Teenage girls are swinging into golf

Jenny Lee started tagging along to her older brother’s golf lessons when she was 8. Her mother had grown tired of schlepping her to skating lessons, so she began dropping both children off at the local driving range in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Lee carried a tiny golf bag with a few children’s clubs that she had inherited from her brother Daniel and would hit balls all afternoon. Born in Korea, Lee was a shy, skinny little girl who barely spoke English and liked to play golf in a dress.

Today, Lee, 19, is one of the best junior amateur golfers in the world. She has won or placed in the top tier in dozens of junior tournaments nationwide, earning her a spot on the Rolex Junior All-American team the past four years. Now at Duke University, Lee plays on the No. 1 women’s college golf team in the country.

“It wasn’t popular for girls to play golf," Lee said, speaking of the time when she first started playing. "I was really embarrassed. I didn’t know any other girls at school who played golf.”

Although she played in tournaments for girls, Lee was relieved when she went to high school and joined the girl’s golf team. “It made me feel better about myself," she said. "There were other girls playing golf and they thought it was cool.”

Lee is at the vanguard of a small, but noteworthy movement of teenage girls who play competitive golf. Energetic, athletic and highly trained, these young women have spent the last decade playing golf and honing their skills in this once male-dominated sport.

There are approximately 775,000 girls age 12 to 17 playing golf today, compared with 328,000 in 1998, according to the National Golf Foundation. Of these, approximately 165,000 are considered “core” golfers who play more than eight rounds of golf a year. While girls make up only 17 percent of all core junior golfers, the numbers keep rising each year.

There has also been a notable increase in the number of girls playing at the elite level. According to the American Junior Golf Association, 966 girls age 12 to 18 qualified to play in its national tournaments in 2005, compared with 691 girls in 1996. Nearly every year, the number of girls participating in the tournaments has increased, and at a faster pace than for boys.

“I think what you’re seeing now is a surge in golf that you didn’t see five years ago or so,” said Betsy Clark, vice president of professional development for the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “Golf is a recent thing for girls and women as far as it being an accepted and natural sport for women.”

Clark attributes the growth to a variety of factors, including the increased media attention on young golfers in general and female golfers in particular. Tiger Woods started the trend in the early 1990s, and today, a new crop of teenage, female superstars is continuing the trend for women. Michele Wie, 16, became the youngest professional female golfer this October, and Paula Creamer, 19, already has two LPGA wins and five other top-three finishes. These female golfers are not only phenomenal athletes, they are young, charismatic and stylish.

“Paula Creamer, Michele Wie--it doesn’t hurt to have them as a role model of a girl who plays very good golf," Clark said. "We haven’t had that until now.”

As recently as the 1990s, girls shied away from golf, fearing embarrassment from playing poorly and viewing it as an isolating, boys-only sport, according to a study done by the National Golf Foundation.

“Girls like camaraderie,” said Martha Richards Freitag, the head coach of Vanderbilt University’s nationally ranked women’s golf team. “If they have friends who do it, they will be more likely to play golf.”

The majority of women golfers grew up playing golf with men, not other women. That is still true today.

“Most girls are introduced to the game by their dads or granddads,” Freitag said. “Rarely do you have a situation where a mom introduced her daughter to the game,” a pattern she believes will change now that more women play golf.

In addition, many high school girls still must play on boys’ golf teams and from the boys’ tees unless their school can field a team of four girls.

“I’m still surprised by the number of girls playing on boys’ teams,” said Dan Brooks, the head coach of Duke’s women’s golf team.

The proliferation of programs aimed at getting girls to play golf in recent years has helped draw them to the sport and undercut the stereotype that girls don’t play golf. There has been an increase in programs for girls at public and private golf courses, junior golf tournaments, golf clinics in urban cities, and high school teams.

“Junior golf overall, which will feed into high school golf, has taken off in the last 10 years," said Steve Perry, director of Hawaii's high school golf tournaments.

Clark believes that girls playing golf is a self-perpetuating cycle: The more girls play, the more other girls will take up the sport. “Girls have other girls to play with now,” Clark said, and “we found that this has kept them in the sport.”

Competing against other girls at tournaments has also improved the caliber of their play.

“The quality of golf has increased in recent years,” Brooks said. “The cream at the top is just a little bit thicker.”

Lee says that one of her inspirations when she was learning to play golf was a total stranger whom she would quietly watch at the golf course.

“I used to go to the range a lot to hit balls,” Lee recalled. “There was an older girl who played there and I really looked up to her. I saw her working hard and it really inspired me.”

E-mail: ecf2104@columbia.edu