As meetings go, what could be better than an event which features the Rules of Golf being taught Dr. Seuss style — complete with rhymes and big colorful hats — and adds equal doses kids-based philanthrophy, collaboration, awards and learning, with a little frivolity mixed in?

The CWGA Annual Meeting, held Saturday at The Inverness Hotel & Conference Center, included all of the above and more. With almost 200 people on hand, many representing about 75 clubs from around the state, there was a little something for everyone.

CWGA rules officials Jan Fincher, Karla Harding and Sandy Schnitzer set a humorous, yet educational tone by donning Dr. Seuss hats and even writing Seuss-like rhymes for their Rules of Golf breakout session:

Look at the greens. Look ’em over with care. Mark your ball and proceed. Do it with flair.

The rule that has changed is quite fundamental. Just put the ball back. Was it accidental? …

“We do it every year (with an ingenious approach to a Rules breakout session), but we’ve gotten more fun,” noted Harding, pictured below with Schnitzer.

“Every year we have Rules of Golf breakout sessions, and every year Jan Fincher, Karla Harding and Sandy Schnitzer come up with a new educational way to teach the Rules of Golf,” noted CWGA executive director Laura Robinson. “Last year it was a Jeopardy game. This year they came up with the Dr. Seuss adaptation. And they wouldn’t be the three of them without wearing the hats.

“It’s a balance. The Rules are complex and can be overwhelming, and what we’re trying to achieve in these breakout sessions is some education, and we’re going to bring it down to a level that’s easy to understand so that when you’re out on the golf course you have the confidence to apply some of these Rules. We’re not trying to teach all 500 pages of the Decisions book.”

Among those in attendance for the Annual Meeting festivities on Saturday was a who’s who of golf orgnizations from Colorado and beyond: There was representation from the USGA and leaders of the CGA, Colorado PGA, CoBank Colorado Open championships, the Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado and the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. Included was Highlands Ranch resident Mark Passey, a director of regional affairs for the USGA who plans to retire from the national organization on July 1, after more than 27 years.

“Look around the room,” noted Colorado Golf Hall of Fame executive director Sammie Chergo, one of Saturday’s speakers. “You have so many people here from the world of golf in Colorado that want to work together and make golf in Colorado great.”

And much of that effort revolves around building a solid foundation for the future through support of junior golf. So on Saturday, the CWGA presented a check for $10,000 to the Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado, a comprehensive set of programs and tournaments led by the CGA, Colorado PGA and the CWGA. In its inaugural year of 2016, the JGAC included 836 members, who played 3,695 rounds in Junior Alliance events. The JCAC also includes such things as the Colorado PGA Golf in Schools program, the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy, PGA Junior League, the Hale Irwin Elite Player Program and Drive, Chip & Putt competitions.

“Our beginning year we were hoping to shoot, using a golf analogy, 1 or 2 over par,” said Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Alan Abrams, the president of the JGAC . “But we had an incredible sub-par round and ended up winning the tournament. Exciting things happened for us that first year.

“Thanks to all of you (CWGA members) for … the wisdom to (support) junior golf. Obviously, that’s a legacy that you’ll have, and this Alliance covers everything junior golf in the state. Congratulations for giving us this great gift. I promise we will take it and do great things with it.”

(Abrams is pictured at top receiving the check from CWGA president Juliet Miner.)

In addition to the $10,000 — which was raised in 2016 by the CWGA — the association earned another $6,723 for junior golf through a silent auction and other sales held Saturday at the Annual Meeting.

“It looks like the silent auction once again broke the bank so we’re very pleased,” Miner said.

Overall regarding the meeting on Saturday, “In spite of the beautiful weather — it’s hard to compete with 70 degrees in March — we had a great turnout,” Miner noted.

Fitzsimons, Patty Jewett, Heggie Receive CWGA Awards: Saturday’s meeting also recognized the CWGA’s award winners for 2016, including the Club of the Year, which is a new honor.

The women’s clubs from Fitzsimons and Patty Jewett Golf Courses shared the inaugural Club of the Year Award for their work in raising money for charity, growing membership, etc.

Fitzsimons made significant charitable contributions thanks to annual golf events for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the Colorado chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. And it took pro-active steps to bringing new golfers into the fold, and paid tribute to veterans and their families, which is inherent given the course’s military roots.

Patty Jewett raised almost $10,800 for charity through golf and related events in 2016. In addition to that money, members volunteered for Special Olympics, for cleanup day at the course, and for the CWGA.

“I think what you heard today through our Club of the Year awards and our fundraising efforts is that a lot of women’s organizations are very good at giving back,” Robinson said. “I think what you saw here was reaffirming that it really is about helping others through what we do.

“We tried to tally how much our clubs raised for charity this year through grassroots events and we think it’s well over $100,000, not including what we do in the office.”

Meanwhile, the 2016 CWGA Volunteer of the Year Award went to Vivian Heggie, who worked as a rules official at more CWGA championships and USGA qualifiers last year than any other volunteer. That included a dawn-to-dusk 36-hole U.S. Women’s Open qualifer in very cold and rainy conditions at Heritage at Westmoor.

“Our winner (Heggie, pictured in a yellow shirt-collar with Schnitzer) personifies dedication to the game of golf and dedication to making sure the players are well looked after and that they have a memorable experience,” Miner said. “It takes more than knowledge of the Rules to be a good rules official. It takes tact and the appropriate way to deliver a difficult message at times. Of course, it always helps if you have a delightful English accent (like Heggie). It takes perseverance and patience, and great respect for the players.”

The CWGA Player of the Year and Senior Player of the Year winners, both previously announced, also were recognized on Saturday. Both Jennifer Kupcho (the POY who is competing in a college tournament for Wake Forest) and Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Kim Eaton (the SPOY who is playing in a Legends Tour event in Arizona) could not attend because they’re at tournaments, but sent their thanks. For more on their accomplishments in 2016, CLICK HERE.

“I’d like to thank the Colorado Women’s Golf Association for selecting me for this award,” said Kupcho, who received the POY honor for an unprecedented third straight season. “It’s a great honor to be your Player of the Year … My first time at Denver Country Club (in winning the CWGA Stroke Play) was definitely one to remember.”

Said Eaton, the SPOY for the seventh time in eight years: “Thank you to the CWGA for this honor. I had every intention of being there today, but I received a better invitation — to play in the LPGA Legends Tour event in Arizona. I had a great year and did not want to pass up that opportunity. … I’m very grateful that I continue to play well and enjoy the game so much.”

Also receiving recognition Saturday was the nine-hole women’s club from Raccoon Creek Golf Course, which was the top 2016 CWGA fundraiser for the Evans Scholarship for caddies, bringing in $1,450. Almost 60 caddies currently receive full tuition and housing Evans Scholarships at the University of Colorado, with about a quarter of them being young women.

Chip Shots: Among the speakers on Saturday besides Chergo were CGA executive director Ed Mate and Colorado Open Golf Foundation CEO Kevin Laura, both of whom spoke on topics in the news this week. Mate, who serves on the USGA Rules of Golf Committee, gave attendees an update on the Rules changes the USGA and R&A proposed that are expected to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2019. And Laura noted some big news that was announced on Thursday — that the CoBank Colorado Women’s Open is increasing its purse to $150,000 and more than quadrupling its first prize to $50,000. …

CWGA Centennial Committee co-chairs Phyllis Jensen and Nancy Wilson assembled 357 slides, 511 pictures and a lot of memorabilia from CWGA centennial-year activities and events in 2016 into a scrapbook and a slideshow. On Saturday, they presented their work to Miner for CWGA historical purposes. “I want to thank (Jensen and Wilson) for stepping forward,” Miner said. “They made our centennial a great success.” (Wilson, Miner and Jensen are pictured at left.) …

With the CWGA planning to unveil an updated logo in the near future, 24 proposed logo submissions that the association received were showed off to attendees on Saturday. “Many people have said a woman with a long skirt (as in the current logo) is not representative of golf today,” Miner said. “We don’t want to necessarily change the logo to something that is unrecognizable, but we do want to modernize it.” …

CWGA organizers were pleased with Saturday’s attendance, which was just shy of 200. “We had one of the biggest turnouts, and as a follow-up to the centennial year, that says something,” Robinson said. “Today we achieved our objective by making it educational and giving lots of information, besides celebrating women’s golf in Colorado.”
 

This being Father’s Day weekend, I decided to do a little rummaging through some old newspaper clips — and I mean really old newspaper clips.

My dad — his first name was Francis but everyone called him by his middle name, Clyde — passed away a decade ago this year at the age of 86. I subsequently received some of his personal collectibles from those 8 1/2 decades. Included was a newspaper photo and story about him and a few other U.S. soldiers meeting Princess Elizabeth — now Queen Elizabeth — while on leave in Scotland in 1942. There were plenty of other military-related pictures from his days serving in North Africa, Italy, Taiwan, Vietnam and all over the U.S.; of him as a champion trap shooter; and tons of family photos.

But all that isn’t what led to my search of these personal archives. No, I was looking for a golf-related newspaper item that featured my dad as a youngster. To indicate how old it is, the newspaper it ran in, the Omaha Bee-News, folded in 1937. I’m not sure of the date of the clip I located, but based on a few snippets in the newspaper, I’m guessing 1935, during the thick of the Depression.

The paper published a large photo and caption (above, with my dad at far left in the picture) about the caddie tournament at the Omaha Field Club, which had 140 loopers at the time. For the record, my dad won the third flight, though the paper misspelled his last name as “Barnes”.

Anyway, golf turned into a longtime bond between my dad and me. Four decades after my dad caddied in Omaha, I followed a similar path by looping at Columbine Country Club and later becoming caddiemaster and working in the bag room there.

The reason all this strikes home now is threefold:

— Obviously, it’s Father’s Day weekend.

— The U.S. Open, which has concluded on Father’s Day all but once in the last 50 years — barring a playoff or weather issues — was probably my dad’s favorite tournament, though he watched PGA Tour events about every weekend after retiring.

— My dad’s favorite golfer, by far, was Hale Irwin, who grew up in Boulder and won his NCAA title almost exactly when we were moving to Colorado in 1967. And, of course, Irwin largely made his career on Father’s Day weekend at the U.S. Open, winning in 1974, ’79 and ’90. That last victory — which actually came in a playoff the day after Father’s Day — made Irwin the oldest U.S. Open champion ever, at age 45, a distinction he still holds.

As a sports writer, I’ve only had the pleasure of covering two major championships held outside of Colorado, and both are due to Irwin. As the golf writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder for many years, we paid a great deal of attention to PGA Tour players such as Irwin, Dale Douglass and Steve Jones, all of whom played on the University of Colorado golf team. And after Irwin made his improbable run to win the U.S. Open in 1990, the Camera’s sports editor, Dan Creedon, wanted plenty of coverage for Irwin’s U.S. Open title defense in 1991 at Hazeltine outside of Minneapolis, and in 1992 at Pebble Beach. It was eight years earlier at Pebble Beach that Irwin won the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am after bouncing a drive off the rocks bordering the Pacific Ocean and back into the fairway en route to a birdie on the 72nd hole, forcing a playoff which he won.

But the golf connection that linked my dad and me went far beyond that. I knew that he had played golf as a youngster and into middle age. But major back problems, no doubt exacerbated from many, many hours spent as a navigator/bombardier in B-52s, kept him from playing for a long time. But by the early 1980s, he recovered enough to be able to join me for a round in the Evans Scholars Father-Son tournament.

Soon, my dad was playing a lot of golf. Just about every time we’d chat, he’d note proudly that he had racked up some ungodly number of rounds that year. I remember tallies getting well over 100, which is pretty impressive for Colorado, and he normally walked during those rounds despite getting along in years. I joined my dad and his retired military buddies occasionally for rounds, almost always at his two favorite military-course haunts — Fitzsimons and the Air Force Academy. (At left, we’re at Fitzsimons in the late ’80s.)

My dad and mom also got a huge kick over the years from annually attending The International at Castle Pines. The folks at The International were nice enough to give me a couple of complimentary passes, and my parents made good use of them for about the first dozen years the PGA Tour event was held. I’d run into them in between my coverage duties at the tournament, and you couldn’t wipe the smiles off their faces.

Though it’s been quite a while since last celebrating a Father’s Day with my dad, those golf-induced smiles are etched permanently in my memory. And so is the joy that golf brought my dad.