If mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, as Noel Coward suggested, who goes out to a Mississippi golf course in August?
The finest women amateur golfers in the world, that’s who.
Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point will host the USGA Women’s Amateur Aug. 5-11, 20 years since the club hosted its first national USGA event, the U.S. Women’s Open in 1999. Tuesday, Old Waverly Director of Golf Chris Jester visited the Columbus Rotary Club to share details of the event.
“August is probably not the ideal time of year for a golf event here, but we’re excited,” Jester said. “We’ll be ready and it will be a great event.”
Hosting a USGA Championship is no small honor, especially for a course located in a small market such as West Point. Whatever reservations the USGA may have had about taking an event that draws golfers from all over the world to West Point were emphatically put to rest in 1999.
That was the year Old Waverly cemented its reputation as one of the country’s top golf courses after hosting the U.S. Women’s Open, the top event in women’s golf.
“It broke the record for attendance at the time,” said Jester, who arrived at Old Waverly just a month after Juli Inkster captured the championship that provided Old Waverly world-wide exposure.
“Given that history, hosting the Women’s Amateur really rang true for us,” Jester said.
‘It takes a village’
Hosting the tournament will mean giving the golf course over to the USGA for two weeks as it sets up the course and all the logistics needed to conduct its championship. In the meantime, Old Waverly is getting ready with its own preparations.
“We’ve not had to do much to the golf course itself,” Jester said. “We’ve narrowed some fairways and we’ll be adding some intermediate rough. At tournament time, the USGA will want the primary rough to be two inches and the greens should roll at 11 (the speed of a putted ball measured by a device called a Stimpmeter.)”
The largest part of the preparations are devoted to putting together a group of 300 to 400 volunteers needed to conduct the tournament.
“It really does take a village,” Jester said. “We’ll need volunteers in lots of areas — marshals, spotters, standard bearers, walking scorers, scoreboard volunteers, even caddies. We’ll probably have 30 caddie requests. We’ll need volunteers to help with transportation, registration, hospitality and in the event headquarters.”
To volunteer, go to www.oldwaverly.com.
For Jester and Old Waverly, giving up the golf course for those two weeks in August is an easy decision.
“First of all, anything we can do to grow our game, we want to do,” he said. “We’ll have over 40 hours of live coverage from Fox Sports. That kind of exposure is great for our game and for the next generation of women golfers. We’re always trying to replenish our membership. The average age of the players in the tournament is 19. Players as young as 12 have qualified and played in this event.”
The field will consist of 156 players, most of whom will earn their way into the field through qualifying tournament held in July all across the country.
While the focus will be on the golf club, the benefits will extend throughout the area.
In 1999, the Women’s Open generated an estimated $3 million in economic impact. That figures to be even higher 20 years later.
“It really is a Golden Triangle event,” Jester said. “We will not only have those 156 players, but will have their caddies, their families, coaches, USGA people and media. They’ll be staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants, shopping, buying gas, all those things.”
While August might not the be preferred month for golf in the Golden Triangle, it’s almost perfect for hotels and restaurants, said Sunny Sethi, who owns the Hilton Garden Inns in Starkville and Hyatt Place in Columbus.
“We’ll definitely be sold out at both hotels,” Sethi said. “August, typically, is a slow month for both hotels and restaurants as the summer winds down and people start getting ready for school to begin. So this comes at a great time for us.
“In the big scheme, anything that brings traffic to the area is a good thing and that’s especially true in August,” he added.
Jester is also hoping for one other thing.
“Crowds,” he said. “It’s not something the USGA gives a lot of consideration to, because they’re focused on the event itself. But I do think it’s important. It’s a great event, especially for a market our size. … In a lot of the big markets the USGA goes to, the event kind of gets lost in the shuffle. But when they take it to a smaller market like ours, it’s something the community really takes pride it. It’s a great event, with great competition and the tickets are free.
“We set an attendance record in 1999,” he added. “We’d like to see the same kind of crowds this year.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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