When Stephenie Harris walked off the course at Gulph Mills Golf Club on July 21, she had just won her first major state golf championship, by seven strokes.
The Buckingham resident finished the two-day Pennsylvania State Senior Amateur Championship with a score of 158, or 10 over par, after years of working to compete at the highest levels of the sport while navigating the demands of her business, family and personal loss.
“This recent victory was a validation that all the work I’ve put in, all the changes I’ve made over the last year have really brought me a level of calm and joy that allows me to be able to focus and achieve what I’ve really wanted to achieve for so long,” Harris said.
The win was the 56-year-old’s first major state victory, but it was the culmination of nearly a decade of competing in national and international tournaments. From 2017 through last year, Harris has qualified for nine USGA, including four U.S. Senior Women’s Opens, and this past year has competed in three international tournaments.
“The win is fleeting,” she said. “It’s the feeling that this is what I needed to do to play my best and it just happened that I won.”
Harris’ connection to the area and to golf began long before she competed nationally.
She grew up in Furlong and attended Buckingham Elementary School, Buckingham Friends School, Holicong Middle School and Central Bucks High School East. Her family owns the equestrian facility Fox Heath in Furlong, where she grew up on 80 acres.
Her father has since died, and her mother, now 79, continues to run the farm, which offers riding instruction, summer camps and boarding.
Harris first discovered golf during a fifth-grade class camping trip. One of her classmates brought a bag of balls and a wedge, and the children took turns hitting.
“When it was my turn on my third shot, it was magic,” Harris recalled. “It was like a lightning bolt of amazement and joy. I thought, ‘This is so amazing. I really love this.’”
She returned home talking about golf, and a woman at the farm gave her some clubs. Harris began hitting balls around the property, and her interest quickly grew.
As a child, her father would also drop her off at the Bucks Club in Jamison to play golf.
Golf eventually became less central to Harris’ life. After school, she moved to New York and spent her 20s and 30s selling wine and representing benchmark wineries from around the world. Golf was expensive, so she had little opportunity to compete.
That changed in her late 30s.
Harris was introduced to a professional at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, when she was 38. She began receiving more advanced instruction and started competing at 43.
Four years later, in 2017, she qualified for her first USGA championship at age 47.
“The level of competition was far greater than I had experienced, and I realized that I had a lot of work to do,” she said.
Since then, Harris has spent years learning the intricacies of tournament golf, from course management and preparation to maintaining her focus when things go wrong.
“So many of the women who I competed against played collegiate golf at a very high level,” Harris said. “I spent my 20s and 30s selling wine and representing benchmark wineries from around the world, so I wasn’t immersed in a competitive environment at that level.”
Harris returned to her family farm in Furlong in December 2019. Her return coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and her father becoming ill.
She also started her own business, Sugar Bottom Hemp, a farm-based CBD company dedicated to helping people and pets find natural relief and balance, on the Fox Heath property. She is also a realtor, meaning golf has had to fit around her professional responsibilities.
Her return home brought her back to local golf, and she eventually joined the Philadelphia Cricket Club, where she remains a member.
The past several years brought Harris another significant challenge.
Tanya, her wife of 14 years, became seriously ill and died in February 2024. Harris had continued competing during Tanya’s illness but said she had limited emotional energy to draw on when something went wrong on the course.
“Golf was my way to distract myself and to give myself a mental time out,” Harris said.
At the same time, the people she met through golf helped her process her grief.
“Everyone carries something that they have worked through that has been life-changing,” she said. “There’s not one person you meet who hasn’t had that.”
Harris began working with mental coaches Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, learning techniques to remain focused and present during competition. She also trains with Meaghan Francella at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, who helped take her swing to another level.
“I was able to walk into my bigger tournaments and be much more present,” Harris said.
The Pennsylvania State Senior Amateur tournament, held July 20-21, became an opportunity to put those lessons into practice.
Harris had competed in the British Senior Amateur earlier in July, where she shot 1 over par to make the cut in a highly competitive international field. The experience showed her she could perform at that level, but she needed to maintain her focus throughout the tournament.
At Gulph Mills, she concentrated on playing her own game.
“I needed to stick to my game plan,” she said. “I needed to be very focused on being in the present.”
Harris particularly enjoyed playing Gulph Mills, a Donald Ross-designed course that she considers one of the region’s top courses.
Her caddie also played an important role. Harris did not want to know where she stood on the leaderboard, and her caddie helped keep her focused without allowing her to get ahead of herself.
Harris said her biggest challenge was avoiding distractions, something she had spent months working to overcome.
“I didn’t have any excuses,” she said. “This was my time to go out and have fun and do the best I can.”
She did exactly that.
Harris finished seven strokes ahead of the field, earning the state senior amateur title and giving the Philadelphia Cricket Club a trophy that will be displayed in its clubhouse for the year.
For Harris, the victory represents years of learning to compete, a return to her family farm and the personal challenges she has faced along the way.
“Much of it is not just about winning,” Harris said. “It’s the execution, being able to have that marker that says, yes, you were able to do all the things that you are striving to do.”
Harris is currently in Michigan competing in her fourth USGA Senior Women’s Open.
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