Grand Haven Mens Golf Assoc.
Spotlight Golfer
David Neely
I was born on September 29, 1959 and grew up the youngest of four boys in Bethel Park, PA, a south hills suburb of Pittsburgh. While my older brothers always took good care of me, we were also always very competitive. My dad played both basketball and baseball up to the college level and he imbued his competitive nature on all of us. It was even a competition to see who could eat the fastest and get seconds at the dinner table! That competition continues to this day, usually on the golf course as both of my oldest brothers are good players.
We played every team sport known in our neighborhood but I wasn’t quite good enough in any of them to play beyond the Little League level. So I spent my high school years in the marching band playing trumpet. I started playing golf when I was about 10 with my parents and became more avid while in high school. I became good enough to play one competitive round for our Division III college golf team at Carnegie-Mellon but not good enough to ever have a second chance to do so.
I have always been a fan of Pittsburgh sports. You have to be – the city’s attitude is best summarized on a ubiquitous bumper sticker “Steelers – Love ‘em or leave town!”. It seems only natural that my wife, Kami, and I did a lot of dating at Pirate games in 1979, the year of Willie Stargell’s “We are Family” team and then took that advice to heart by getting married and becoming family in 1981. We left for Orlando the very next day to start our careers as engineers at Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin. Pittsburgh is a great town but it gets cold, snowy and gray for 3-4 months every year. In Florida, I can play golf year-round – very nice. I stuck it out at Lockheed in Orlando for 36 years, progressing from electrical engineer to group lead and eventually to the Director of Electrical Engineering and then Chief Engineer of one of our large sensor programs. It was challenging and high pressure all the way but I had the chance to work on some awesome systems, support our fantastic warfighters with the best technology and help solve some very hard technical problems along the way. Kami gave birth to our son Chris in 1987 and daughter Jessica in 1990 and did the bulk of the heavy lifting in raising them. She also picked up golf along the way and is now very active in the LGL at Grand Haven. Chris is married and living in Chicago and Jessica is now Jessica Castanon, married and living in Katy, TX, just west of Houston. She became a mother last year to our first granddaughter Emerie. We are excited to be with them (especially Emerie!) every chance we get.
Sometime around 2005, I read a short article in Golf Digest about someone who had just finished playing golf in all 50 states. I had about 14 completed at the time and decided to take on the challenge as my one and only bucket list item. I am now up to 41 states, completing Oregon last fall, with several GH members, and Oklahoma this summer. I would have had Rhode Island this year also for 42 but COVID intervened – maybe next year. It has been a great experience and given us the opportunity to see a lot of the country. For the record, my favorite course is Pebble Beach, by far, and the hardest course I’ve played is Bethpage Black on Long Island. Bethpage’s length, tough rough and small greens are pretty overwhelming to the average player. Tralee GC in Ireland is my favorite international course while Waterville, also in Ireland, holds down second spot in my personal hardest course ranking.
In 2015, we were looking for a place to get away from the pressure of my job and spend relaxing weekends so we bought a condo in Flagler Beach, aka Paradise. Within about a year, we realized just how much we hated to leave on Sundays to go back to Orlando. So we figured out how to pull off early retirement in 2017, moving permanently into our condo. It was quite the downsizing process to fit into 1120 sq. ft. but the view over the intracoastal makes it worthwhile.
Faith is very important to us and we have been very active in church throughout our lives. We are currently helping and attending at Parkview Church’s LPGA campus meeting in an elementary school near the LPGA community. We helped start it as an offshoot from Parkview Palm Coast (on Belle Terre) in 2018 and have been at it ever since. It’s been very rewarding this past year, especially, as we’ve been able to help so many people through our food drives and other activities and offer some hope in very challenging times.
We joined Grand Haven in 2018 and have really enjoyed playing the course and getting to know everyone. I goofed off the first two years but Mike Rowlands and the board have put me to work this year as Tournament Director. It’s more work than I thought, but part of that is my fault – I am a perfectionist in organizational matters, for sure. It has also given me a great opportunity to get to know many of you better and I look forward to that continuing through the 2020-21 year.
