Jeffrey Flax
In August of last year, Jewish News extended best wishes and mazel tov to local attorney Jeffrey Flax for qualifying for the Masters Golf Division in the 2022 Israeli Maccabi Games (formally called The Maccabiah Games, a quadrennial Jewish Olympics). As of press time, Flax and his family (wife Mona and their two boys Jeremy and Harris and Harris’s partner) are now in Israel for—hopefully—many holes-in-one. The U.S. Masters Golf Team (for 50 and over) consists of six players who have qualified from all over the U.S.
An attorney at Childress, Flax, Levine, P.C. in Virginia Beach and the current Cavalier Golf Club Champion (Cavalier Golf and Yacht Club of Virginia Beach), Flax has been playing with his father since the age of 10 and “fell in love with the game.” He played college golf at the University of Georgia and has played competitively on a statewide level since he was a teenager.
“I still play five to seven statewide tournaments each summer, so my preparation for Maccabi has been the same as I do for other events.” So far this year, he’s played two tournaments, and he tries to play once a week as well as practice one afternoon a week during tournament season.
Flax qualified and played in the United Sates Amateur in 1975, was a quarterfinalist several times in the Virginia State Senior Amateur (for 65 and over), and won the Virginia State Super Senior Amateur in 2020.
How did he get involved in the Maccabi Games? It all started in 2017 when he was invited to go to London to play in the Transatlantic Maccabi Cup. “It was a Ryder Cup-style competition between a team from the U.S. against a team from Great Britain and Ireland, a really wonderful experience. I also have two friends who have played in the Maccabi games in Israel as golfers who said I needed to try to qualify because it is an amazing event.”
Besides the competition, he says, “Golf teaches you to be responsible for yourself, how to deal with adversity, and how to be respectful to your fellow competitors. All of those things are necessary in your personal and business life.”
–Debbie Burke