Golf Magazine (golf.com online) compiles the Top 100 Teachers list biennially. It debuted in 1991. Nominees are submitted by the PGA of America, LPGA, the United States Golf Teachers Federation, industry executives and Golf Magazine readers.

Among those included on the 2017-18 list are Mike LaBauve, who teaches at the Roaring Fork Club in Basalt during the summer and Kierland Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., during the winter; and Tim Mahoney, an instructor at Cordillera in Edwards in the summer and at Troon North in Scottsdale during the summer.

LaBauve and Mahoney have both been part of Golf Magazine’s Top 100 since 1996 and are PGA of America members.

In addition, former Colorado residents Mike McGetrick and Eric Alpenfels made Golf Magazine’s Top 100 list again.

McGetrick, who now teaches at the Golf Club of Houston in Humble, Texas, also first appeared on the Golf Magazine list in 1996. Alpenfels, on the Top 100 ranking since 2001, is an instructor at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina.

LaBauve and McGetrick are also on Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers in America.

Golf Magazine says its Top 100 is the only national golf instructor ranking “that combines outside academic and PGA professional peer review. In addition, candidates are judged on their willingness to give back to the game and to the PGA and LPGA through one of the following: apprentice education, member continued education, research or lesson programs.”

For the complete Golf Magazine list, CLICK HERE.
 

Editor’s Note: With the CGA celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1915, this is the ninth monthly installment of a series of stories looking back on the last century of golf in Colorado. All the articles are being published on coloradogolf.org. This chapter focuses on the period from 1995-2004. For the previous installments, CLICK HERE.

There have been many groundbreaking and pivotal moments for women in the history of golf in Colorado and beyond, but it hasn’t gotten much bigger in the Centennial State than in the mid- and late-1990s.

It started with The Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs hosting the 50th U.S. Women’s Open in 1995, marking the first time arguably the top championship in women’s golf has come to Colorado — or the Mountain time zone, for that matter. And though no one realized it at the time, one of the sport’s all-time greats was to emerge, as Annika Sorenstam made that tournament the first of what would become 72 LPGA Tour victories before she unexpectedly retired in 2008.

In the first of her 10 major championship wins, Sorenstam (below) finished a stroke ahead of Meg Mallon and two in front of Pat Bradley and Betsy King at The Broadmoor’s historic East Course. That was the first year the U.S. Women’s Open featured a purse of at least $1 million.

While all that was huge from a historical perspective, the next year was even more unique.

That was when Colorado Springs resident Judy Bell was elected president of the USGA, becoming the first female to hold that post. In fact, Bell’s two-year term beginning in January 1996 remains the only one in which a woman has served as USGA president since Theodore Havemeyer became the first president of the association in 1894.

“I bet that’s the first time the incoming president kissed the outgoing president on the way to the dais,” Bell memorably joked after it was announced she would succeed Reg Murphy.

But, as former USGA president Stuart Bloch noted, “Judy’s gender, I don’t believe, was a consideration in her election. Her abilities, I think, were the consideration that caused her to be selected as the first woman president. If she were a man, she would have been elected.”

Overall, Bell was the third Coloradan to become USGA president, following Denver residents Frank Woodward (1915-16) and Will Nicholson Jr. (1980-81). (Bell is pictured at top in a USGA photo presenting the low-amateur award to Cristie Kerr at the 1996 U.S. Women’s Open.)

During Bell’s presidency, the USGA started the “For the Good of the Game” program, a $50 million initiative which aimed to increasingly spread the game to groups such as youth, minorities and the disabled.

Bell had had a long, distinguished career as both a player and a volunteer golf administrator leading up to her presidency. She had served on the USGA Women’s Committee starting in 1968 and chaired that committee from 1981 to ’84. Then in 1987, she became the first woman elected to the USGA Executive Committee.

On the playing end, Bell won three Kansas women’s amateurs, starting at age 15, and three Broadmoor Ladies Invitation titles, competed in 38 USGA championships and was both a player and captain on U.S. Curtis Cup teams. And in 1964, she shot the lowest round in the history of the U.S. Women’s Open, a 6-under-par 67, a standard which stood for 14 years.

For all this and much more, Bell was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001.

But Bell wasn’t the only woman from Colorado in USGA volunteer leadership roles around this time. Colorado Springs’ Barbara McIntire, winner of two U.S. Women’s Amateurs and a British Ladies Amateur, served as USGA Women’s Committee chair in 1995-96, and Denver’s Joan Birkland, another accomplished athlete, followed McIntire in that role in 1997-98.

On a more local level, 1995 marked the debut of the Colorado Women’s Open.

Here are some of the other Colorado golf highlights of the period from 1995-2004:

— Steve Jones (left), who grew up in Yuma, Colo., and played golf at the University of Colorado, won the 1996 U.S. Open, overcoming runners-up Davis Love and Tom Lehman. The victory culminated a remarkable comeback after Jones was off the PGA Tour for almost three years following a dirt-bike accident in November 1991. The victory gave former CU golfers four U.S. Open titles — three for Hale Irwin and one for Jones.

— In 1996, the CGA entered into an agreement with the Lowry Redevelopment Authority to purchase the former Lowry Air Force Base golf course. The CWGA became partner with the CGA in the purchase of the course. The site is now home of CommonGround Golf Course, which is owned and operated by the CGA and CWGA.

— From 1996 to ’98, Ken Krieger won three consecutive Colorado PGA Professional Championships, becoming the second player in the 1990s to do so, joining Ron Vlosich (1991-93).

— In the five-year period from 1997-2001, an amazing 42 courses opened in Colorado.

— Cherry Hills Country Club hosted the 1998 Trans Miss, won by Dan Dunkelberg. Coloradan John Olive was the runner-up.

— CU graduate Hale Irwin won two U.S. Senior Opens in three years, in 1998 and 2000. That gave the former Buff a total of five USGA championships, including his three U.S. Opens.

— In 1998, The Broadmoor hosted the biennial PGA Cup matches, which pits the top club professionals from the U.S. and Great Britain & Ireland. In Colorado Springs, the U.S. defeated GB&I 17-9.

— In the period from 1999 to 2002, Kevin Stadler won the CGA Match Play title twice, along with the 2002 Colorado Open championship in his pro debut. During the decade 1995-2004, Stadler and Jonathan Kaye (1996) won the Colorado Open en route to becoming PGA Tour champions.

— John Olive, winner of the 1977 CGA Match Play, became one of the top senior players in Colorado history. In addition to claiming titles in five CGA Senior Stroke Plays and four Senior Match Plays during this decade, he won the inaugural Colorado Senior Open (1999) and remains the only amateur to earn the title in that event.

— Colorado PGA members received four more PGA of America national awards in this decade: Alan Abrams (1997 Junior Golf Leader), Mike McGetrick (1999 Teacher of the Year), Charles “Vic” Kline (2000 Golf Professional of the Year) and Russ Miller (2003 Resort Merchandiser of the Year).

— In 2000, Coloradan Kaye Kessler won the PGA of America’s National Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism.

— Also in 2000, Warren Simmons retired as CGA executive director, with Ed Mate succeeding him. Mate continues in the position to this day.

— Nicki Cutler won the CWGA Stroke Play three times in a four-year period from 2000-03.

— Rick DeWitt, the 1999 CGA Stroke Play champ, won the last of his record seven CGA Mid-Amateur titles in 2002 before being inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and later turning pro. He was named CGA Player of the Year a record six times.

— With financial issues and mismanagement burdening the Colorado Open, the 2003 championship was called off during tournament week. Thanks in large part to developer Pat Hamill, the event was resurrected in 2004.

— The International at Castle Pines saw two future World Golf Hall of Famers — Phil Mickelson (1993 and ’97) and Davis Love III (1990 and 2003) win the PGA Tour event for the second time.

— Les Fowler, a Colorado Golf Hall of Fame player and a former CGA president who had a key role in the CGA acquiring the golf course at Lowry, passed away in 2003.

— In 2004, Steve Irwin, a former pro who regained his amateur status, joined his father Hale (1966) as a winner of the CGA Match Play.

— Jamie Lovemark won the prestigious 2004 Western Junior at Denver Country Club. Lovemark later became the No. 1-ranked amateur in the world.
 

Mallon’s swing coach for almost her entire illustrious career was Mike McGetrick, one of the founders of Colorado Golf Club, which will host next year’s Solheim Cup competition Aug. 16-18. So Mallon was one of the first to see the course in its infancy.

“I love the connection,” she said Monday while sitting in the new CGC clubhouse. “It’s a great story. We (Mallon and McGetrick) were on the driving range near Centennial Airport hitting balls and Mike said, ‘I’ve got a piece of property I want to develop and build a course on.’ So for all those years, watching that come to fruition was really fun.

“I knew this place before there was a hole in the ground. I saw it as they were mapping out the course. When there were literally stakes in the ground he walked me through the course. … The whole experience of watching this thing come together has been something.”

Though she lives in Florida, Mallon has visited the Colorado Golf Club site about 15 times over the years, including roughly three times annually from when the club opened in 2007 until she retired from LPGA Tour competition in 2010. And, theoretically anyway, that should work to the American team’s advantage when it faces the Europeans next year in the biennial matches.

“Let’s just put that (thought) in everybody’s mind right now,” Mallon said with a laugh. “I think it’s a great advantage. Just having that whole history and being a part of this place from the beginning I think will be great. And hopefully I can pass that along to the team.”

Mallon, who competed on eight U.S. Solheim Cup teams as a player, hopes the fact that the 2013 matches will be played on U.S. soil — where the Americans have never lost in the Solheim Cup — will give her team the upper hand as it tries to regain the Cup after a 2011 loss in Ireland.

If nothing else, once the 12-player team starts to take shape, the American competitors can visit Colorado Golf Club in the months leading up to the 2013 matches much easier than can most European-based competitors.

“I want to get my team as prepared as possible to play this golf course,” Mallon said. “I know quite a few players came up from the (U.S. Women’s Open at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs) last year, which was good. The more I can get them to see the golf course, the more I can get them used to the (mile-high) altitude, and the better off we’ll be for sure.

“Altitude is a big factor. Both teams have players that hit it a long way, then you add in the adrenaline of a Solheim Cup and throw in the altitude, and that’s going to be very big. Hopefully my team will be prepared for that. But Solheim Cups, as much as you tell players they’re going to hit it 10-15 yards farther just on adrenaline alone, they kind of have to see it first, then they’ll believe it.”

All that said, Mallon doesn’t want to overstate any advantage she might have at Colorado Golf Club. She notes that recently named European captain Liselotte Neumann, though a Swede, lives in San Diego.

“So arguably she’s closer to here than I am in Florida, so she might sneak over a few times too and get to know it as well (as I do),” Mallon said.

Mallon, winner of 18 LPGA events in her career, including four major championships, certainly knew how to compete in Colorado. She finished runner-up to Annika Sorenstam at the 1995 U.S. Women’s Open at the Broadmoor, and was 13th at the 2005 U.S. Women’s Open at Cherry Hills.

In addition, she was no slouch as a Solheim Cup player, compiling a 13-9-7 record. Then she was an assistant captain when Beth Daniel’s 2009 American team captured the Cup. Mallon and Neumann captained Junior Solheim Cup teams in 2011, when the competition ended in a 12-12 tie which allowed the Americans to retain that Cup.

Of course, such a tie wouldn’t work out so well for the Americans next year considering the Europeans would get to keep the Cup after winning it by a 15-13 margin last year.

“Lotta (Neumann) was joking, saying can we do a 12-12 tie again, and I said absolutely not, not this time around,” Mallon said with a smile.

Actually, Mallon said she and Neumann are good friends despite playing on opposite teams five times in the Solheim Cup from 1992 through 2000.

“Lotta and I basically have spent our whole careers together,” Mallon said. “Both of our personalities are pretty low-key. Lotta is very quiet but obviously very competitive. Despite all the Solheim Cups we played against each other, at the end of the day we were still friends, which says a lot about our friendship because those are pretty competitive weeks.”

But friendship or no friendship, Mallon has no intention of becoming the first American captain to lose a Solheim Cup competition in the U.S. The Americans are 8-4 overall in the Solheim Cup, including 6-0 in the States. The matches were last held in the U.S. in 2009.

Keeping that “home” record perfect “is a great challenge, let’s put it that way,” Mallon said. “There’s a reason why the record has been that way — you get fired up at home. We’ve had a lot of close calls, and I expect a close match again. But the extra adrenaline that comes from U.S. fans really helps us a lot.”

Even though the Solheim Cup is still 16 months away, Mallon is already busy trying to lay the groundwork for American success. In fact, that’s part of the reason for this week’s trip to Colorado Golf Club — in addition to participating in a sponsor outing and visiting with some members of the media.

“My job is to make everything easy for the players when they get here, so it’s all about preparation,” he said. “I’m here today to walk through where we’re staying (next year), what we’re eating, what the schedule is like. I’m making sure that it’s the easiest and most comfortable week for our players because it’s such a hectic week. They have every minute taken for these guys all week and my job is to make sure they’re rested and ready to play by Friday (Aug. 16). It’s a balance of running an event and making sure my team is ready to go on Friday. I don’t want them to have to worry about anything but playing golf that week.”