A golfing odyssey: Couple’s final round in 50-state journey is at Baker City’s Quail Ridge

Published 12:45 pm Monday, September 12, 2022

Mike and Sharyl Sheftz were destined to celebrate half a century of marriage with wooden tees in their pockets and putters in their hands.

But it’s only coincidence that they ended up in Baker City.

Yet there they were, the two retired Marine Corps master gunnery sergeants, standing on the first tee at Quail Ridge Golf Course on the sunny but chilly morning of Friday, Sept. 9, with temperatures in the low 40s.

The couple were getting ready to complete a golfing odyssey that started a couple decades ago but became an actual quest much more recently.

Just a year ago, in September 2021, the Sheftzes were returning to their home in Pensacola, Florida, from a golfing vacation.

They had been playing in Branson, Missouri, and Sharyl said it occurred to her that they had recently golfed in nine states.

Then she considered the other states they had visited in previous years.

And suddenly the idea was born.

“Why don’t we just do all 50 of them?” Sharyl, 74, remembers saying.

When 2022 began the couple was only a bit past the halfway mark, with 23 states remaining where they had yet to hit a 5-iron.

In May they traveled to Alaska, played a couple rounds and made the long journey back to the opposite corner of the U.S.

“We also went dogsledding,” Mike, who’s 72, said.

In July they made a swing through the Midwest, taking in six states.

August found them in the Northeast, where they bagged seven more.

Finally, as summer waned, the couple were down to three — Montana, Idaho and Oregon.

There was, Mike said, no intention to end with that trio.

“Oregon just kind of ended up being the last one,” he said.

The couple first flew to Utah, where Sharyl grew up. Much of her family lives in Salt Lake City.

On Wednesday, Sept. 7, the Sheftzes played a course in Anaconda, Montana. After wrapping up their round they drove to Twin Falls, Idaho.

On Thursday morning they played Canyon Springs-Twin Falls Golf Club, a scenic layout in the Snake River Canyon below the famous Perrine Bridge.

That afternoon they arrived in Baker City, a town neither had ever visited, 882 holes down and just 18 left to play.

Mike said they started planning this last trip a couple months ago.

They prefer courses in smaller cities, and after settling on Canyon Springs they plotted a course west to Oregon.

Although they could have completed their 50-state epic just a few miles from the border, at Ontario, Mike said that during their research they were taken with Baker City, with its historic downtown and connection with the Oregon Trail, and with Quail Ridge, the city-owned course on the city’s hilly south side.

“It’s a good-looking golf course, and the reviews were good,” Mike said.

Both Mike and Sharyl knocked their first drives straight down the fairway.

Accompanied by Sharyl’s brother, Lynn Steele, and her brother-in-law, Allen Moser, they headed for the fairway.

Before marriage there was war.

Mike, who grew up in New Jersey, and Sharyl, the Utahan, both enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1967.

Within months Mike was in Vietnam, where he served for about 13 months.

Both Mike and Sharyl were golfers before they met.

But not long before, in Mike’s case.

He had returned from his tour in Vietnam and was stationed at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base in Southern California.

One Friday in January 1971 his sergeant asked for volunteers interested in helping with security at a professional golf tournament that Vice President Spiro Agnew was planning to attend.

Mike was 21, and he had never played golf.

But he figured it would be interesting.

When he and the other Marines arrived, in uniform, they met some of the golfers.

One introduced himself and thanked the Marines.

“He said, ‘hi, I’m Arnold Palmer.’ I had no clue who Arnold Palmer was,” Mike said.

Palmer was at the time perhaps the most famous golfer in the world.

Notwithstanding that inauspicious introduction to the game, Mike has been an inveterate golfer pretty much ever since.

Sharyl’s, meanwhile, played golf in college.

But the sport turned out to be a lot more than just a shared interest for the couple.

Their first date, in October 1972, was at a golf course.

A couple months later, on Dec. 2, 1972, they were married.

But not in a church.

They exchanged vows on the 18th green at Cherry Point, North Carolina.

Cherry Point is also the site of a Marine Corps air base.

Over their 50 years of marriage the Sheftzes have played thousands of rounds of golf together.

Sharyl retired from the Marine Corps while raising the couple’s two children, son Michael and daughter Shenandoah.

But after several years she returned to the military, serving in the Marine Corps Reserves for 20 years.

Mike retired from the Marine Corps on June 1, 1998. He was working in the Pentagon at the time.

During their just-completed nationwide golfing tour, neither managed the ultimate feat of a hole-in-one.

He said they average around 85 to 90 for an 18-hole round.

“We’re not great golfers,” Mike said. “We just love the game.”

And although their odyssey ended when their last putts dropped into the cup on the 18th hole at Quail Ridge, their affinity for golf will go on.

“We’re going to continue to play golf,” Mike said. “We’ve got a big, beautiful country with a lot of things to see.”