{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | Tyler Strafaci has spent the last year retracing his grandfather’s footsteps from winning the North and South Amateur to competing in the Masters Tournament. While he’s already surpassed his grandfather by winning the U.S. Amateur, qualifying for the Walker Cup team and will forge his own path as a professional, Tyler will be hard-pressed to match the “American Dream” that Frank Strafaci Sr. fashioned from whole cloth.
“I never got to meet my grandfather (who died in 1988), but he’s been a very integral part of my life,” said 22-year-old Tyler. “My grandfather came from nothing. His family came from Italy, and just came from nothing, and he built a great career, became a great amateur golfer. Played in two Masters, won the Pub Links, finished ninth in the U.S. Open.
“So he had quite the unbelievable career coming from no money. He was very inspirational. So just being in the Masters and playing a tournament that he did, it’s a dream come true. It brings me closer to him.”
Frank Strafaci Sr. was the Forrest Gump of golf. He grew up in an immigrant household with five brothers and two sisters on a farm in Brooklyn, New York, adjacent to a nine-hole military course that eventually became Dyker Beach Golf Club. He dominated the Metropolitan amateur golf scene and ended up a ubiquitous figure in pictures with celebrities and in historic moments.
“The stories my dad would tell were usually about people,” said Frank Strafaci Jr. “Being in that area he played with presidents, he played with mobsters, he played with just a lot of characters and historical figures through the years and characters in and out of golf. His connection with golf and its history started in middle ’30s and went through the day he died.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS UNLOCKED STORY AT GGP+... AND USE COUPON CODE GGP48 TO SAVE 20% ON AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION