If It Rains, Club Will Take Its Tee With a Lump or Two

The good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, tournament tee-off will be Sunday at the Westlake municipal golf course for members of the Career Women’s Golf Assn.

The group has been rained out of the annual event at this course for the past two years, so they are hoping that the third year is the charm.

Good luck.

Club President Gail Tyson says members will probably all be packing umbrellas. They might consider scuba gear as well.

The organization is a sort of semi-exclusive Good Old Girls Club where a lot of business contacts are made and friendships forged. But trying to outdo the Good Old Boys Club is not the primary purpose of this organization.

Always having a weekend golf foursome is.

The group was begun about five years ago when some Valley women thought that putting together business women who are also golfers would be a good idea.

“Because we work, most of us can only play on weekends, so it’s hard to get a tee time, as is getting a foursome together,” Tyson says.

“By having a pool of golfers, we have solved the problem of golfers having to scrounge around for partners. And by rotating the responsibility for booking the starting times, we alleviated a lot of individual time on the phone,” she adds.

She says the group is open to any golfer who fits into the club’s 31 handicap, adding that most members shoot 18 holes in around 100 strokes or so.

Ages of members range from 34 to 60-something. In addition to weekend outings, the group sponsors a tournament once a month.

“We play on city and county courses all over the Southland, but most often in the Valley because that is where our membership is,” Tyson says. She adds that the group also meets the last Monday of the month at Casa de Carlos in Woodland Hills for a no-host dinner at which members may sign up for golfing events.

Tyson says that as word of the group’s success spread, it began getting inquiries from others wanting to start similar groups elsewhere. An Orange County group has already been organized.

“After we helped them get organized, we decided to have a joint tournament with them. That’s something we will probably not do again,” she says with a laugh.

When asked why, Tyson says: “They’re yuppies,” adding that the Orange County group is more about big tournament prizes and hair and nails than the Valley group is.

“We are just a bunch of middle-class women who like to swing the clubs,” she says. “We’re just about fun and games.”

Tyson, a travel agent, says that sometimes the group’s weekend rounds attract only a handful of players, but more than half the group’s 52 members might show up for one of the monthly tournaments.

Most members have particular courses they like playing best, but there’s no consensus favorite. Different strokes for different folks.

Tyson says the rain policy is the reason that most members might agree on their least favorite course, though.

“Because tournaments have to be booked in advance and the money sent in, we depend on the course officials to be fair about rainy weather,” Tyson says. “If it rains, most courses will refund or hold your money for another date.”

Administrators of one course near Pasadena, which shall remain nameless, told the group that the course was playable one recent Saturday. Since they had paid their money, many members turned out to play in the rain. Tyson and other club members have some not-very-happy memories of slogging around the course, feeling like half-drowned cats.

Westlake, on the other hand, has been holding on to the money the group sent in three years ago in hopes that this year the weather will be favorable.

Members are praying for sun.

Thanks for the Cards, Letters and Phone Calls

At the beginning of the year, we said our thank yous to folks who call or write in with suggestions for this column.

Most people understand that the Chronicle is an upbeat look at the good people who people our valleys. If there is a funny side to the story, so much the better. Funny is good.

Sometimes, however, Mr. Postman and Ma Bell bring puzzling, totally inappropriate tidings, which, under normal circumstances, we would keep from the eyes of our readers.

However, because of special circumstances, this week we won’t.

The special circumstances are that no one this past week seemed focused on good and funny.

Phone conversations tended to end quickly, usually with some lame excuse about cars floating down the street or rooms that are being converted into mud-wrestling venues.

So let’s get to the phone messages and mail that we did get, and see what we find:

Sure Beats Watching ‘Models Inc.’ on TV

Our message line received a call from a woman whose name sounded like Gloria Vasalis.

She wanted to tell us that today is the last day of the Camel Wrestling Festival in Selcun, Turkey.

We, of course, were ready to pack the bags and hit the highway, but our travel agent says you can’t get there from here.

No Bicycle Thieves in Portland, Ore.

That’s right. According to Fred Colman of Porter Ranch, the city of Portland, Ore., has about 200 yellow bicycles standing around the city leaning against the poles of street signs.

Although these 200 yellow bicycles are not secured with a chain and lock, it is impossible to steal them. They are there to be ridden for free.

You just pick up a bike and pedal around until you are tired of pedaling. Then you lean the bike against the nearest pole and the next person picks up the bike and pedals away.

Leaving unlocked bikes around the city is not the work of some evangelical spokes-person. It is a scheme by a group called the Community Action Network headed by one Joe Keating, who seems to think that this sort of indiscriminate borrowing of bikes is OK.

Well, this is an idea we could actually adopt for the Valley, except, instead of bicycles, we could leave rowboats tethered to telephone poles.

More information about the plan, however, is not immediately forthcoming.

A call to the Portland home of Joe Keating resulted in this brief snippet of information.

A teeny voice came on the line and said, “Daddy not home. He’s skiing.” And the sound of little hands enthusiastically hanging up the phone.

Saints Preserve Us

A Winnetka woman wrote to tell us that Saturday is the feast day of St. Agnes.

She sent along a little biography of the saint taken from the Concise Biographical Dictionary edited by John Coulson. It says:

“A suitor, or suitors, chagrined by her refusal to wed, denounced Agnes (circa 304 A.D.) to the Prefect of Rome as a Christian. No threats could shake her determination to preserve her virginity as the bride of Christ and her faith.

“When she was taken by the order of the prefect to a brothel, divine power protected her purity. A subsequent attempt to burn her failed when the fire was miraculously extinguished.

“Her courage unshaken, she was beheaded.”

We thank Agnes Reele for that.

Overheard:

“I’m stocking up on the essentials in case the streets get flooded and I get stuck in my apartment.”

--Young man at Woodland Hills Vons with cart containing a case of beer, fifth of vodka, fifth of whiskey and a bag of granola.