A vision for something greater

Being able to play in mid-amateur tournaments helped elevate Tara Joy-Connelly's golf game. She wants more women to be able to do the same and believes a national women's mid-amateur network would do the trick. Darren Carroll, USGA Impressive as her résumé reads, Tara Joy-Connelly doesn’t get caught up in talking about past achievements — mostly because she’s excited to discuss future endeavors. She does subscribe to that rich mantra about golf being a game for life, but it’s the second half of the book that currently sparks her fancy. “My vision is for a national women’s mid-am golf network, much like the men have,” Joy-Connelly said. There is a long way to go, of course, but she and many of her peers have circled the first initiative: “We have to improve the retention rate (keeping women playing after college), because it’s less than when I was in college.”

Different time, to be sure, because when she graduated from the University of Miami in 1995 (she was Tara Joy back then), the Duxbury, Massachusetts, native was very much part o...