The stereotypical female country club golfer is a married woman of leisure, playing weekday mornings after driving her kids to school.
But the cliché doesn’t apply at Mount Vernon Country Club, which draws a strong contingent of female players, many of them busy professionals with high-powered jobs.
Recommended Stories
Earlier this month, when Mount Vernon won its second straight Virginia Women’s Team title and fourth this decade, they did it with a lawyer, an FBI agent, a health care executive, a financial analyst and a software development manager.
Mount Vernon won the title despite the absence of two-time Virginia Senior Amateur champion, Linda DiVall, the President and CEO of American Viewpoint, a political polling firm.
“We have so many strong players. This year we had to have qualifying to figure out who was on the team,” said Joan Gardner, Executive Director, State Services at Blue Cross Blue Shield. “When we don’t win these kind of competitions, it’s usually because we have too many work conflicts.”
That’s exactly what Mount Vernon did on the final day of the Virginia Team Matches after entering the final round of the three-day tournament tied with 2006 and 2007 champion Country Club of Virginia. In winning the Nancy Hollenbeck Trophy, 30-24, Mount Vernon claimed its eighth state title in the 63-year event.
In the better ball format, each club is comprised of three two-player teams with each hole worth a single point. Alexandrians Gardner and Katie Cox won their match by three points, while Susan Podolsky (Alexandria) and Kim Franks (Springfield) won theirs by two.
In the most competitive match of the day, Shawn McCullough (Alexandria) and Debbie Simpson (Lorton) won on the final hole as Simpson made a spectacular explosion from a deep greenside bunker. The ball came to rest 6 inches from the cup for the winning par and a final margin of 9.5-8.5.
“That was the shot of our match,” said McCullough, 52, an 11-time women’s club champion at Mount Vernon. “We thought the other matches were closer. We thought we really needed that point.”
McCullough, a software development manager at Boeing, joined Mount Vernon in 1980, when she moved to the Washington area after playing golf at Stephens College (Mo.). In the next three decades, McCullough has seen many other strong women’s players join the club.
“Mount Vernon is very women-friendly. There are no restrictions,” said McCullough. “I think that’s why so many strong players and so many women with demanding jobs are drawn to the club.”
Among those joining this decade are Franks, an FBI agent, Podolsky, a lawyer, and Cox, a financial analyst at the Federal Reserve.
“We’re dedicated to our work and dedicated to our golf,” said Gardner. “When we’re able to get the time to get together and play, we want to make the most of it.”
