Celebrating 25 years of great golf – PCLGA Tournament of Champions

PCLGA 25th Low Net Champion Award presented to Louise Levanti, by Ronnie Decker and Dave Vader, Golf Shop Pro Staff.

PCLGA 25th Low Gross Champion Award presented to Andrea Dilger, by Ronnie Decker and Dave Vader.

Deanna Mendiola

The PebbleCreek Ladies Golf Association (PCLGA) celebrated its 25th anniversary during the two-day Tournament of Champions, March 26-27. The event concluded with a delicious dinner and the PCLGA annual meeting and awards. Co-chairs were Judy Newell, Liz Mitchell, and Kathy Enegren, who did an amazing job organizing the tournament, dinner and program, along with the help of PCLGA Tournament Directors, Judy Layton and Vicki Norrie.

The evening’s highlight was the opportunity to hear entertaining stories from Paula Fix and Jinny Pearson, about the many challenges of creating a ladies’ golf association over 25 years ago. At that time, there were only nine holes of golf available for play on Eagle’s Nest, and no clubhouse; only a very small building shared with the tennis players. Despite these limitations, nine ladies worked hard to recruit enough members to be eligible to join the Arizona Women’s Golf Association. They approached every new resident of PebbleCreek to try to reach the 12 members required to be a recognized association and the PCLGA now totals 243 members! With so few members everyone had to be an officer in those early years. Jinny shared many of her great memories, such as a “turkey shoot” with real turkeys (frozen of course), a member being thrown into the pool after one of the events (…hmm!) and Subway sandwiches for luncheons. How it has all changed!

Ronnie Decker and Dave Vader, PebbleCreek Golf Pro Shop Staff, announced results of the 2019 Tournament of Champions. The overall winners are Andrea Dilger, Low Gross Champion (with a total score of 140) and Louise Levanti, Low Net Champion (with a total score of 129). These two ladies played extremely well and were presented with beautiful, engraved vase trophies, plus a bouquet of white roses; congratulations!

Flight winners

Flight 1: Gross – 1st, Mary Harris, 2nd Kittie Day. Net – 1st (tie) Sheri Sears, Sarah Marsh.

Flight 2: Gross – 1st Suzanne Kanaly, 2nd Cindy Sota. Net – 1st (tie) Judy Hauser, Barbara Rossi, Kathy Enegren.

Flight 3: Gross – 1st (tie) Karen Poturalski, Claudia Tiger. Net – 1st Peggy Steffan, 2nd – Vicki Norrie.

Flight 4: Gross – 1st Sharon Johnson, 2nd – Marilyn Williams. Net – 1st (tie) Carolyn Suttles, Kathi Curtis.

Flight 5: Gross – 1st Carol Langhardt; 2nd – Pam Volm. Net – 1st Diana Wolf, 2nd – Esther Frehner.

Flight 6: Gross – 1st Mary Coon, 2nd – Gayle Hubbard. Net – 1st Carol Sanders, 2nd (tie) Sue White, Judy Layton.

Flight 7: Gross – 1st Karin Smith, 2nd (tie) Judi Floyd, Suzan Simons. Net – 1st Linda Sweet, 2nd Tess Braden.

There were 35 players who had a total of 49 birdies, plus a very exciting hole-in-one by Karen Vagley, on Eagle’s Nest No. 4 during the first day of the tournament!

A special thank you goes to Ellen Enright, PCLGA Photographer, who captured the enthusiasm of the players and all of those who attended the tournament, dinner and meeting. There were so many positive and complimentary comments, “one of the best” was heard many times!