After a career as a pharmacist and medical writer, Nancy Carroll Phillips found that there was a book inside of her. It just took being a member at history-rich Philadelphia Cricket Club to bring it out.
Her self-published, not-for-sale golf travel memoir is titled: “It’s All About… Golf, Memoirs of learning the game, new friends, and playing some of the world’s best golf courses.”
In 2017, while on a trip to Bandon Dunes, she read a Wall Street Journal article by John Paul Newport about a women-only trip that he had joined to the Oregon resort. It inspired her to think about telling her own tale.
Two golf writers, Michael Bamberger (a Philly Cricket member) and Tom Coyne (a Philly local), offered the same advice.
“They told me, ‘If you’ve got a story, write it,’” she said.
The result is a work chronicling her immersion into golf at age 59 and her seamless transition to full-fledged golf junkie through the support of Philly Cricket’s COO/director of golf, Jim Smith Jr., and his initiatives for club member trips.
But Phillips urges that while she is the author, the message is about her home club and great people who share her passion to see the world through golf.
“This is a Philly Cricket story,” Phillips said. “It is so wonderful to have the opportunities to do what I have done.”
“I always enjoyed challenges in my business life, and this was a new challenge.” — Nancy Phillips
With Smith at the helm, Phillips (along with golf pals Jean and Jill) has made 30 trips worldwide since she embraced golf in 2010. Her “day job” as a medical writer took her around the globe (six of the seven continents), so the confluence of the end of her work career and her beginnings in golf were a perfect mesh point.
“I traveled for a living for 27-plus years all over the world, so traveling for me is a joy,” she said. “It is a hobby.”
Phillips, 72, and her husband, Hank, joined Philly Cricket in 1996. Hank and their son Anthony both played golf long before Phillips – until 2010, when she got hooked.
“I always enjoyed challenges in my business life, and this was a new challenge,” Phillips said as she started playing in 2010 after few-and-far-between dabbles in her youth.
“I signed up for every single trip that Jim Smith offered except the men’s trips – all the ladies’ trips, the mixed trips and the big trips where there were always more men than females.”
For 10 years, even in her fledgling days as a player, she never missed a trip.
“Now, I am just cherry-picking,” she said.
She says while there are as many as 100 women who play regularly at Philly Cricket, there is a core group of 12 to 16 who travel. The group was dubbed the Cherry Bombs (Michigan trip) for their text-messaging thread.
Smith never steered her away from trips, even as a beginning golfer, offering her words of encouragement.
“He was always welcoming, and so were the ladies at Philly Cricket, as long as you knew when to pick up [your ball],” Phillips said with a chuckle. She notes that some modified Stableford scoring always helps with pace of play.
Aside from places such as the Old Course at St. Andrews and Royal County Down, Phillips points to the trips including sightseeing (New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates) as the most memorable. She has played 244 courses: 160 in the U.S. and 84 internationally. She credits Smith with that high worldwide number.
“We are the best of friends now, and we weren’t before. So many of these people, I didn’t know before golf.” — Nancy Phillips, talking about her friends Jean and Jill
“I’ve got so many favorites,” she said. “It’s usually the last one. Dubai/Abu Dhabi [this year] was phenomenal. It was beyond my expectations – the golf courses, the experiences that we had there.”
That trip also included a segment in Egypt.
Phillips relishes the social part of the Philly Cricket trips – the dinners, the banter, et al., because it builds strong friendships.
She frowns when she remembers one of her first women’s trips to Mexico with 20-plus participants. It remains a sticking point.
“There were people that I never even saw, much less had the chance to play with,” she said.
When it comes to Jean and Jill, Phillips said: “We are the best of friends now, and we weren’t before. So many of these people, I didn’t know before golf.”
Jean has been on 30 trips with Phillips; Jill has been on every women’s golf trip.
“Many of them were professionals at work before they became golfers,” Phillips said. “Jill still works as a senior VP for a hospital, and Jean is a Ph.D. in anatomy. Maybe we speak the same language.”
In addition to the close-to-home connections, Phillips revels in the friends she has made across the world. She lists Royal Aberdeen in Scotland as one of her all-time favorites. Sam, a caddie whom she had there years ago, is getting married in Scotland.
“Hank and I will go and be like family members,” she said.
The photo of five women sitting on a bench at Bandon Dunes that is part of the cover of her book overshadows, in this humble opinion, the photo of her driving on the 18th tee of the Old Course.
It is the perfect depiction of her journey.