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By Chris Lang
FREDERICKSBURG — Anyone who plays a round at Portsmouth’s Bide-A-Wee Golf Club will hear rooster calls during their rounds. The members there have named the bird Roy.
The six members of Bide-A-Wee’s entry into the 75th Virginia State Golf Association Women’s State Team Matches brought a stuffed replica of Roy along to Fredericksburg Country Club this week for good luck. And at the end of a 27½-26½ victory over Mount Vernon Country Club in the 75th playing of the event, stuffed Roy found itself with the six ladies, nestled in a silver trophy.
“He became our unofficial—or official, really—mascot, and he pulled us through,” Bide-A-Wee captain Pam Fisher said.
After a decade in which Mount Vernon and the Country Club of Virginia traded titles, Bide-A-Wee won its first championship and became the first club other than MVCC or CCV to win since 2011.
“I think we knew from the start that it was going to be a close match,” Hetzel said. “You’ve got 12 great players, and a putt here, and a bounce there, it could have gone either way. That’s golf, and you have to have some good fortune go your way in order to win something like this. We feel fortunate to come out on top. It’s been a fun few days with our buddies, and we’re excited to be taking home a trophy.”
Bide-A-Wee used another strong performance from its anchor side of Fisher and Mallory Hetzel to squeak out a win over the 14-time champion, denying MVCC the chance to tie the all-time event record with 15 titles.
“We’re very comfortable with each other,” Fisher said. “We know each other’s games. We’ve got each other’s backs on and off the golf course. We just felt good about where we were, our pairings, our lineups the last two days. We were focused, but we remained who we are. We just came to the golf course and took care of business.”
In the Women’s State Team Matches, each club features three two-person sides. Each match is played to its conclusion as 18 points are available—one for each hole. Sides get a half-point each if the hole is tied.
Mount Vernon won two of the three matches between the two clubs, but Fisher and Hetzel recorded a 10½-7½ win over MVCC’s Linda DiVall and Sarah Alvarez in the third match, enough to secure the one-point win.
Mount Vernon’s Joan Gardner and Debbie Simpson posted a 9½-8½ win over Laura Landon and Gigi Smith in the second match; and the MVCC side of Diane Willkens and Shawn McCullough defeated Cyndi Carlson and Gigi Smith by the same score in the first match.
The anchor match—which began on No. 17—was tied through nine holes, but the Bide-A-Wee combo of Fisher and Hetzel began to assert itself on the eighth hole. Fisher and Hetzel won holes 8, 10, 11 and 13 to take a four-point lead. DiVall and Alvarez birdied the 15th hole to cut the lead to three points and needed to win 16 to forge a tie in the final, but the sides tied the par-4 hole with pars.
“Linda and Sarah are two really good players,” Hetzel said. “Linda’s one of the best women’s players in the history of our state. We knew we were in for a good match, a tough fight. But we were just really steady. We didn’t have a bogey, sprinkled in a few birdies, and in the end, it was just enough.”
Winners were crowned in five other flights on Wednesday. In the first flight, The Piedmont Club defeated Fawn Lake Country Club 28½-25½. Spotswood Country Club won the second flight, defeating Army Navy Country Club 27½-26½.
The Golf Club at the Highlands earned a decisive 32-22 win over The Dominion Club in the third flight. Ivy Hill Golf Club topped Evergreen Country Club 29-25 in the fourth flight. And Greenbrier Country Club beat host Fredericksburg Country Club 34½-19½ in the fifth flight.
Lang is the VSGA’s manager of media and communications.