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By Jim Dodson
Golf With the Girls
The first woman I ever played golf with was
my mom. I was thirteen, a newbie to the game, and, well, it didn’t end happily. I accidentally threw her out of a golf cart and broke her arm.
The next woman I teed it up with was my fiancée at Bald Head Island in the summer of 1984. We were young and in love. The course was a decade-old George Cobb design that felt as wild as it played. My wife-to-be, alas, found the flora and gators far more interesting than chasing Old Man Par through the heat and gnats and bailed out for a bike ride to see Old Baldy after just nine holes. So, you see, my track record playing golf with the gals is, shall we say, not entirely inspiring — or for that matter pain-free. Last December, however, on a day that was colder than a witch’s pitching wedge, I managed to hook up with a pack of seven hearty women, you’ll please pardon the expression, at the redoubtable Wilmington Municipal Golf Course, one of the great civic golf courses of America, for a day of golf with the Cape Fear/Wilmington area Executive Women’s Golf Association, a rapidly growing chapter of the thriving national organization that’s brought tens of thousands of women into the game of golf since its inception in 1991. Since that time the EWGA has become, in fact, the largest women’s golf organization in the country by offering a wide range of friendly organized events, learning programs, and social and business networking opportunities. Today, the EWGA has chapters in every state and several foreign countries. Last December’s outing was a part of a regular group that meets at least once a week at Cape Fear area clubs. Fortunately I’ve lost the card from that frigid afternoon — my game was in deep hibernation that day — though what wasn’t lost on me was the unmistakable bonhomie and passion these gals share for the game of golf and each other. Afterward, several of us sat around enjoying adult refreshment while David Donovan explained the pending closure of the municipal course for a comprehensive million dollar renovation by architect John Fought, which will restore fairways and green complexes to something more akin to what Donald Ross originally had in mind, doubling the size of greens, rebuilding bunkers and adding vital irrigation. Delays in the final approvals from the city meant the project will commence this month and allow the course to reopen sometime in the early fall. For the beloved muni’s loyal patrons who clock more than 55,000 rounds a year, including the ladies of Wilmington’s chapter of the EWGA, this can only be viewed as a gift to the golfers of the Port City. Which is exactly why, when the golf girls of the EWGA offered a mulligan by inviting me to participate in their annual “Swing into Spring” golf outing on Bald Head Island in March, I jumped at the chance to redeem my sorry play at the muni, find out more about this great organization, and get another look at Bald Head Island Golf Club, which recently underwent a major restoration by awardwinning Sunset Beach-based architect Tim Cate and continues to earn strong reviews in the golf press. Links magazine, for instance, rated Bald Head’s restora-
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Salt • May 2014
tion second only to that of legendary Pinehurst No. 2. I was eager to see for myself what I remembered from playing there thirty years ago. Also, and maybe more importantly, I needed another dose of golf with the girls of the EWGA. This go-round I found myself playing with founding member Ellen Gregory, former all-state softball star Vickie Blankenship, and sharing a riding cart with Shannon Benedict, the organization’s current president and a woman who became so addicted to the game after taking it up at age 52, she now drives all the way from White Lake to participate in EWGA’s busy roster of events. “For me,” she said as we joggled along the opening fairway, “the allure was always to do something out of doors, especially after my children grew up and my husband, Chris, and I sold our insurance business. Chris was the serious golfer in the family but once he started teaching me, I’m the one who got hooked on it. Discovering the EWGA was perfect because it gave me instant friends and playing partners.” I asked if she still played with Chris. I’ve known some husbands and wives to be a volatile mix on the golf course, especially when the guy isn’t smart enough to keep his yap shut and not try to coach a woman as she sets up to hit her ball. This is a lesson I learned with my second wife, I confessed to Shannon, the one who in fact fell hard for the game. “Funny you should ask that. Chris has a small game preserve he manages and spends his time on now. I’m the one who lives to play golf. Then again, we have so much fun, why wouldn’t I?” Ellen Gregory, who served as a founding member and the organization’s first president, explained the local club started in 2005 and has grown slowly to a current membership of about seventy-five members, many of whom regularly make designated golf days, clinics, special events and weekly socials like “Nine and Dine,” an afternoon outing for golf and supper at a number of local clubs that host the group on a rotating basis. At least once and often twice a month during warm-weather months, members travel on Saturdays to play at clubs as far-flung as Myrtle Beach and Jacksonville. “It’s a great time for girl talk,” Vickie Blankenship – a songwriter and music producer who resides in Myrtle Beach – informed me shortly before pounding a drive twenty yards past my pretty good one on the stunningly handsome sixth hole. For her part, Ellen Gregory also was a late-comer to the game, taking it up at age 50 just before she and husband Gill retired to Wilmington in 2004. “EWGA was also a godsend to me. I moved here not knowing a soul — or any women who played golf. Not only have I made a lot of wonderful friends this way, I’ve gotten to play some outstanding golf courses.” Gregory’s late love affair with the game — coming on the heels of a successful career in statistics and marketing — recently prompted her to sign on as the executive director of the Carol S. Petrea Youth Golf Foundation, an umbrella organization that oversees four different First Tee chapters and the Carolina Leadership Academy in Shallotte. “We basically have one or two travel days every month — Saturdays of competition where we’re invited to play at really fine clubs from the Grand Strand as far north as Hampstead and White Lake,” Shannon Benedict amplified, moments before she smartly struck a 6-iron approach shot onto the seventh green — prompting her playing partners to do something I’d never The Art & Soul of Wilmington