Sometimes the best things start with the simplest plan: four buddies from Andover, Kansas, looking for a golf getaway that wouldn’t break the bank.
In April 2008, we pointed the car toward Lake Kahola near Emporia, crashing for free at the Ek family cabin. No grand itinerary, no bucket-list courses—just Kansas fairways, cold beers, and the kind of laughter that echoes long after the last putt drops.
None of us saw it coming, but that humble weekend sparked something bigger. The excitement of planning it, the easy rhythm of old friends chasing a little white ball—it felt too good to be a one-off. By the time we packed up, the idea had already taken root: make it annual, give it a name, turn it into a quest across 50 states in 50 years, with the wild, pie-in-the-sky dream of one day finishing at the Plantation Course at Kapalua—the kind of place we’d only ever seen on TV during the Tournament of Champions, a trip that felt completely unattainable back then compared to a free weekend at a quiet Kansas lake cabin.
Kahola to Kapalua. A legend, quietly, was born.
Kahola to Kapalua Tournament of Champions 