Ladies On The Links

If you build it, they will come…this motto came true at Los Robles Greens GC in Thousand Oaks, CA in the summer of 2007!!

The idea to have a ladies golf league started in April, when a female student said to Sally Quinlan, Director of Instruction at Los Robles Greens GC, “Why don’t you start a league for women this summer?”

And so a flier was created and emailed out to the Los Robles Greens GC mailing list and Sally’s email list of lady clinic students, and there was a small newspaper article announcing the league. The object of the league was to have fun and help newer women golfers to get out on the golf course and to meet other women golfers to play with in the future.

The flights were catered to the beginning woman golfer: A flight (capable of shooting under 100), B flight (capable of shooting between 100 – 115), C flight (played on the course more than ten times), and D flight (played on the course less than ten times). Rules of play allowed for A flight to play the ball up, and all other flights to be able to tee the ball up, anywhere, anytime. Scramble was the format that was utilized as there were far many more D flighters than there were A flighters and this would keep up the pace of play.

John Barr, General Manager at Los Robles Greens GC said he would be delighted if seven women signed up for a league that would fill a normally slow golf time at the course, Monday evenings at 5pm. Sally Quinlan said she thought maybe fifteen ladies would be a good start. And Suzi Haydon, Event Coordinator ambitiously carved out five tee time spots to allow for 20 women in our kick off event on Monday night, June 18, 2007.

Immediately the registrations began to come in at a steady pace. Word of mouth traveled as fast as women at a shopping mall sale! Suzi would update Sally and John, saying “now we have 10 summer league registrants” etc. Well ten became twenty, which became thirty, which became forty, and before we knew it, we had 80 women signed up for our kick off night!

Sally called upon some junior golfer volunteers to help guide the newer women golfers around the first evening. Kids greeted the ladies at the bag drop and directed them to the pro shop where they paid to play and received a free range token and golf towel for joining the league.

Then the kids helped the women down to the range and back to the putting green and on down to the first tee. The atmosphere was helpful and welcoming, and the tee off and first evening went very smoothly.

So many women stayed around after the first night of nine holes for drinks and food that for the remaining weeks, we had to have chef around to handle all the food orders. Jonathan Greek, Head Chef created wine and cheese specials which sold out each week.

Sally asked for one lady golfer to volunteer to help with tee time pairings and another to assist with points and scoring. Always in emails, we asked the ladies how the league was going and all responses were favorable, and there were some great suggestions also. One was that our league needed a name, and so all the women voted to call the league Ladies on the Links. The runner up name for the league was “Chicks with Sticks” …it was a very close second!

Slow play has probably been the biggest challenge, with the first groups finishing nine holes in two hours, but the last groups finishing near three. Not to mention, the registrations never stopped and to date there are nearly 100 ladies on the league email list. So Sally continues to educate the women about pace of play by email and the A flight players are constantly encouraged to be the leaders and to keep up the pace of play in their groups. And Kay Trietsh, Los Robles Greens Starter goes out and notices gaps in the groups and keeps play moving as best she can each Monday night.

One week, there was a young man at Los Robles who had been playing golf for eight years who commented “I have never seen that many women at a golf course before.”

Let’s hope that through course familiarity and requests already for a fall and spring ladies league that this many women on the golf course might become more of the norm for the future of all golf courses.