Their golf group goes by the name “Grip It and Sip It,” so
it’s probably no surprise what’s inside the gift bags they got at the end of
their trip.
“Anytime someone gets a birdie,” one of them explains, “everybody
takes a shot of Fireball.”
They’re 12 ladies from the heart of Texas who are serious
about golf. And equally serious about good times. (“Anywhere there’s a cocktail
involved, we’re there,” they’ll tell you.) They spent this week exploring both
at French Lick Resort, and they took a little time Thursday to share the story
about how their group came together and how their travels have taken them to
some of the premier golf destinations in the country.
The way they banter and razz one another about their age, or
their graying hair, or that one terrible hole on the course, you’d think they
were sisters or lifelong friends. Actually, the golf trips are a relative new
tradition among these ladies who met through the golfing community in San
Antonio where they’re from. Well, most of them.
“Everyone’s scattered around different areas of San Antonio,
except the one we had to totally kick out, to Dallas,” jokes PJ Wright, motioning
down toward Harriet Lane. “We had to send her far away.”
You gotta have some thick skin, some solid game, and a nose
for adventure to hang with this crew. This is their third annual trip, with the
first two years taking them places that everyone’s heard of. South Lake Tahoe
the first year. Then Tucson.
“And then we kept on hearing little snippets about French
Lick and we thought, ‘Well, let’s check it out.’ And of course there were rave
reviews on everything we read,” PJ explains. “And one person from our group had
been here last year, and she gave us the thumbs up. And we are!”
With a new-and-improved group name, too.
“Here we can Grip It, Sip It and Chip It, because there’s a casino,” PJ explains.
They got a little taste of everything — literally — by doing
a progressive dinner with stops at three of the resort’s restaurants. Sorta
like a bar crawl, only with pizza and onion rings and dessert, as Harriet
described the restaurant hop she did with Michelle Alsup and Loy Thompson.
“We went to the Dome (at West Baden Springs Hotel) and
enjoyed eating at the Dome. Then we went to the Power Plant and had a few more
snacks, then we decided to go to 1875: The Steakhouse and we had Bananas
Foster.”
“And we were the last people that left,” Harriet adds.
“We closed it down,” Loy says proudly.
As for the golf?
Well, the golf proved a stout test of patience and stamina,
as anyone who’s played The Pete Dye Course or Donald Ross Course can attest. 54
holes of golf in three days is no joke, whether you’re the weekend warrior
golfer or someone like Betty Ferguson, the unofficial star of the group who
played on the first women’s golf team at the University of Texas.
“You have to know how to hit off the side of a hill. You
have to be billy goat,” was Harriet’s takeaway from the diabolical Pete Dye
Course.
“I had to have ice picks on my shoes to get up the dang
hill,” jokes Marsha Slocomb, one of the group’s elder members. “The mountains
on each hole are higher than the mountains in the Hill Country of Texas.”
But hey, golf is all about those little victories.
“I came up here with 18 balls, and I finished with 18 balls,”
Loy proclaims, drawing a round of applause from the others.
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| Sultan's Run Golf Club in nearby Jasper was also in the itinerary in addition to the rounds at the Pete Dye and Donald Ross Courses. |
Maybe that’s the difference when the girls gather on the
course. A little less serious; not stressing about every drive and agonizing
over every iron. “We’re thinking that the caddies – and this has been our
experience a lot – they love caddying for the women, because they’re out there
having fun,” PJ says. If someone has a rough hole? “We just go ‘whoops,’ and
off we go.”
Spoken in true “Grip It and Sip It” spirit. There’s more to
life than the number scrawled on the scorecard. It’s about cocktails with friends
late into the night and venturing to small-town Indiana for a golf experience
that was “totally unexpected for me,” says Marsha, who was expecting table-flat
land and wheat farms instead of the 40-mile vistas atop The Pete Dye Course.
“The reason we really
play golf is just to come to places like this,” Harriet says. “The beauty — obviously
the camaraderie — but it is to just get out here and enjoy the sights that are
here. It is a beautiful area.”
We’ll raise a glass to that.