Celebrating 15 Years

BY BOB SHERWIN • CG STAFF WRITER

For native Northwesterners or folks who have been in the Seattle area for some time, there are a handful of golfers that we all know, that we’re all proud of and represent who we are.

Certainly, Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters champion, tops the list. The Seattle native, who learned the game at the inner city Jefferson Park track, is a 15-time winner on the PGA Tour and World Hall of Famer. JoAnne Carner – Big Mama — who grew up in Kirkland, won 43 LPGA tournaments, including three USGA titles. Other Northwest elite players include Ryan Moore and Kyle Stanley, Washington’s Joel Dahmen, C.T. Pan and Nick Taylor and Oregon’s Peter Jacobsen, Aaron Wise and Wyndham Clark.

However, there’s one more player in the fairway, overlooked perhaps, that has had a significant impact on this region’s golf identity: Cascade Golfer Magazine. This one. The one you are reading. The magazine is celebrating its 15th anniversary this summer, an apt chronicler of all those elite players along with so much more that matters to this region’s golfers. The magazine was out in front when Chambers Bay was still a vision of designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr. It has detailed so many splendid courses that have opened over the past decade or so, Wine Valley, Gamble Sands, Suncadia’s Rope Rider, The Home Course, Silvies Ranch, Bandon Dunes’ Sheep Ranch, and Salish Cliffs which celebrates an anniversary of its own this year (see our feature in this issue).

It has been our guide through a series of major tournaments — the 2010 U.S. Amateur and 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers, and the 2010 U.S. Senior Open and 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club. It was there at the beginning for the Boeing Classic at Snoqualmie Ridge.

Most importantly though, the editorial staff tried to stay true to its motto: ‘News and views you can use.’ That could mean stories of the latest equipment technology, discounts on green fees, or measuring your game against other local players in annual Cascade Golfer-sponsored tournaments. “We wanted this to be the ESPN of Seattle golf and follow what people are doing here,’’ says Dick Stephens, the magazine’s publisher. “We talk about consumer products, places to play, where to save a few bucks, what’s new and upcoming. We give a voice to golfers who would never have anything else written about them. Our readers are our heroes and golf in Seattle and Northwest is an endless bounty to report on.”

Brian Beaky, who took over the editorial arm of the magazine in the second year of the publication (2008) before leaving last year, said when he came aboard, “I wanted it to be hyper-local. We were not going to do stories if they were not relevant to a large number of Seattle readers. That was our focus by the second year, to nail that down,” he added. “I feel that resonated with people and helped it grow.”

‘Local’ became an expansive word. The core of the magazine was and continues to be stories of people, places and events in Seattle/west of the mountains, but other regions generated attention. New courses such as Palouse Ridge at WSU and Gamble Sands in Brewster raised the status of eastern Washington golf. Western Idaho became all the golf-road-trip rage with the pairing of Circling Raven and venerable Coeur d’Alene and its ‘Island Green.’ Oregon also has a pair of blossoming golf meccas, Bandon and Bend.

“Anyone who popped (their) head out of the weeds, we brought light to them,’’ Stephens says. “Kyle Stanley. Fred Couples turning 50. Bandon Dunes has been a big part of it, marking time as they kept adding courses. We’ve done a ton of stuff on Idaho. Central Oregon has been a real big part of it. What we tried to show is this is our Hawaii, our Palm Springs, and our Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail right here. East of Montana, we’re out of the picture. The areas touching the Cascade Mountains, that’s what we’re talking about.”

Stephens got his first taste of publishing, a bad taste at that, in 1990, a year out of college when he produced a local golf magazine called Northwest Golf. The owner reneged on his promises, however, and that endeavor ended unfavorably after just eight issues. In 1991, Stephens hooked up with Varsity Communications, a Seattle-based marketing/publishing company that primarily featured slo-pitch (softball) and soccer news. It had been founded by Ozzie Boyle and Kirk Tourtillotte in 1985. “I didn’t have much interest in golf in the early 1990s,” says Tourtilotte, who has been a driving force behind countless publishing efforts of Varsity’s over 35 years there, including Cascade Golfer. “I was a die-hard softball player. When Dick came on board, he had been a publisher of a golf magazine. He wanted to do a golf magazine, so he went to talk to John Bodenhamer.”

Bodenhamer was then the Executive Director of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association (now the Senior Managing Director, Championships at the USGA). Stephens struck a friendship and a deal to publish the Pacific Northwest Golfer magazine along with running the Seattle Golf Show shortly after. Sales/marketing whiz Simon Dubiel began a long association with Varsity in 2000 as well as art director Rob Becker, hired in 1997. Prior to Dubiel, David Stolber provided years of sales marketing talent and impact to all of Varsity’s golf projects — blazing many trails.

But in 2002, the PNGA decided to produce the magazine in-house, ending Varsity’s eight-year run as its publisher. It didn’t deter their vision or motivation, however. Stephens believed a new golf publication could prosper in this market, clinging to that dormant idea for the next five years. “We have maintained and built friendships with the other two local golf publications for many years — PNGA’s Pacific Northwest Golfer and Inside Golf Newspaper. We follow and respect what they do, as we have all stood the test of time and work together on different projects. But, knowing both publications very well, we knew in our hearts we could create a new voice of the people for golf in the Northwest that was more like a conversation with our readers, which is what we set out to do.”

In 2007, Varsity finally seized the opportunity, working out an arrangement with longtime golf merchandiser Puetz Golf, which had begun serving the area’s golfers in 1945. “They (Puetz) had a 60-year-old database and are the gold standard in customer service,” says Stephens. “It was the perfect union. We own the magazine but Puetz plays a starring role in each issue. We created the editorial (content), they select products that are keen to Seattle golfers and we sent it out to their customers. Puetz General Manger Mike Livingston has been the greatest co-pilot we could ever ask for.” The Varsity golf gang was back together again. Stephens, Tourtillotte, Stolber, Dubiel, original editor Charles Beene and Becker handling the art direction and page layout. “I remember closing our first ad, with Wine Valley, on the floor of CenturyLink Events Center at the golf show,” says Dubiel. “Wine Valley was on the back cover of our first issue.”

The Puetz leadership feels the magazine plays an integral role in their reach and messaging. “Our partnership with Varsity Communication, and Cascade Golfer magazine, has been the centerpiece of our marketing every year over the past 15 years,” said Puetz’s Livingston. “We feel that the magazine has the biggest impact on our connection to our customers throughout the year.”

The Dan Hixson-designed Wine Valley had opened outside Walla Walla in 2009, and it has had a symbiotic relationship with the magazine. “We’ve been working with Cascade Golfer since our inception, working on golf shows with them, partnering with advertising,’’ says Chris Isaacson, Wine Valley’s director of golf. “They have a good reach. They really do. They’ve been integral in spreading the word about Wine Valley.”

Beaky, with his fresh UDub journalism diploma in hand, took over the editorial vision in 2008, beginning with issue No. 3. He didn’t want Cascade Golfer to be similar to the other established golf publications. Instead, Beaky wanted stories on local courses, local events and local personalities. If the magazine suggested a road trip story, it would focus on how to get there from here. Everything stems from here, from the people here. About anything that ran in Cascade Golfer he would ask, “how does this benefit local golfers?”

The magazine’s first issue, published in the first quarter of 2007, had provided insight for what would follow. It featured Puyallup legend Ryan Moore, making the transition from his spectacular amateur career to his budding PGA Tour career. But in the corner of the cover was a tease about a burgeoning new course in University Place — Chambers Bay. Cascade Golfer covered every step Chambers took — the opening, the leadup to the U.S. Amateur, the grass issues, the development of the U.S. Open — as well as or better than any publication. Its coverage of Chambers’s designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr. even led to a scoop of sorts for Beaky.

The editor and his wife were in Kauai in 2015 and had a chance meeting with Jones, who was familiar with the stories Cascade Golfer had done on Chambers. “I talked to him for about a minute,’’ Beaky says. “And later that day, I got this call. It’s Robert Trent Jones. I don’t know how he got my number. But he wanted to know if we could have dinner with him.”

Beaky and Jones talked for two hours over dinner — about Jones’s career, his courses, his philosophies, and his poetry. “It was kind of a unique experience,” says Beaky. As he was paging through Jones’s poetry book, Beaky noticed original sketches of various Chambers Bay holes, from Jones’s own hand. Piqued by journalism instincts, Beaky asked Jones if he could run his sketches in the next issue of the magazine. Jones agreed and they appeared on the April 2015 cover, two months before Chambers hosted the U.S. Open.

Beaky, who wrote many of the stories, also sought out veteran writers to raise the standard of reporting. Writers such as Craig Smith, Blaine Newnham, Jim Street, Josh Kerns, Steve Kelly, Bart Potter, Jeff Shelley, and British-born Tony Dear, became involved. Many of the slick photos have been taken by one of the nation’s top golf course photographers, Rob Perry.

“The writers are all seasoned veterans,” says Stephens. “We didn’t bring in interns to teach them about writing. We bought in guys we wanted to write for our magazine.” Besides stories on all the professionals from our region, there have been dozens of profiles on a wide variety of subjects. Beaky said the first story he remembers, in 2009, that generated significant reader reaction was a look back at Karsten Solheim’s time growing up in Ballard. In the article, the founder of Karsten Manufacturing Company (PING) was remembered by his then 91-year-old wife Louise.

The look of the magazine is just as important to the team as the journalism, and CG clearly has a sports-forward colorful arty vibe each issue. “Rob Becker is as important as any of us in the history of this title and his cool, creative, Seattle-themed art direction doesn’t mirror a stiff or traditional golf look,” said Stephens. “Rob is cutting edge and his page designs speak to the meat and potato reader in a way that says ‘open me’ and show this to your friends because it’s so cool looking. He’s hands down the best art director in the Seattle magazine business and a brother to all of us here.”

There have been celebrity golf-related stories with Drew Bledsoe, Raul Ibanez, Edgar Martinez, among sports figures, along with profiles on Jordan Spieth’s caddie Michael Greller and Tony Finau’s bagman Greg Bodine. The magazine also took on hard news stories, such as how public and particular private courses were surviving during the 2008-10 recession, why more young African-Americans still weren’t embracing the game, and reporting on the City of Seattle eyeing golf properties as a possible solution to the homeless crisis.

From the start, the magazine got the reader involved. That may have been through various standing features such as ‘Save Some Green’, ‘In the Bag’ which featured the latest Puetz equipment, and course reviews. There are the Players Card and Playbook offering discounts at local courses, match play events, and dozens of other tournaments over the years at some of the state’s best courses. The first tournament the magazine sponsored was the 2009 Muckleshoot Casino Masters at Druids Glen, the winner earning four tickets to The Masters. Other trips the magazine has offered have been to Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, The Olympic Club and Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club in England.

“We really tried not to just talk about amazing things but let people experience them,” says Dubiel who organizes the tournaments. “It’s a long, long list of sweet things.”

Stephens feels like the magazine found something people are interested in. “The prizes were so good winners had to consider their amateur status. One year, the total value for Cascade Golfer prizes was $100,000.”

A measure of reader influence was reflected in 2013 when the magazine conducted a survey on Washington’s best 10 courses and more than 11,000 people responded. “The readers like the magazine,” says Dubiel. “The best evidence of that is when we sit in our booth at the (Seattle) Golf Show and people come up to us and say ‘we love your magazine. We can’t wait to read it.’ We hear that over and over again.” Stephens adds, “we follow the sport, we follow the trends, we follow the money (advertising), but we’ve never changed the departments in the magazine. We still feel it is the right mix.”

Little more than a year ago, the pandemic had a devastating impact on all things, including Cascade Golfer and its team. Its strategic partner, Puetz Golf, had to limit operations and curtail like so many businesses. Nothing was selling. It faced an uncertain future. The magazine went to a digital format, eschewing the printed editions, perhaps for good. But by mid-2020, golf had regained its popularity because it was one of the few activities — outdoors with social distancing — the general public deemed safe. Puetz rebounded strongly, and now works hard to keep up with pent-up demand. Local courses are packed and the printed magazine has returned. “The pandemic has been our biggest challenge,” says Tourtillotte. “No one could play golf for a couple months. We went from print to digital, and back again. We had to move fast and make immediate decisions working closely with our partners. It’s a different world now.”

Tourtillotte is constantly gratified but amazed at how many people love Cascade Golfer. “It continues to have an impact,” he says. “Its success has largely been down to Dick’s leadership and vision, but also Brian Beaky’s editorship for 14 years, and Simon Dubiel’s role as salesperson with a lot of editorial discretion. I can’t believe it’s been 15 years. It’s been an incredible ride.”