Links Magazine | The Best Of Golf | Charting a New Course

Three out of 180
Currently, there are only three women—Jan Beljan, Alice Dye and Vicki Martz—among the 180 members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Hillary Clinton may be a frontrunner for this year’s presidential election, but females have made much less progress in course architecture—a woman’s name does not appear solo on a design of any significance.

“Why?” Sorenstam asks of the dearth of distaff designers. “We know how to play. But the first thing people ask me is, ‘Are you going to design a course for women?’ I look at them and say, ‘No, for a golfer.’ I never felt like there has to be a difference. People think it’s going to be shorter and easier, and that to me is just weird.”

Former player Jan Stephenson, who has designed three courses and has four more in development, has encountered this myopia for years. “People don’t realize that we play from the men’s tees,” she says. “We carry it as far as an average male player does. [Jack] Nicklaus designs hard courses with a lot of high, left-to-right 2-irons, which we and average men don’t have in our bags. I always felt like we would have an advantage designing courses. I’m hoping once people see my courses and Annika’s they’ll see that, too.”

Gender equality has been an issue in golf since the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews opened in 1754 and excluded women from joining, but the lack of female architects may come down to a simple, non-political reason.

“It’s hard,” says Beljan, one of Tom Fazio’s lead designers. “The days are long. In the summer, it’s hot. Remember, this is raw land you’re dealing with. There are no comfortable situations.”

There are even dangerous ones. When building the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, Beljan had to deal with wild boars while wading through giant palmetto bushes trying to flag out the clearing limits. “All you do is hope you can get to some kind of big tree so you can run around it in a tighter circle than they can,” she says with a laugh.

Beljan comes from a family of golf pros—five uncles were pros and her father designed and built Mannitto Golf Club near Pittsburgh. “But it’s not a natural progression for most girls like it was for me,” she says. “Plus, it really takes dedication and time. Think about if you were married to someone who was out of town as much as male golf course designers are and you have kids. How does that work?”

The rare-breed quality is what drew Hattie Pavlechko to the profession. After playing golf at Ball State University in Indiana, the 26-year-old has worked for Oklahoma-based Tripp Davis for three years. “I was definitely aware that there weren’t many women in the field,” she says. “But that’s something I really liked about it. It was a way to set myself apart and standout.”

The late Ed Seay, Arnold Palmer’s longtime design partner, pointed out the overwhelming majority opinion when Martz started at the company in 1985. “He basically said, ‘You’ll be able to work in the office, but you will probably never be able to do it in the field,’” she recalls. “He wasn’t sure that any bulldozer operator would want to take directions from a woman.”

By the early ’90s Martz was designing her own courses and making site visits—with Seay. “He would sit in the truck and let me do my thing,” she says. “He was pleasantly surprised. Once you demonstrate that you know what you’re doing, it’s not an issue. In fact, I’ve had bulldozer operators bend over backward to please me where I’m not sure they would with a male architect. Women have a softer touch and tend to be more inclusive.”