Web Watcher - Links to women's golf few
Golf is a popular game all across Canada and its growing particularly
among women but you would never know sizing up sites on the World Wide
Web.
Figures from the 1999 Golf Participation in Canada Survey, conducted
by the Royal Canadian Golf Association, indicate that about 28 per cent
of golfers in Canada are women. The ratio of golfers that are women
is higher in the Prairies where about a third of golfers are women.
Unfortunately, there are few high quality websites that reflect the
interests of women. If you find any more, let saskgolfer.com know about
them:
Canadian
Woman Golfer - A broadbased webzine on woman golf in Canada
with several years of back copies of articles in the print magazine.
The Lady
Golfer - This U.S.-based website focuses on women's golf on
the web.
Golf
Online - This high quality megasite at golfonline offers up
tips, tour information and lots more, but no Canadian content.
Women's
Golf World - It's a collection of books, videos and other products
relating to women golfers.
Ladies
Golf in England - A look at womens golf in the 1890s and a visit
to Amy Pascoe, the current champion (Harper's Bazaar Magazine).
Canadian Ladies' Golf
Association - This pretty good site serves up the CLGA news
and a few other things of interest to the women golfer.
Ladies Professional
Golf Association - If you're interested in following professional
competitive golf, this is the place to be.
Women's Golf in
Saskatchewan,
1899-2000
As soon as there were golf courses in Saskatchewan to play on, women
began to enjoy the game. When the Regina Club inaugurated golf in the
province in 1899, the daughters of North West Mounted Police Commissioner
Perry were among its first members. Since then, women have played the
game in ever increasing numbers and with ever decreasing scores. They
have overcome difficulties, both natural and manmade, to achieve major
successes as both organizers and players.
Along with male golfers, women have had to struggle with Saskatchewan's
challenging climate. Courses are closed for at least six months every
winter, but even in the summers temperatures tend to vary widely between
too hot and too cold, and the wind blows vigorously. In August of 1981,
for example, the Wascana Country Club in Regina hosted the national
senior tournament for women over age 50 under very difficult conditions,
as the Leader-Post reported:
Last week, when there were no golf tournaments of any import happening
in town, there was no wind, no cold, and almost no rain. For a couple
of days there we were being baked. Then a national championship starts
up and the mercury plummets, the wind howls [up to 70 kilometres an
hour], and for one afternoon, the rain pours [causing the course to
be closed for over an hour in the middle of a round]. Through two
days of this atmospheric torture, the ladies [competing in the national
championship] took the conditions reluctantly but with all the grace
and composure at their disposal. . . Women who are used to shooting
in the high seventies and low 80s saw their scores rocket into the
high 90s and beyond.
Sometimes sections of courses are closed by flooding, such as the Regina
Golf Club, located along Wascana Creek near the RCMP training depot,
which can have the back nine covered first with ice flows and then with
rushing muddy water which damages both the bridges and the fairways.
Other times, especially in the 1930s, too little water was the problem,
as Dr. Ben Reid, historian of the Wascana Club in Regina, reported:
"To those who didn't live through it, it is hard to imagine the
plague of grasshoppers, the dust storms, the brassy hot sun and the
winds. Day after day, the sky gave no sign of clouds other than the
shine of grasshopper wings by the millions high in the sky. . . On
the golf course, carried by the wind, they became projectiles striking
like bullets penetrating any opening in clothing. . . . All forms
of green growth were consumed -- trees, grass and weeds as well as
crops. Combating hoppers on the golf course meant covering greens
with topsoil, exposing only a six foot circle with the hole in the
middle and changing the position of the hole when the grass was consumed.
Putting became a rapid stroke taken after clearing a path to the hole.
Long putts required extra haste. With the grasshoppers came the dust.
. . . The slowly desiccated fairways gave up their prairie wool reluctantly
to the drouth, heat and wind. Blades of grass were here and there,
but there also were cracks so wide that they caught thousands of balls."
During one tournament in the 30s, the woman refereeing the final match
wore goggles to protect her eyes from the blowing dust and had to look
for tracks made by rolling balls to locate them in drifts of topsoil
near fences on the course. There are of course many days when the weather
co-operates, but on the whole, the golf season is shorter and the wind
blows more strongly here than in most other areas of Canada, making
golfing conditions very difficult.
Another problem for Saskatchewan women golfers is their isolation from
other golfing centres. Within the province, they are split almost evenly
between the two large cities which are 250 kilometres apart, making
regularly competitions hard to arrange. For more variety, competitors
have to travel to adjacent provinces, trips that have 
a
cost in both time and money. In Ontario in 1994, for example, there
were over 35,000 women golfers affiliated with the Canadian Ladies Golf
Association (CLGA) through 328 clubs, most of them close together in
southern Ontario, while Saskatchewan had about 4,000 affiliated members
in 69 clubs, some as far north as Waskesiu in Prince Albert National
Park. Thus golfers here do not have as much competition, in terms of
either quantity or quality, as those from bigger provinces.
A third kind of problem faced by women is lack of access to some golf
courses at peak playing times. Apparently beginning in the 1950s, the
male executives of the largest private clubs in the cities passed rules
banning women from the course on weekend mornings and during certain
designated weekdays. The men claimed they were compensating for this
by also restricting men's access to the course during one weekday, usually
Tuesday, but there were no concessions for women on the weekends. The
club's regulations also barred women from becoming shareholders and
therefore voters at the annual meetings where these decisions were made,
so women had no way to attack these rules and the strongly held male
attitudes from which they sprang. Prince Albert golfer Eleanor Reid,
whose husband was a member of a well-known golfing family, summed up
the prevailing attitude:
"My husband was delighted that I became so interested in his sport --
but I still didn't play with him and I never was allowed to play on
weekends -- after all I had all week to play so I shouldn't clutter
up the course on weekends!!" This attitude assumed that women golfers
were all housewives with unlimited time to golf during working hours,
an idea that became increasingly outdated as more and more women joined
the labour force.
Since about 1990, these restrictive rules and attitudes have been challenged
for a variety of reasons. Some female members of private clubs have
threatened to go before the Human Rights Commission to force changes,
and have convinced male board members to open shareholding privileges,
which come with open access to the course, to women. As more public
courses, which have no gender restrictions, are opened, there is more
competition between clubs to increase their membership, so the private
clubs have changed their rules to attract women golfers to their facilities.
Many of the clubs need money to replace or improve facilities, and women
shareholders are coming to be regarded as a potential source of funds.
However, the attitudes of some older men about women on "their course
in their time" are harder to change than the rules, so there is still
not complete equality in access to the course.
Male attitudes about female golfers were one of several factors which
led women golfers to organize to run their own affairs. This type of
separate organization was a tradition in both Britain and eastern Canada,
and like many other traditions, was imported to western Canada. Golf
in the province was initially controlled by men who formed the Saskatchewan
Golf Association, the group which held the first provincial tournament
for women in 1914 in conjunction with the men's provincial competition.
This tournament was held annually under this arrangement until 1924,
when it was cancelled because the men wanted to hold a Western Canadian
championship at the same time as their provincial, and that left no
time for the women to play.
This cancellation occurred at the same time as the national Canadian
Ladies Golf Union was campaigning to expand from its existing membership
in eastern Canada. The national president, Ella Murray of Toronto, came
to Regina to speak to golfers here in 1926 and easily convinced them
to set up a Saskatchewan branch of the CLGU. This group took over the
running of the provincial tournament (a move that ensured that the women's
provincial tournament would be cancelled only when women decided to
do this) as well as other tasks, such as establishing pars on courses
which affiliated with the organization and distributing literature about
the rules of the game. They also sponsored exhibitions of the country's
top female golfers to help publicize the game.
Joining the national CLGU gave Saskatchewan women a chance to participate
in decision-making about golf, an opportunity which two Saskatchewan
women used to make an impact on the game. The first of these was Gladys
Rideout of Regina, a top competitive golfer who was provincial champion
six times, and who served as the first provincial president of the Saskatchewan
branch. At the end of the 1940s and in the early 1950s, Rideout began
suggesting that the national CLGU encourage girls to golf by staging
a national competition for them, like the annual competition held for
women. By 1955, her ideas prevailed: the first national junior championship
for both provincial teams and individuals was held, and Rideout was
elected to a three-year term as the first Junior Development Chairman
which gave her a chance to determine the rules and conditions for this
tournament. Initially, juniors were under age 21, but this was later
reduced to under 19.
In the 1970s, another Saskatchewan woman, Irene Mackenzie of Saskatoon,
had a major impact at the national level as well. When the national
women's championships were held in Saskatoon in 1967, the CLGU followed
its tradition of choosing its president from the host city by electing
Mackenzie. However, she found the experience completely frustrating
because she had no actual power to do anything except run the tournament;
the real power rested with a permanent executive committee whose members
all came from Toronto.
Mackenzie decided to reform the way the national CLGA functioned. She
returned to the board in 1969, first as handicap and rules chairman,
then as vice president, and finally as president in 1974. She accomplished
her goals of giving actual power to the president and allowing women
from the smaller provinces to have a larger say in the organization.
The central office was moved from Toronto to Ottawa, away from the traditional
management group, and an executive director responsible to the elected
executive was hired. The annual meeting was held in a different province
each year to improve communication with all regions in Canada. The CLGA
was also able to start a variety of new programs because they began
receiving a lot of federal grant money.
As CLGA president, Mackenzie travelled overseas to represent Canada
at international golf tournaments and meetings. Canada was considered
a leader in systems of handicapping players and rating golf courses,
so Mackenzie was in demand as a speaker to explain these activities.
She also was in charge of affairs for the Canadian golf team, which
had her doing a variety of jobs such as chauffeuring the team in New
Zealand where they drive on the other side of the road and convincing
Quebec golfer Jocelyn Bourassa of the need to curtsy to New Zealand's
Governor General. Thus a Saskatchewan woman made an impact on both the
national and international golf scene, and was rewarded for all her
achievements by being nominated for a national-level Air Canada volunteer
award in 1975.
Saskatchewan has also produced several women golfers who have made
an impact nationally. The first of these was a teenager from Rosetown
who was an almost instant star. In 1936, one of the entries in the provincial
tournament at the Wascana Club in Regina was fifteen-year-old Margaret
Esson, who had previously played only on nine-hole, sand greens courses,
with a set of only four clubs. On the first day of the tournament, Esson
shot the third-best score, a 95, and then proceeded to defeat much more
experienced players such as five-time provincial champion Gladys Rideout,
in head-to-head match play competition. In the final, her shots were
described by a Leader-Post reporter as "deadly" as she defeated
a Saskatoon player who was about ten years older. At her mother's suggestion,
she played the final match with her hair in curlers so she would look
nice at the presentation tea, and wasn't the least intimidated by the
large crowd of spectators who came out to watch the match.
The following two years, the provincial CLGU arranged for Esson to
be a member of the Saskatchewan team which travelled to the national
championships. In Winnipeg in 1937, she won two matches against players
from Edmonton and Vancouver, lost in an extra-hole playoff against the
eventual national champion, and was second in the country in the long-drive
contest. In 1938, she did even better, defeating a member of Britain's
international team and a strong Vancouver player to advance to the quarterfinals
against another British team member, who defeated her on the 16th hole.
By this time she was the darling of newspaper reporters who featured
her in nationally-circulated wire service reports which highlighted
both her golfing skill and her good sportsmanship, win or lose. They
also provided details about her life, such as her nickname Puddin, her
outfit which included her dad's shirt with the tail cut off, and her
comment that she didn't smoke or wear bright nail polish because "dad
and mum would have a fit." Thus, a prairie teenager became the country's
darling and a ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak depression atmosphere.
The 1938 Canadian championships were the high point of Esson's career.
The outbreak of World War II caused the cancellation of most provincial
and national tournaments, so her competitive chances were limited. By
the time competition resumed after the war, she was married to Regina
lawyer William Elliott and chose not to travel to tournaments most of
the time. Her skills remained sharp, however, and she won the championship
at the Wascana Club most years when she competed. When the national
senior championship came to her home club in 1981, she entered and placed
seventeenth in a field which included about a hundred of the best players
from all of North America.
Two Saskatchewan women have been able to make golf their career. One
is Nancy Moen Harvey from Swift Current. She was one of the province's
top junior players by 1980 and was ranked tenth in the country in that
age group. She then attended Arizona State University on a golf scholarship,
and after her graduation qualified as both a teaching and competing
golf professional. In 1989, she began competing on the Ladies Professional
Golf Association Tour, the LPGA which you can see on TV most weekends,
against the best players in the world, and has seen her rank move up
every year, to 105th place in 1995. By January 2000, her professional
earnings totalled $US470,452, placing her 163rd in the all-time money
list. She is proving that a golfer who started in Saskatchewan can compete
at the highest level.
Darlene Selander of Prince Albert has found a different way to make
a living as a golfer. After a very successful junior career which saw
her tied for fourth in the national tournament in 1986, she won a full
golf scholarship to the University of Hawaii. She attended there for
three semesters, enjoying travelling to competitions all along the American
west coast, but she dropped out because she was not receiving high-level
coaching. She then returned to Saskatchewan and applied for admission
into the five-year apprentice program run by the Canadian Golfers Association
for teaching professionals. She signed on with the pro at the Riverside
Club in Saskatoon and successfully completed the program to become the
province's first woman golf professional. Since qualifying, she has
taught at a variety of clubs around Saskatoon and has been especially
helpful to the CLGA with its junior program. She loves her work but
has found one drawback: there are very few competitions available for
women professionals so she finds it hard to keep her competitive skills
sharp.
Saskatchewan's two most successful women golfers have chosen to compete
as amateurs rather than professionals. One of these is Saskatoon's Barbara
Turnbull Danaher. Danaher learned the game by taking lessons from her
future husband, Saskatoon pro Bill Turnbull, who switched her from left-
to right-handed clubs. She practised this new swing for nearly a year
before she actually started to play. This approach obviously worked
because she has won ten provincial championships between 1962 and 1983,
and has been senior provincial champion five times. She was ranked in
the top ten nationally in both those categories many times, and was
the finalist in the national championships in Moncton, New Brunswick,
in 1969, losing to Canada's most frequent champion, Marlene Stewart
Streit. Her comments to reporters during that championship highlighted
the plight of all Saskatchewan's serious competitive golfers: she noted
that she was hindered by the lack of wind and by her inexperience in
top-level competition. She has also had other highlights in her golfing
career. In the early 1970s, she was twice chosen a member of Canada's
international teams, travelling to competitions first in Spain and then
in Australia. In 1967, she was a member of the Saskatchewan team which
placed second in the national championships, and in 1985, she was a
member of the Saskatchewan senior team which won the Canadian team championship
for the first time ever, a feat they repeated in 1990. As well as playing,
she has also served on the executive of the Saskatchewan CLGA and has
been especially active in junior development.
Regina's counterpart and often teammate to Danaher is Joanne Goulet.
She had a different exposure to the game, first encountering it when
at age nine she began making money by retrieving used golf balls from
Wascana Creek and selling them back to golfers. She told a Leader-Post
reporter how she actually took up the game at age fourteen:
Because there were six of us in 10 years, the tradition in our family
was that for Christmas, us kids got things we really needed, like
pyjamas and mitts and toques and things, but that for our birthdays,
we could have anything we wanted -- up to $5.00, no questions asked.
And I remember asking my father for golf clubs and he went down to
Brown's Auction and bought four clubs and a bag for $1.50. That left
me $3.50, and for $3.00 I bought a membership at the Gyro [a public,
sand-green course in Regina]. And that's how I got started.
Three years later in 1952, she won the first of her eight provincial
championships, the last of which she claimed in 1985. She has also won
two junior championships, four senior titles, and an incredible thirty-two
Regina city titles spread over five different decades.
Like Danaher, Goulet has also done well at the national level. She
was a member of both national senior championship teams which won in
1985 and 1990. She was on the amateur team which placed second in Canada
in the 1967 national team competition, and was the second-best individual
player in the country that year as well, one of many times she has ranked
in the national top ten.
Goulet's most impressive victories came as a member of Canada's international
team in 1964. She played in the British Open tournament, one of the
most prestigious tournaments in the world, on a course which the Ontario
members of the team described as "an enormous hayfield," "burnt and
brown," with bunkers "almost impossible to deal with." Conditions were
made even worse by a stiff wind blowing off the English Channel. Under
these conditions Goulet won two matches on the first day of the tournament,
one against a British player with significant international experience.
The next morning, she overcame a five-hole deficit against an American
to win on the nineteenth hole and reach the semifinals, held after only
a short lunch break. Goulet was two holes ahead with only five to play
when exhaustion and nerves finally caught up with her. Her British opponent
had evened the match by the eighteenth hole and defeated her when Goulet
three-putted on the twentieth.
Shortly after her British triumph Goulet received several honours such
as a gold watch from the City of Regina, selection as Saskatchewan Sportswoman
of the Year, and a lifetime membership from her golf club. More recently,
the city has also granted her a unique award for both her victories
and her decades of work in teaching and promoting golf around the province.
In 1992, they renamed a golf course in north Regina after her, making
the Joanne Goulet Golf Course the only one in Canada named after a woman
and thus recognizing her amazing record. That action also acknowledges
that she and other champions and organizers like her have, in fact,
made golf their game and are doing all they can to allow other women
to duplicate their successes.
People wanting more information about women's golf in this province
can find it in Breaking 100: A Century of Women's Golf in Saskatchewan.
This book by Sandra Bingaman was published by the Saskatchewan Section
of the CLGA in 1997. It traces the development of the game decade by
decade, looking at such details as outfits, equipment, and club social
activities as well as the careers of the top players and organizers,
which are explained using quotations like those in this article. Breaking
100 also includes one hundred illustrations dating back to the turn
of the 20th century and lists of all women's provincial champions and
team members. This book can be purchased for $12 from the Saskatchewan
Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in Regina and the Saskatchewan Golf Association
office in Saskatoon.
