This April marked the 76th year of the Salisbury Women’s Golf Club. When Ruth Torgerson and others founded the league in 1949 at Salisbury Golf Course (now Eisenhower Park Golf Courses) in Westbury, New York, not even the legendary Long Island golfer could have imagined the league would still be thriving today.
How many things in life last that long? Better yet, how many things continue to improve each year? The simple answer is not many. However, for the 40 members of the Salisbury Women’s Golf Club who play at 9 a.m. every Tuesday from April through October, their slice of golfing heaven is on the top of the list.
“The founding ladies convinced the private Salisbury Golf Course to set aside tee times for their weekly use. Still to this day we play every week.” – Joyce Mullen
Torgerson, a five-time New York State Women’s Amateur champion and three-time Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association Match Play winner, was part of a group that decided they wanted to create a place for Long Island women to come together to play golf and socialize. That place, once a week since 1949, has been the Eisenhower Park Golf Courses in Nassau County.
“The founding ladies convinced the private Salisbury Golf Course to set aside tee times for their weekly use,” third-year league president Joyce Mullen said. “Still to this day we play every week. We play the first three Tuesdays of the month on the Red Course and the last Tuesday of each month we play the Blue Course.”
The tight-knit group varies in skill level – ranging from a 2 handicap to a 32.5, the maximum to join the league – and in age with the youngest member checking in at 50 years old and the oldest at 90.
“Even though l am currently the oldest I love to continue to play,” said 90-year-old Edna Boothe, a member since 1999 and a three-time club champion. “It is a game that you can play for a lifetime. I love the camaraderie, and have made long-lasting friends playing golf.”
With a waiting list, the Salisbury Women’s Golf Club has long been a desired place to play. With no website, “people have to try to find it,” Mullen said. In fact, it is often through word of mouth that people discover the league.
Early Salisbury Golf Club members took golf seriously, but also enjoyed laughs and camaraderie.
“It’s a competitive league and you have to try out,” said Mullen, who has trimmed the number of try-out rounds from three to two. “The women who are in the league are decent golfers. They play a couple times a week, not only in the league but all across Long Island. So they’re interested in competition and getting better at golf.”
When it comes to Salisbury Women’s Golf Club play there is no shortage of competition. Throughout the year a wide variety of formats are utilized. They play even-hole scores, odd-hole scores and consecutive holes where players can select the nine-hole stretch they want to count towards their final score.
However, the flagship event is the club championship. Held every August, the tournament has crowned a Salisbury Women’s Golf Club champion each year since 1949 – with the exception of 2020 during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the league began, Mullen estimates 5,000 players have been members but of those members only 33 have earned the title of club champion.
The latest to wear the crown is Anongrak Baffi, a 2-handicap, who has swept the title the last four years. Remarkably, Baffi’s four club championships are still a far cry from the all-time record of nine shared by Maureen Delaney and Connie Burns.
The club championship might be the league’s flagship tournament but the event that brings the most enjoyment each year could be the Salisbury Cup, a Solheim Cup-style team event pitting the Blue team vs. the Red team. “We decorate the carts and we wear our team colors,” Mullen explained. “Then we have awards afterward and it is a lot of fun.”
At the end of the day, the fun, camaraderie and a sense of belonging are at the core of the Salisbury Women’s Golf Club.
Long before Salisbury Golf Course became Eisenhower Golf Courses, it hosted the 1926 PGA Championship.
“Every member gets a chance to put the lineup together and this allows everyone to be what we call the ‘officer of the day’ and learn more about the league,” Mullen said. “It is a great way to get to know everybody. And if it is just a regular tournament you can play with anybody in the league. For me it is so much fun to be in the company of women who play better than I do.”
Whether you are a low handicapper like Baffi, a 32-handicap like Mullen or 90 years old like Boothe, the SWGC provides an opportunity for a group of 40 women to meet up every Tuesday morning to play golf, have a good time and compete. It is an opportunity to continue a tradition that turned 76 this year – a tradition that has nothing but open fairways and countless memories laid out in front of it for decades to come.