Beth Daniel - Part 1 (The Early Years)

World Golf Hall of Fame member Beth Daniel begins her life story by recollecting her days growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Thanks to her supportive golfing parents, Beth was introduced to the game at age 6 and benefited from fine teachers at her home club like Masters Champion Henry Picard. She won the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1975 and 1977 and in between, was the medalist in 1976. Playing for Furman University with the likes of Betsy King, Sherri Turner and Cindy Farro, Beth and her teammates won the AIAW Championship Team title that same year. She also competed on two winning Curtis Cup teams, going 7-1 in her matches. Beth Daniel, the 1977 Broderick Award winner as the nation's best female collegiate golfer, shares her early years, "FORE the Good of the Game."

Transcript

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to fall.

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Welcome to another edition of FORE the Good of the Game and Bruce Devlin. Not only do we have one of the all-time women's greats in golf, we also have our first low country native, I believe.

Bruce Devlin 0:28

That's right. And oh, I tell you what a record this young lady has. 105 major championships she played in, 92 cuts were made, 41 victories as a professional. And I'm telling you, we're so glad to have Beth Daniel. We've looked forward to this mic for about two months. We sure have. Welcome, Beth.

Beth Daniel 0:52

Thank you. Good to be here.

Mike Gonzalez 0:55

Beth, so great to have you. And uh, as you know, because we've talked about this a little bit, uh, we are here to tell your story. And uh, I think if my count is right, you are our 49th interview, so we've done quite a few folks across the golf world. We just started doing the women recently, and as you know, we were scheduled to do you earlier, and uh the pandemic jumped in. And uh for people listening to this 50 years from now, they'll wonder what we were talking about, but uh but but so great to have you. And uh I think the best place to start, obviously, is uh where you got your start. So tell us a little bit about uh uh growing up in Charleston, South Carolina.

Beth Daniel 1:37

Well, yeah, I did. I was I grew up in Charleston, and um both my parents played golf. I was the youngest of three kids. Uh my brother was a very, very good junior golfer. Um and my sister and I both played golf. We had a really good junior program at the Country Club of Charleston. Uh I think we had about 10 junior girls at that time that were playing. Um, so really I was pretty lucky to have a lot of um support my age at that time, and I just wanted to be at the golf course all the time. I like dropped me there after school, and I'd stay there till I had to be home for dinner. Um but my very first memories of golf or following my parents, they were playing, and I just had one club and a golf ball, and I'd kind of hit it around. And I just from early on I remember I just love the game. I love to be out there.

Bruce Devlin 2:44

You started when you were six years old. That's a that's a really that's getting a head start on it.

Beth Daniel 2:52

Well, my joke, my joke in the family is that I was the baby, everybody else played golf. If I didn't play golf, I was gonna get left at home by myself. So I went out there, but then I ended up really liking it.

Mike Gonzalez 3:06

You know, Beth, you probably compared notes with some of your uh colleagues on tour as it relates to how you all got started. Some probably weren't quite as fortunate. Uh I had the same experience you did as a kid. It was just a simple small town club, as they call it, country club, but uh, you know, probably could join for $180 a year. And uh it wasn't too fancy. Uh but the important thing was you were able to play.

Beth Daniel 3:31

I was able to play, and I had a golf pro at the club. Um, Alesposito was the pro at the time, and he was just a big advocate of junior golf and getting kids started the right way. And he would have clinics for us. Uh, the women's group at the club would have uh clinics for the for the you know the girls, the junior girls, chipping and putting clinics, things like that. Um and so I had a ton of support around me, and I realized, I think I always realized how lucky I was to have that support. Because there's so many kids that don't have it. And I I actually played tournaments as a junior with a lot of kids that didn't have that support and they couldn't keep going.

Bruce Devlin 4:22

Yeah, shame.

Mike Gonzalez 4:23

So you got started at age six. Uh when did it really kind of get you where you just wanted to be out there every day?

Beth Daniel 4:30

I I think almost immediately. I mean, I wanted to be, we had a caddy program at the country club of Charleston at the time, and I just loved hanging out with the caddies, and you know, my mom and dad didn't care that I was hanging out with the caddies all day. So there's a big oak tree. Um, if you're looking down the first fairway, just to the right, and that that oak tree is still there, and that's where all the caddies would stay until they knew if they had a job that day or not. And I was down there with them all the time. And our our caddy master, um Horace Goss was his name, um, and he played he played some tournaments at the time, but he would get me out on the putting green and he'd be like, okay, you know, in those days it's like if you have a downhill putt, hit it off the toe. You don't do that anymore, the way the putters are counterbalanced and everything. But you know, he would teach me stuff like that, and um, I just I learned a lot about life and golf, hanging out with the caddies at the club.

Bruce Devlin 5:41

Boy, isn't that the truth?

Mike Gonzalez 5:43

Probably as much about life as anything else.

Beth Daniel 5:46

Exactly.

Mike Gonzalez 5:48

Yeah. So you had a lot of early influences uh in your uh in your game. You mentioned Al Esposito, who I think was there until about 72 or 73, if I'm not mistaken.

Beth Daniel 5:57

Probably about right, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 5:58

Yeah. Um Henry Picard had a history there, didn't he?

Beth Daniel 6:02

Well, Henry Picard retired at the country club of Charleston, so I used to see him out there all the time uh teaching. People would fly in for like three days to have lessons with him. And, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't I I knew that he had played the tour, I had no idea how great his career was. Um, I had no idea at the time that when I was a kid that he had won the master's, the PGA, played Ryder Cup, um, all of these things. He was just, you know, if if you knew Henry Picard, he was like 6'1 or two. So he was a large, larger than life man. And to me, he was a very intimidating character. So he would come up to me in the mornings and he would ask me some question, like, you know, how do you hit a flop shot? Or how do you hit a fade, or how do you hit a hook, or how do you hit it low? Every day when he saw me, he would ask me a question like that, and then I would be a nervous wreck the whole day trying to figure out what I was going to answer him at the end of the day. And so at the end, sometimes if I didn't know the answer, I would try and hide from him, but he would always find me. Like I'd hide behind a tree or I'd hide behind the cart barn. He would always find me. And so when I answered the question, if I answered it correctly, he would just say thank you and he would walk away. But if I didn't, he would tell me the answer. Um, so that was kind of his way of motivating me to work harder at the game and to learn more about the game. But he was a he was a funny man because he was a man of few words. And, you know, everybody at the club that knew him, if you ask him now, they'd be like, if he would teach you a shot or something like that, if you did it correctly, he would go, thank you, and he'd walk away. But if you didn't, then he'd keep teaching you. So it was kind of it's kind of a funny joke. Like, what did Mr. Picard say? He'd say, he'd say, Thank you.

Mike Gonzalez 8:26

Yeah, amazing. You know, you you probably both have examples of this, like a Henry Picard that you encountered early on in your life. And we're sitting here today wishing we probably would have all had a deeper appreciation for the game's history when we were young, right?

Beth Daniel 8:41

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I was taught, I was taught, you know, how to play golf and I was taught the rules of golf, but I really was not taught the history of golf. And I later on in life had influences like Henry Picard and like Louise Suggs, Joanne Carner, um, people like that that that taught me the history of the LPGA.

Bruce Devlin 9:08

I didn't quite get started as young as you, Beth, and uh certainly had no history of the game, except I knew my dad and mum liked to play a little bit, but uh I enjoyed field hockey until I was about 15 years old. So uh I guess that helped in one respect because of you know good hand-eye coordination. Exactly. But uh yeah, I do nothing about the golf history at all until uh, you know, probably until I was about 17, 18 years old.

Beth Daniel 9:39

Yeah, it's it's kind of a shame, and I don't feel like the tours right now really teach the history of the tours, um, which I think would be helpful to, you know, the rookies that come out, the young players that come out to learn some of the history behind the tour, you know, why the tour does things the way they do. And um, some of these players are just getting lost in the history. Um, you know, I find that I sit on the World Golf Hall of Fame uh selection committee, and I mean, names will come up and nobody knows who they are, and then you start, you know, doing research on them, and it's like, oh my gosh. The I mean, these people were great in their time.

Bruce Devlin 10:29

Interesting you would say that because uh Mike and I both feel that that's what we're doing with you. Is we're we're telling your story so that somebody, some young lady in 40 years from now can who hears the name Beth Daniel will be able to press a button and listen to your story. And and and I think it's something that uh well Mike is the one that came up with the idea, and I think it's a great idea, and we're we're glad to tell stories of people like you, Beth.

Beth Daniel 11:00

Yeah, I think it's very important. Um, you know, I I learned more about Henry Picard because I actually wrote a letter on his behalf after he had passed away to get him into the World Golf Hall of Fame, and I had a list of players, and I said, look at this list. It was a whole page of players. And I said, There's one player that's not in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and he's his record is as good or even better than some players that are in there. And I think that that was what kind of opened the committee at that time. It opened their eyes to, yeah, this guy should be in the Hall of Fame.

Mike Gonzalez 11:47

Well, hopefully this series of podcasts will be required listening for uh future LPGA stars to learn the game because uh we got started just a few weeks ago with the women, as I said, Beth, and uh our first guest, Kathy Whitworth.

Beth Daniel 12:01

Unbelievable.

Mike Gonzalez 12:03

You know, we take the opportunity with Kathy to go back to 1950 and the founding of the LPGA, and we went through each of the 13 founders and and talked about each one, the one she knew, the one she wished she'd known. And uh I gotta tell you, you know, as you go through that list too, there was some badass women in that list.

Beth Daniel 12:23

I mean well, you think about you think about what they went through. They had to be badass. Oh, they really did. And that in that 1950, yeah, they had to be.

Mike Gonzalez 12:34

One of the coolest ones for me, Helen Detweiler, uh, World War II wasp and flying fortress pilot. Come on, huh?

Bruce Devlin 12:43

Yeah, yeah.

Beth Daniel 12:44

Yeah, yeah. Well, and you know, Patty Berg served in World War II as well. Um, when she passed, I went to her her service over in um at St. Pete Naples or St. Pete area, and um she actually had a military funeral. She had she had a bugler play taps at her funeral because she was a World War II vet. And she also had, I think, six priests and a bishop presided over her memorial service. I mean, that's how so come to find out, she was a big Notre Dame football fan. So on Sunday afternoons or Saturday afternoons, she and all the priests and the bishops would watch the Notre Dame football game together. So she developed like a friendship with all of them.

Bruce Devlin 13:40

Oh, that's great.

Mike Gonzalez 13:42

Yeah, Patty was in the Marine Corps. Uh, she did a couple of clinics, didn't she, as I remember?

Beth Daniel 13:47

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I actually, when I first signed on tour, I signed with Wilson. And that was one of our prerequisites, is that we had to do the Patty Bird clinics. And I mean, you talk about doing a clinic the proper way. She knew how to do a clinic. And I saw her in college. She came to the Greenville, South Carolina area because I was at Furman at the time, and our whole team went to watch the clinic. It was it was pretty special.

Mike Gonzalez 14:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh uh, at least you read about her, and and I think what I read was she had done in her career 16,000 clinics.

Bruce Devlin 14:32

Yeah, that's a lot.

Beth Daniel 14:33

Really? Wow. Yeah, that's a lot of clinics.

Mike Gonzalez 14:37

A lot of clinics. Well, well, let's let's continue on with your early career. We we talked about uh a couple of the pros that were there. Um uh following uh Al Esposito, Derek Hardy came along. Um and you probably spent a little time uh with Derek, I would guess, as well.

Beth Daniel 14:54

Yeah, I would say Derek was the biggest influence on my career. Um he um well, I had I had always taken lessons from Al Esposito, and I had a six-inch growth spurt from the seventh, the summer between the seventh and eighth grade. So I went from five feet tall to five six, and then I grew another three inches that that year. So really within a year I I grew nine inches. So being a short kid, I played with cutoff clubs and I had a really flat kind of round swing, and you know, obviously getting taller that wasn't gonna work for me anymore. So Derek came in as the new pro and he talked to my parents and he he had seen me out practicing, and he said, I really think I can help her. So let's set up a a schedule and let's do, you know, let me work with her all the time. So we said yes. And so the first year or first summer, or I guess it was a winter, it was the first winter I was working with him, I did only half and three-quarter swings with an eight-iron. And he made my swing much more upright, um, which matched my body. So obviously I had to change my setup a little bit, and it was a it was a huge change, and um but it made a world of difference. All of a sudden I started hitting the ball a long way. Um, so I became a long hitter, and I actually became a lot more consistent because my plane kind of matched my body better. Um, so I worked with Derek for 13 years until we got to the point where he said, Beth, I think I've taught you everything I can teach you now. So I'm gonna help you move on and I'll help you find a pro a pro that you know can can take you even farther and which I thought was great. A lot of pros wouldn't do that, they would hang on. Um so Derek was yeah, he was a huge influence. He was also the one that talked my parents into sending me to the first USAM in 75, which I ended up winning, which then completely changed my life because it opened every door in golf for me because I was a U.S. amateur champion.

Mike Gonzalez 17:45

So tell us a little bit about how your game progressed as a as a youngster. Were there step changes? Was it a gradual progression?

Beth Daniel 17:54

It was a gradual progression with me because I I mean I was I was good and I was passionate about the game, but I was by no means was I considered a superstar or you know, young phenom or anything like that. Um if anything, I was a late bloomer. Um I didn't break par in a tournament till I was 17 years old. Um and I remember my dad's like, if you break par in every round, I'll buy you a sand an a sand wedge, because I was I only had a wedge at that time. I didn't have a sand wedge, and that was like a big deal. I wanted to add a sand wedge to my bag. Um, and I did, and the first thing it was the twin state junior girls, and I went up to him and I'm like, I get a sandwich. Where's my sandwich? Um but yeah, I was more of a gradual progression, but I think the thing about me was I just I was so passionate about it. I was so willing to learn and I was willing to work at it.

Mike Gonzalez 19:04

Well, you had a wonderful uh early junior career. Uh, we can recap uh some of the things you mentioned, the 75 uh U.S. amateur uh that was uh at at Brayburn Country Club where you won in the finals over Donna Horton 3-2. Uh and then two years later you you win it again in Cincinnati.

Beth Daniel 19:25

Yeah, in Cincinnati Country Club. Um yeah, there were, you know, in 77 there were a lot of expectations on me because I had won in 75. I actually in 76 in the amateur, I was the medalist, and then I lost in the first round. Um one down in the first round. That was at Del Paso Country Club. But then um in 77 I had all these expectations and I went out, I was playing really well, and um yeah, I ended up I beat Kathy Schirk, a Canadian uh in the in the finals.

Mike Gonzalez 20:07

Yeah, three and one.

Beth Daniel 20:09

Yeah, and watching watching the women's am this year, they mentioned that Kathy Schirk that year had won her semifinal match 11 and 10 or 11 and 9. So she she must have had too much rest going into the finals.

Mike Gonzalez 20:33

Uh well uh tell us a little bit about the decision process you you you went through as your game developed, and you, as you said, got very passionate about it. At some point, uh uh you perhaps with your parents said, Hey, I'm gonna do this in college.

Beth Daniel 20:50

Yeah, I I was not heavily recruited to colleges, and really that was the very beginnings of Title IX. So a lot of colleges still did not have scholarship money for women. Um there were two schools that recruited me, one was University of South Florida, and the other one was Rollins College, and I went and looked at at uh Rollins, and Rollins was really nice. I went to a very small high school. Um I had 35 in my graduating class, so I did not want to b go to a big college. So um and the University of South Florida wasn't that big at that time, but to me that was it was too big. Um and then Furman I had written Furman a letter because I I have an aunt and uncle that lived there. And um I I'm like, well I'd be interested in maybe going to Furman. And I knew they had a good golf team and I knew that they You know, they had a a golf course on campus. So I went there and looked at it and I had no scholarship offer at all. And my dad's like, if you want to go there, then go there in hopes that eventually they'll have scholarship money. And eventually they had some money. Um, I look back on that as kind of a selfish act on my part because my dad had to pay for my school. You know, it's funny how at the time you don't think of that stuff. Um and then, you know, once you have to pay for things on your own, then all of a sudden you look back and you're like, the money that my dad and mom spent on me to travel to play golf, to go to college, all of that. I mean, I'm forever grateful to him. Um, but it I ended up going there. Um, Betsy King was a year ahead of me. Cindy Farrow was two years ahead of me. Um she played the tour for a while and now she's a teaching pro. And um Sherry Turner, who was the same, we're the same age, she sat out a year. And then once I was at Furman, we talked her into coming to Furman. Um and uh Doc Meredith, who was the coach at the time, found some academic money for her and because she couldn't afford Furman. So he found the money so that she could go there. And she was kind of the missing key to us winning the national championship in 76, which was my sophomore year, Sherry's um freshman year, Betsy's junior year, and Cindy's senior year. So it just kind of fell into place that we had this great team. But um, that's kind of how I ended up at Berman. It was more of a comfort thing with my aunt and uncle being there, and I was four hours from home, and um they had a golf course. Those were the those were the factors that went into it.

Mike Gonzalez 24:19

Yeah, so you guys won the team championship, the AIAW.

Beth Daniel 24:24

Right. It was an NCAA at the time.

Mike Gonzalez 24:27

It was a different structure, right, than what uh young people would know about today, but uh won that championship at 76. Uh Nancy Lopez was the individual winner that year, I think.

Beth Daniel 24:38

Yeah, and we won by one stroke over the University of Florida, which had Donna White was on that team, uh Lori Garbasi, um uh I think Mary Hafman was on that team, who's a teaching pro. They had a really good team, as did Tulsa. Had Lopez, um uh Kathy Reynolds, Nancy Aronson, and so we were kind of the three favorites, and we won by one shot, and the last hole we played at Michigan State's golf course, the last hole at the time that's been redesigned, was a par three. And Cindy Farrow had played she had already finished, and she walked back out to ATT, she watched Betsy, who was in front of me, finish, and she said to me, If you make a par, we win the national championship.

Bruce Devlin 25:37

Oh, thanks.

Beth Daniel 25:38

And I looked at her and I went, You're kidding, right? She's like, and so I proceed to, I had a six iron, I proceed to hit it. I missed pin high to the right on the green. I chip it to three feet, and I'm standing over this putt, and I know it's for the national championship. I make it, and I, you know, everybody on the team's running out, and I looked at Cindy and I said, Don't ever do that to me. Do that again.

Mike Gonzalez 26:09

Yeah, I think you're all just too young to know better, you know. But as you as you got deeper into your careers, you'd probably never want to say that.

Beth Daniel 26:17

No, you wouldn't do that to someone, no.

Mike Gonzalez 26:19

So did you did you draw on that three-foot putt experience much in your early in your career?

Beth Daniel 26:25

Um, you know, yeah, I probably think I did because I mean I thought about it a lot. And to me, the the key to pressure is uh practicing correctly. So if you practice like you play, which most people don't do, even a lot of pros don't practice like they play. And I always tell people, I'm like, when you're on the driving range, you need to walk into every shot like you would on the golf course. You need to do it the exact same way. You need to have a target, you need to to have a pre-shot routine just like you would. And then once you hit the shot, you need to hold yourself accountable to that target. You know, did I hit it? Did I not hit it? Why, why not?

Bruce Devlin 27:21

That brings that brings me up uh a name that you will remember too. Bert Yancey.

Beth Daniel 27:28

Oh yeah.

Bruce Devlin 27:28

But Bert Yancey used to have his caddy stand by his bag, and when he when he chose to start his routine, he'd have the caddy click a stopwatch, and he wanted to hit the golf ball in exactly the same amount of time every time.

Beth Daniel 27:46

So it's great. I mean, I I have um I get some phone calls from players, and particularly because I went through the yips and putting in my career like three times. So I get calls from players that have the yips. And one of the things I always tell them is that your routine needs to be within a second every single time. Because if it's not, your brain is saying something's wrong. Like if you're taking too long, your brain's saying, Oh, this must be really important. Um, this is different.

Bruce Devlin 28:26

Good point. Yeah. Yeah, great.

Beth Daniel 28:28

And so it's really, really important. And that said, so Bert he Bert was way ahead of his time then doing that.

Bruce Devlin 28:36

So Bet to finish your amateur career, you you played in uh two Curtis Cup teams, right? 76 and 78.

Beth Daniel 28:45

Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 28:46

That had to be a great experience, too.

Beth Daniel 28:48

It was unbelievable. In 76, we played Royal Lithum St. Anne's, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

Bruce Devlin 28:55

Um few bunkers there, right?

Beth Daniel 28:57

Yeah, a few bunkers. Um and well, there are a few things that I remember about it, but one of them is Donna White and I got off the bus the first day, and we walked in the front entrance of the clubhouse and proceeded to get kicked out. We couldn't go in the women couldn't go in the front entrance at the time, even though they were having the Curtis Cup there. So there was a there's a side entrance into the women's locker room that um we found out very quickly that was the entrance we needed to use. Um but I also um I just I fell in love with um with British golf. I I mean I grew up at Country Cup of Charleston, you can when you chip, you always have an option, or I'd say 90% of the time you have an option to put the ball on the ground. And so I was very good at chipping with a seven-iron or a six-iron or even a five-iron, and I was able to use that a lot over there. I also in that that Curtis Cup used the small ball because I was a high ball hitter, and in those days the small ball was an option. It was the first time I'd ever played with it, and you know, it went through the wind better, it was not affected by the wind as much, and um, I got a great benefit out of using the small ball there.

Mike Gonzalez 30:28

You went 4-0 in that Curtis Cup, so you must have been playing pretty well with that small ball, not much, not much of an adjustment to the small ball.

Beth Daniel 30:36

Yeah, and I think I just kind of didn't, you know, it was my first Curtis Cup. I didn't really know what was going on. I was just like, let's go up and play golf. There's a lot to be said for that. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 30:48

Well, you didn't do bad uh two years hence. You were three and one at Apawamas in the uh in the next Curtis Cup.

Beth Daniel 30:54

Yeah, and I think it was the very first match that I lost at Apawamas, and um yeah, um Helen Wilson was the captain there who was quite the character. Um and we had a lot of we had a lot of fun there. Um yeah, that was a good team. I played on I I played on two really, really stacked American teams.

Mike Gonzalez 31:20

So before we get too far removed from your college experience at Furman, we we need you to tell us a little bit more about Doc Meredith.

Bruce Devlin 31:28

Yeah.

Beth Daniel 31:29

Well, anyone that knew Doc was was they knew he was character. Um I thought he was a fun guy. Um he you know, he was pretty serious about um working out, which in those days a lot of coaches didn't didn't uh do because people didn't really work out in golf. Um he was called Doc. His nickname was Doc. His name was Gary Meredith, but um he was a PT. Um so you know, he knew a lot about injuries and fitness and stuff like that. Um and um he um you know he was he was a I I would say a tough coach, but a fun coach. And he would always pit me against Betsy King. Like you guys are gonna play to see who plays number one this week, which I think really helped both of our games. Betsy and I have both talked about that, and you know, I he he pushed us to be better. Um and you know, we win the national championship with him. And the thing about Doc is that Doc did he did drink and we knew it. And but you know, he never I don't feel like he ever put us in danger. Um and but obviously the school did because they they fired him from being the women's coach, but they didn't fire him from being the men's coach. And so I went to the women's athletic director and I said, This doesn't make sense to me. Why is it okay for him to be with the guys, but he it's not okay for him to be the women's coach. And you know, she said, Well, the school just feels like it's inappropriate for him to drink around women. And I'm like, Okay, well, if it's inappropriate for women, then it's inappropriate in front of the the men too. So, and this was my senior year when this happened. So I just I finished the meeting with the athletic director, and I called my dad and I said, This doesn't make sense to me. And he said, Well, what do you want to do? And I said, you know, I'm kind of frustrated because they're gonna make a professor our coach, and we're all the top golfers in the nation. And they're putting a professor as our coach, they're not even trying to hire somebody that knows something about golf. And um we had gone through quite a few coaches in my four years at Furman, and you know, I felt like we finally got one that kind of got it and what it was like to win. And so I said, I'm I'm gonna quit the team. Now this was spring term, my senior year, and I said to my dad, I said, I need to do an independent research, and I've got some classes that I really need to focus on. I'm gonna play at Moss Creek as an amateur because I've been invited, and I had one other tournament I had been invited to to play as an amateur. So I said, I have two tournaments I can play in, and then maybe I should just focus on school and graduating in four years. And so he said, Okay, then I you know, I support you. And um so I went back in at a meeting and I said, I quit. And that and she's like, You can't do that, and I'm like, Why can't I do that? And um, so I walked out of there, and like two days later, Doc calls me and he said, How would you like to play a couple of tournaments for the men's for the men's team? And I'm like, Are you serious? How that how's that gonna work? And he said, It's fine. I'm gonna have you play the Wake Forest tournament, and I'll have you play the Southern Conference Championship. And he said, It'll be good for you because you have to play the back tees, and you know, it's gonna stress a different part of your game, and I think it'll be really good for you. So I said, All right, I'll give it a try. So I played those two tournaments for the men's team and kind of focused on my studies and and I graduated. Um but it was it was interesting. I mean, I'm playing 7,000-yard golf courses, and um it it was just yeah, there were a lot of par fours I couldn't hit in two, and I'm hitting a lot of Fairway Woods, which was really a weakness of my game at the time. And I think in the long run it was good for me. Yeah, I don't know if it was good for the guys that I played with, because I still to this day I have guys that'll walk up to me and say, I was paired with you, and you know, you outdrove me on this hole, and my team never let me live it down, or you know, all kinds of stories like that. So in hindsight, I don't know if I'd do it again, but it at the time I did it, and I think it I think it really helped me.

Mike Gonzalez 37:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you were the uh Broderick Award winner as the nation's best female collegiate golfer in 1977. Uh in 78, you you uh you won the women's western am over Noreen Uline at Fox Chapel. Fox Chapel was in the news the last couple of days, wasn't it?

Bruce Devlin 37:22

Yeah, yeah.

Beth Daniel 37:23

Well, Fox Chapel is gonna host the um women's senior open. Yeah. Which, boy, it's what a great, great golf course that is. I think it's really underrated how good it is. But um, yeah, that's that's one of those things, you know, you get to the tournament, you play a practice round, you're like, wow, I really like this golf course. And so it inspires you to play well.

Bruce Devlin 37:46

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 37:47

Well, you're you're probably a Seth Rayner aficionado, having grown up at Country Club of Charleston, so you were supposed to win there.

Beth Daniel 37:54

Exactly. I felt right at home there. I really did.

Mike Gonzalez 37:58

Have you had a chance to play a lot of other Rayner courses uh around the country?

Beth Daniel 38:02

Not a ton of Rayner courses, no. I need to kind of make a trek and go play some of them. Um he's I I think he's a fabulous designer. Yeah. It's really some interesting stuff.

Mike Gonzalez 38:19

Yeah, he's done some, he's does good stuff. Uh you got Yaman's Hall right there in Charleston. Uh I was up there, oh, I think I was up there on Saturday and played it. Uh, but I had a chance uh and was quite blessed to play when I lived in Milwaukee for a while, to play at Blue Mound out in Wawwatosa. And if you've never played that, that's pretty special.

Beth Daniel 38:39

I'll have to I'll have to try and make a trip there. Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 38:44

You gotta make one other trip. There you go. You gotta make one other trip.

Beth Daniel 38:49

What's that?

Bruce Devlin 38:50

The gentleman in the middle of the scream is a member at Secession Golf Club, and you gotta go down there and play golf with him.

Beth Daniel 38:58

Yeah, I've heard so many good things about secession. Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 39:03

You gotta. I'm I'm I'm offering on his behalf an invitation for you to come and play. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Beth Daniel 39:10

I appreciate that. I will have to take you up on that one.

Mike Gonzalez 39:15

That's an invitation that comes right from the golf course architect himself. So yeah.

Bruce Devlin 39:20

Yeah, that's right.

Mike Gonzalez 39:21

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you uh uh the the young man at Country Club of Charleston now just came from our place, Matt Bova. You know Matt. That's right.

Beth Daniel 39:29

I know Matt, and I just spent a lot of time with him uh a couple weeks ago at the junior azalea.

Mike Gonzalez 39:35

Yeah.

Beth Daniel 39:36

I think he's in Scotland right now.

Mike Gonzalez 39:38

Oh, really?

Bruce Devlin 39:39

Uh taking some members over there to play or something.

Beth Daniel 39:42

I think so. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 39:43

He's a wonderful, wonderful young man.

Beth Daniel 39:45

And a really good player.

Mike Gonzalez 39:47

Yeah, he sure is. As a matter of fact, yeah, I hosted when he was a sophomore in college, was the first time I met Matt, and uh I got a phone call about hosting him at my club in Illinois in the Chicago area because we were hosting the Illinois amateur. So he and his older brother, who was a senior at the time, Matt was a sophomore, wanted to come over and play a practice round. So I took him out, and uh I think he might have finished third or fourth as a sophomore in uh in college in that Illinois amateur.

Beth Daniel 40:15

How about that?

Mike Gonzalez 40:16

Yeah. And at the time it wasn't just ball striking, but he thought he thought his way around the golf course like a 30-year-old. He had a very mature mind in terms of course management.

Intro Music 40:26

Yeah, that's unusual for a young player.

Mike Gonzalez 40:29

Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game.

Intro Music 40:33

That's when McCann.

Mike Gonzalez 40:34

And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, and tell your friends. Until we take it up again, good of the game.