by Kurt Kragthorpe
Kurt Kragthorpe is a Salt Lake Tribune sportswriter and frequent contributor to Fairways.

Winter - February - 07
Linda Olsen Takes the Reins at the UGA

Turns out, someone other than Linda Olsen is listed as the USWGA president.

There’s a good reason for that. Olsen is the president of the Utah Golf Association.

Clearly, this was a case of old-fashioned thinking on my part.

“Thirty or 40 years ago,” said Mike Jorgensen, the UGA’s former president, “it wouldn’t have happened.”

But this is 2007, and society, sports and women in sports have advanced to a point of heightened perspective. Augusta National Golf Club may still not be ready for a female member, but the UGA board of directors eagerly embraced Olsen as president.

“To me, it’s wonderful,” Jorgensen said. “In this day and age, it shouldn’t be gender-oriented. It’s golf. I think it’s great.”

So it is that the co-founder of the Bountiful Ladies Night League, which began modestly with a couple of foursomes and grew exponentially, is now representing some 30,000 plus avid golfers in Utah.

If loving the game and having the respect of the board members are the key criteria, Olsen is well suited for the position.

Like any UGA volunteer, Olsen believes her work is an effort to repay what golf has done for her.

“In many ways, it’s been my savior,” she said of her eight years of experience with the UGA.

Her husband, Richard, died 12 years ago. They were golfing companions, even playing on the last full day of his life. Without him, Olsen has pursued the game to greater lengths—particularly when measured by miles traveled.

As a partner in Country Club of the World, the tournament/travel service company launched by her Bountiful neighbor, Thomas Stark, Olsen has helped organize and conduct trips to destinations such as the K Club in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. “You name it, we’ve been there,” she said.

Well, there’s still Scotland. A tour was scheduled to leave for Scotland on Sept. 13, 2001, which ended up being two days after what we know as 9/11. That created some major challenges, because some folks had departed early and became stranded.

Fewer complications, if any, are expected this year when a CCW tour is scheduled for August, following a March trip to New Zealand.

It’s all quite exciting for a girl who grew up in Logan and followed her sisters into golf. LaRae Bowen is the most accomplished golfer among them, a player whose standards Olsen can match only when Bowen is “having a bad day,” Olsen said.

Having spent most of her adult life living in Bountiful and playing at Bountiful Ridge Golf Course, Olsen started the evening league with the blessing of former pro Scott Whittaker, who told her to go ahead if she really wanted to try something like that. It caught on. “You just have to get a few people who are interested in it, and they can carry the ball,” Olsen said.

Formerly a manager for First Security Bank, Olsen now works as a financial planner, which gives her more flexibility than in the days when her schedule allowed only evening golf. Stemming from her grassroots work at Bountiful Ridge, Olsen became involved with the USWGA and served a two-year term as president in the late 1990s.

In 2004, she received the Jeannie Goddard Memorial Award for her support and encouragement of golf in Utah. Goddard, a driving force of women’s golf—and the game in general—in Utah, would be proud of Olsen’s new role with the UGA and its 12-person board that includes Secretary Judy Allem.

Being the president carries a special distinction, yet Olsen already has made strong contributions as a board member. In recent years, she was the handicap chair, emphasizing the role of local clubs in monitoring handicaps.

“They need to be the watchdogs,” said Olsen, who has four sons and 16 grandchildren.

She also made sure the UGA adjusted inflated handicaps when necessary. “It’s about honor and integrity,” she said. “When people start manipulating handicaps, they’re going against the very grain of the game. They’re thinking they’re getting away with something, and they’re not. Now, I think there are a lot of people who know we’re out there watching.”

If she has an area of emphasis as president, it will be working with Executive Director Joe Watts to develop more tournaments for the top women players in the state. She believes the USWGA accommodates the average woman quite well, but wants to provide more competitive opportunities for the low-handicap golfers, possibly leading into interstate events beyond filling the two women’s positions in the annual Arizona-Utah Shootout matches.

On the men’s side, a key issue going forward will be the size of the State Amateur field, after an unprecedented 2006 event at the 36-hole Soldier Hollow Golf Course that allowed twice as many golfers as usual to play.

When she was nominated for the office, Olsen was surprised to learn she would become the UGA’s first woman president. Still, she observed, “Golf has been a men’s game for a lot of years.”

Having grown up in the game, she remembers experiencing the impatience of men when it came to women on the golf course. “The younger generation,” she said, “isn’t nearly as judgmental.”

Any pre-judging of Olsen’s presidential term would be positive.

“She’s very organized, I can tell you that,” Jorgensen said. “She’s a quiet leader, you could say. She has a lot of respect for everyone around her — that’s why she gets it back.”

Giving and getting. That’s the nature of golf, as illustrated by the UGA board. Olsen speaks of “finding joy and bringing joy to others” on the golf course, and that’s exactly what she intends to do off the course this year as the UGA president.