About Grasshopper Golf Tours

Founded in 1981, Grasshopper Golf Tours is one of the oldest and most trusted golf travel specialists in the industry. For more than four decades, we have helped golfers experience some of the world’s finest courses, with a special focus on the legendary links golf in Great Britain and Ireland. Over the years, our clients have traveled with us to destinations including France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.


At Grasshopper Golf Tours, no two trips are ever the same. Every itinerary is thoughtfully customized around our clients’ interests, combining exceptional golf with carefully selected accommodations, transportation, sightseeing opportunities, and dining experiences. We take pride in creating golf journeys that are as unique as the people taking them.


More than 20,000 golfers have traveled with Grasshopper Golf Tours since the company was founded by John Bitner, a Chicago-area businessman who turned his lifelong passion for golf and travel into a career. Today, the next generation of leadership, Matt Harrison and Ben Davis of Lexington, Kentucky, continue that tradition of personalized service and attention to detail.

Portrait of a man in a striped polo shirt against a plain light background

Matt Harrison

CEO

Matt grew up in the suburbs of Chicago a short bike ride from the Grasshopper Golf Tours office. Matt loved sports growing up and started every day with an in-depth read of the Chicago Tribune sports page. His dad was an avid golfer, so along with the traditional sports (basketball, football, and baseball), Matt picked up golf at an early age.

 

Matt and Michelle have been married for 35 years and met at Calvin College. They have been married for 28 years, and have three children- Ian, Conor, and Maggie. When not in the office or playing golf, Matt enjoys reading, playing and watching basketball, and cooking dinner for his family.

Portrait of a man in a striped button-up shirt against a plain light background

Ben Davis

Office Manager

Ben was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky and began playing golf when he was three years old. He graduated in 2017 from Centre College in Danville, KY with a B.A. in Politics and played four years on the golf team.

 

Out of college, Ben spent one year interning for a sports management company based in Lexington that operated over 200 college basketball games, two Web.com Tour events and one PGA Tour event. He spent the next year working in research and development in the equine industry before joining the Grasshopper team in April 2019.

 

Ben enjoys playing golf with friends and has started to plan annual golf trips around the country. He has a love for horse racing and all University of Kentucky athletics.

John Bitner

Founder, Retired

Grasshopper was founded in 1981 by John Bitner, who left his career in the corporate world downtown Chicago to combine his real passions – travel and golf – in a profession. John describes himself as a “garden variety” MBA commuting into the city for work who decided to take a risk. At that time, there were only a handful of links golf travel specialists in the country. John started the business through some personal contacts he had at some country clubs in the Chicago area.

 

In the early years John went on each trip acting as a host and guide. This allowed him to develop first-hand expertise of all the good links courses in Scotland and Ireland along with the best hotels and restaurants near each course. As the business grew John was no longer able to personally accompany each trip, but maintained excellent relationships with clients. He also traveled in the off season to maintain knowledge of and relationships with our overseas vendors.