The Island Golfer: Women’s golf programs promote fun and friendship

There’s something remarkable happening on the golf course that has never occurred before. The face of the game has changed more in the past five years than the previous 50, driven by unprecedented diversity. Across the country, ladies golf is booming, which has driven new offerings at area clubs, Coral Creek and Lemon Bay.

According to the National Golf Foundation participation tracking numbers, 28 percent of the 28.1 million Americans who played golf on a course in 2024 were female. This reflects the continued evolution of the sport’s participant base compared to historical benchmarks.

Since the start of the pandemic, golf participation has increased by 2.3 million women and girls. Females accounted for 60 percent of the net gain since 2019, recently reaching an all-time high of 7.9 million golfers. Area clubs responded with special programming to meet the needs of this growing and influential segment of their membership.

Before Jim Lohbauer arrived as Coral Creek’s Head Golf Professional during the pandemic, the club was male focused. The ladies program had a core group of 16 to 20 golfers that would routinely play on Thursday, the designated ladies day. Lohbauer and his assistant golf professionals introduced the weekly ladies’ Par Suit Program that has drawn as many as 86 golfers. Par Suit pairs skill building clinics on Monday with fun, on-course performance sessions from a variety of target yardages to the greens on Wednesday. The program runs throughout the season.

“One of the key factors in my interview process was about how to grow ladies golf at Coral Creek. It felt like an area that needed a lot of focus,” Lohbauer said. “So, I experimented a bit, drawing upon my experience in developing world class junior programs. I implemented a lot of those fun tactics into ladies golf, and it really just exploded. We hit upon a niche market of ladies golf that was nonexistent here. And now we put in on the map.”

A side advantage to the interest in Coral Creek’s Par Suit Program was the impact it had on couples golf at the club. There are more participants than ever due to the ladies feeling more confident on the course, thereby creating greater social programming, and helping build lifelong friendships. Two of the most popular annual couples events include the Bloody Mary Challenge held on New Year’s Day and the St. Patrick’s Day outing in March. These events attract more than 100 participants each year.

Just up the road from Coral Creek, Lemon Bay’s women’s golf program has been strong since the club’s beginning. The club’s first female head golf professional was Missy Eldridge. Eldridge, along with Cindy Claude, was instrumental in developing the junior golf program at Lemon Bay. Today, participants in the junior golf program can benefit from the club’s A Better Shot Foundation $2 million academic scholarship endowment, which Claude oversees as executive director.

Meg Taylor is the current president of Lemon Bay, elected by the membership to that position in March 2024. Her father was instrumental in helping start the golf club and Taylor joined as a legacy member nine years ago. Subsequently, she was asked to join the Board and led the club’s strategic planning process as vice president before assuming her current leadership position.

To say that the ladies continue to be a force at Lemon Bay would be an understatement.

“We’ve always had a really robust participation from women at Lemon Bay. Some people think the club is really driven by women,” Taylor explained. “I think we have almost 40 percent of the annual play coming from women and our ladies’ days are highly subscribed. Our 18-holers have 30 players each week, and the 9-holers average 35 to 40 players.”

Lemon Bay offers a similar program to Coral Creek’s Par Suit. Branded as Par-Tee, it consists of golf instruction in small groups followed by on-course play over four holes, and then into the clubhouse for libations, munchies, trivia games and the like. The Par-Tee program has made golf accessible and enjoyable for Lemon Bay’s female members, expanding the number of women who play golf at the club.

According to Club President Taylor, Lemon Bay’s number of women golfers had been expanding anyway. Par-Tee simply juiced the interest level.

“The golf professional staff, they’re so enthusiastic and brought in so many women who wouldn’t be confident enough to go out most places and join in a ladies’ day,” Taylor said. “They just feel like, oh, my handicap is too high. But they have so much fun, and as they get more confident in their game through this Par-Tee group, they often join in with the 9-holers and 18- holers and realize that golf is just a lot of fun.”

The Ladies Day play is robust at Lemon Bay, with 212 different women participating last year. It is the most popular event for the ladies at the club. Between the 9- holer and 18-holer groups, there are about 60 participants each week. The golf professionals create new foursome pairings each week, so the members play with and get to know other members. They routinely join the ladies on the golf course to provide tips and promote camaraderie.

Notably, the area clubs – Coral Creek, Lemon Bay and Gasparilla Golf Club – meet up three times each year for so-called Ladies Friendship Matches. The competition between the members of the three clubs is a highlight of the golf season and always well attended. The men used to have a similar competition between the area clubs, but interest waned, and their event was abandoned.

Leave it up to the ladies to one-up the men.

Scott Cotherman writes about all things golf-related in and around the Cape Haze Peninsula. Contact him at the.island.golfer@gmail.com.