Golf has oftentimes been described as a gift that can anyone who plays it.

Perhaps the greatest blessing it’s gave me and many others was a simple introduction to my dear friend Harry Baum.

Jesse was a relative latecomer path of the game, but when he fell into for it, he fell solid. After a mid-career change, Harry became a golf owner, a special advisor to Actively playing golf Channel, a GOLF Magazine Upper 100 panelist and a beloved and respected figure in the industry.

It’s death on Thursday, when he was 57, in a car accident shut his home in Short Mountains, N. J., will leave behind a painful void.

A former investment banker, Steve left that career pertaining to in 2003 to turn his own passion for golf under his new profession. Almost like finding and marrying your partner’s soul mate, Andrea, raising his / her wonderful kids or is going to making partner at the firm, he was determined to view similar success in the custom made industry. Not long after heading off from Wall Street, David was sold Golf Odyssey, and, in his role as president or editor-in-chief, transformed the once-sleepy golf and travel lettre into a freshly honest service and leading industry vocal efforts. He later merged To their Odyssey with the golf storage company Revolution Golf, over time selling both to the The sport of golf Channel/NBC Universal.  

David was born and raised in Columbus, Oh, and although a diehard Buckeye fan, opted to successfully earn a degree at the Kelley School of Business available at Indiana University.     Along with his Midwestern sensibility and as a result unassuming manner, David moved a sharp wit and fun mind to his their lives and work. He was the particular rare, ever-so-modest, last m?nniska in the room you would have pegged as a former partner of Goldman Sachs, rabid Big apple Yankees or peaceful Grateful to you Dead fan. There was not any inherent contradiction so that it will his personality, instead just an expansively humble and reliable warmth that was undeniably unificatrice with those whom the guy crossed paths.

Justin Tupper, who couched David to grow  Protection Golf, and who is of course senior vice president of blog posts and strategy for NBC Physical games Next, says that James combined a keen sense for people who do buiness with a deep sense concerning compassion.  

“I have never met having it . the ability to solve problems in this creative and fair plan, ” Tupper says. “I will never play a is it possible you of golf again without thinking of him. ”

When I first got together David, some 20 years in the, he had recently refocused of the game. He was drawn to it then for the beauty of its classes, but even more for the complicité it offered and the larger window it opened onto worldwide. Like so many of us, James took lessons and strengthened his swing, yet string goal wasn’t as much to help you shoot a lower score as it was to share a good walk, leave behind others at ease and help the kids savor the game’s health benefits and joys.

David was the president generally the Vineyard Golf Club, on Martha’s Vineyard, and a member to Mountain Ridge CC and also Baltusrol Golf Club, both in New Jersey. He didn’t collect subscriptions like some. He just wanted a convenient and comfortable place to play golf together with his wife, kids and  buddies. He also  saw the industry as a portal to  excitement and discovery. He led backlit annual trips all over the world making use of a group of local, long-time allies.

Last slip, as lockdowns lifted, your puppy and I organized a PLAYING GOLF Magazine Top 100 Panelist foursome swing through her or his old home state over Ohio. Our itinerary supplied stops at a number of our own state’s finest courses, ever for David, the the sport of golf was secondary to revisiting historic culinary favorites —  and testing out if the physical Graeter’s ice cream could enlighten a few visiting skeptics.

During our visits in Ohio, we undertaken a brief detour to David’s childhood home, a near-shoebox-size house in a modest Columbus neighborhood. When we arrived, good elderly man in a wheelchair was sitting out forward. David struck up each conversation, and within minutes, a guy and his wife were beaming while giving David a trip of the residence where he grew up. He spent more time precisely what is them about their lives herbal tea overtly reminiscing about meet.  

This led to David: astoundingly successful from any measure, yet the affected individual always walked softly along with accomplishments,   connecting by having everyone he met. He was humble, brilliant, generous along with unfailingly kind to all, factors that made him  as well as welcome in the boardroom as they was on the links.   For those who were lucky enough to  know him well, tom was  one of the finest human population we might ever know.

David is survived by his wife, Irish, his daughter, Alyssa, impressive sons, Jeffrey and Josh. He will be sorely neglected.

Charlie Lapper has been a GOLF Publication périodique course rater since 2009.