The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

Relax. The above is not an inappropriate question.

It’s a reaction to the sparse number of female competitors on the Quad-Cities links scene.

This occurred to me when I scoured last week’s list of Illinois Women’s Amateur contestants, looking for Quad-Citians, finding none.

It occurred to me when all of four women teed it up in last month’s Quad-City Amateur.

It occurred to me when a field of 75 juniors who took on Emeis Golf Course in last week’s first Quad-City Junior Tour event included 18 girls of all ages.

It occurred to Jim Hasley, the godfather of Quad-Cities golf a long time before that.

Hasley, who mucketey-mucked the Q-C Am for decades  as the former head pro at Emeis in Davenport, long has been a champion of women in golf.

Years back, he endured the huzzahs from the chauvenists on the links when he fought for the installation of women’s tees at Emeis.

Yet Hasley never saw more than 20 women sign up for the women’s field in the Q-C Am, even during a brief period a decade back when he scheduled it as an entirely separate event, played at Duck Creek. Most often, fields numbered in single digits.

Given an abundance of ladies leagues and Ladies Days across the Q-C golf-scape, Hasley stressed the issue isn’t a lack of women playing the game.

But that’s just it. They view it as a game, not a sport.

“I think there are more women playing golf,” he said. “But they don’t look at it as a competitive sport. In 40 years, I don’t think it has changed a lot.”

There’s nothing really wrong with that. I play the game for recreation myself and never would dream of embarassing myself in a competitive tournament.

But there are women out there who have more game than me who haven’t stepped up to show it. East Moline’s Patti Lee is a rare exception and she has lost count of the number of Q-C Am titles she’s won over the years, largely over paltry fields.

The real shame is that the lack of distaff competitors trickles down to the junior ranks, where Hasley thinks young female players are missing out on a good bet by declining to challenge themselves in high school and junior summer events.

Hasley now is program director of the First Tee of the Quad-Cities. Of the 6,000-plus young golfers who have gone through that program since its inception in 2002, a representative 600 to 700 have been young ladies.

Not nearly enough of thme have gotten as serious about the sport as Hasley wishes they would, however.

“I tell them the easiest way to get a college scholarship is through (women’s) golf,” he said. “They are crying for players.”

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