Colorado: The State of Women’s Golf

Barriers still present, but future is bright

by Kaylee Harter

Alice Plain was 5 years old when her dad introduced her to golf.

She spent her summers on the greens and fell in love with the sport and the challenges it provided.

There weren’t many girls who golfed, so she became good friends with the guys at her home course. “It was great,” Plain says. But when she got to high school, there was no women’s team. She tried out for the men’s team and was good enough to play, but wasn’t allowed on the team.

College wasn’t much different at first. She qualified for the men’s team at Hanover College, but the coach was still reluctant to have her join. With her male teammates in her corner, she went to the president of the school to “plead her case” and the president agreed to let her play.

“I’m very competitive, and I wanted to beat as many of the guys as I could…I loved all the guys that I played with. They were super supportive, and I think those lessons of competing with the boys really has been a huge platform and a starting point for me being in a very male-dominated industry,” she says.

She transferred to Oklahoma State where she went on to be part of the women’s team that  finished third in the 1989 National Championship. Now, Plain has been in the PGA for more than 25 years and is director of the Vail Golf Club — a job she says competed against men to land.

Access to golf for women has drastically improved since Plain was denied from her high school team. Women now account for one in four on-course golfers, and more than one in three junior golfers are girls, according to the National Golf Foundation. More than 6 million female non-golfers say they’re very interested in playing golf on a course.

So as participation in golf by both men and women has boomed in Colorado since 2020, longtime women golfers say that women trying out the game for the first time need to be ready to be persistent, but that the rewards are worth it.

Barriers Have Always Been There

Plain said golf’s reputation for many years was clear: “It’s been known as a white man’s sport for like 100 years,” Plain says. “That in itself is intimidating.”

M’lis Ward of Denver is many things – she played basketball at USC, joined the Air Force, became a pilot, trained other Air Force pilots, and then an airline pilot. She is Black and identifies as gay, and says that as she sought a new game after basketball, she turned to golf despite its traditional reputation of exclusivity.

“There are some out there, but there are very few (clubs) that accept either women or people of color or the LGBTQ community. I mean, we’re just automatically excluded,” Ward says.

Only about 21 percent of all golfers are nonwhite, and 25 percent of female golfers are nonwhite, according to the National Golf Foundation.

Columbine Country Club south of Denver is a rare country club. In 2021 it had two women on its board of directors, according to the club’s publicly-available IRS tax returns. Few other clubs in Colorado have any.

One of Columbine’s board members, Jill Schafer, is in the middle of a four-year term. She said she has felt lucky because the membership at Columbine made the decision that they wanted different voices to be heard in guiding club operations.

“Unfortunately, most clubs are private, so it really, really stems from who you have there and what their goals are for their club and for their membership,” Schafer said. “I’m just thankful that Columbine has thought about things and is moving to have a more inclusive environment for all people there.”

Schafer says the club was welcoming. “You always hear the stigma of country clubs. ‘Oh, they’re just for the men, they don’t want to do anything for the youth or for women.’ I’ve never felt that way at Columbine.”

Cathy Matthews Kane, president of the Colorado PGA, says she aims to grow the game through programming supporting junior and adult development programs.

“It’s not limited to women. It’s growing the game for everyone. And I would say in my role, I just want women to see that you too can be successful in golf,” Kane says.

The Vail Golf Club hosts a two-day women’s beginner class as well as a weekly women’s clinic called “ladies’ lessons and libations” in efforts to increase access to the game for women, Plain says. Courses throughout the state now offer lessons, leagues and events geared for women.

“It’s really important for everyone to recognize that women have money to spend and they want to spend their money,” Plain says. “Get your women members’ input.”

As she began playing, Ward turned to the region’s armada of strong public courses, and to her friends. She started an informal league called City Chicks that she estimates has between 50 and 60 members with handicaps ranging from 0 to 22. There are no officers, fees or bylaws — and no drama, Ward says.

“It really is refreshing to just go play golf… and just have a great time with everybody because … we’re not all the same,” Ward says. “There are political differences in that group. There’s gay, straight, young, old. It’s probably one of the most diverse groups in the city.”

Ward also coached a high school team, where she says she drew more girls to the sport by making it fun. Still, she sometimes worries about the future of the sport and says investing in the next generation is important. “Those of us that play, we need to be responsible to try and find one more person to play younger than us,” she says.

The Next Generation

Young golfers are already making their mark across the state and Plain says girls today are growing up “in a very different environment.”

Sisters Elle and Brenna Higgins play together on the Valor Christian Girls Golf Team. The senior and sophomore, respectively, are top players on the team that took home the 2022 and 2023 state championships. Brenna, a sophomore, was the medalist in this year’s championship tournament.

“Golf is really a growing sport and there’s a lot more people competing at the higher level, so the competition is definitely becoming more select,” Brenna Higgins says.

Hadley Ashton, now 15 years old, became the youngest girls’ winner of the Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado’s Tour Championship at age 14 and has been playing since she was 6 years old. She’s motivated to play because she says she wants to be the best in the state and compete on a national level. And as far as Ashton can tell, she said, the barriers for women in golf seem to exist across most sports.

“I think women just need to get the acknowledgement that we deserve,” Ashton says. “More talk about it, more people realizing how hard it is for women and how hard we work.”

Elle Higgins will golf on the University of Montana’s team next year and Brenna Higgins and Ashton both have their sights set on playing in college and beyond.

“There’s a lot of careers in golf which I feel like maybe that’s something I would want to do — maybe be an interviewer or go film golf tournaments or post-round interviews or even working kids tournaments — I feel like that would be a lot of fun,” Brenna Higgins says.

A Lifetime Sport

For many women, the benefits of golf go far beyond the game itself.

“I love that you can do it with anyone,” Elle Higgins says. “It’s not something like soccer that you just kind of grow out of. It’s there your whole life.”

Golf can be a vehicle for networking and building businesses that many women might be missing out on, Kane says.

Ward — a former D1 basketball player who discovered her love for golf later in life after realizing she wouldn’t be able to play basketball forever — says she couldn’t imagine her life without golf or the friendships that leagues like City Chicks have provided.

“We all have these connections so that you will never be alone… Even when it’s raining, we all get together and have breakfast,” she says. “That’s what my hope is — that everyone would find a place for themselves where they have a growing group that will never limit themselves and exclude people and you’ll never feel alone.”

Nancy Syms of Colorado Springs, a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, learned the game as a girl. For her playing was easy: there were few other sports open to girls, and she had access to a course where she grew up in Indiana.

It was later, as she competed as a high-ranking amateur, when things became challenging. The cost of the sport was high, pros didn’t make that much money, and keeping her amateur status meant she couldn’t accept so much as a free golf ball.

“It certainly was a struggle, back when I was playing, but it was worth it. And it turned out to be very, very much worth it — what I’ve accomplished with it. But I had to spend my money in order to play and be able to get out there, pay an entry fee and travel time and all that was on me.”

But her journey has been amazing. She played on three Curtis Cup teams – the Curtis Cup is played every other year and pits the best amateurs from the U.S. against a team from Great Britain and Ireland. Her international playing career culminated in 1975 when she won the British Women’s Amateur Championship, played on the Old Course at St. Andrews, with her husband as her caddy.

Stepping into such a challenging sport can be daunting, Kane says.

“Nobody would go downhill skiing, strap on a pair of skis and hop on the lift and expect to try to figure out on the way down,” she says. “Same is true with golf. Take a lesson… find a clinic and start with a coach,” she says.

Elle Higgins encourages other girls to keep an open mind about whether the game is for them.

“Be patient, because golf is hard,” she says. “And you’re not gonna get it on the very first try. It takes a minute. And so I would say just be patient and stick with it.”

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