are calling one such excursion The 1953.
That will be a trip to play The Kittansett Club in Marion, Mass., but also to Little Marion, a nine-holer up the street that is saturated in charm. Why is it called The 1953? Because that was the year, the GB&I team came to play the U.S. in the Walker Cup and famously passed Little Marion and presumed that it was Kittansett.
Offbeat, yes, but perfect for The Fliers Club, which is comprised of members who treasure such history and those opportunities to walk in storied footsteps.
Questions abound, of course, and you can get your answers on the website, thefliersclub.com. For emails, contact info@thefliersclub.com. And to follow on Instagram: @thefliersclub.
Small trips, all of those steps. But should you savor the opportunity to travel further, the Fliers Club can accommodate.
