Welcome female golfers of Northeast Pennsylvania.
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The GAP/AGA Women’s Four-Ball is here. Glen Oak Country Club in Clarks Summit, Pa. will host the inaugural affair on May 7.
“For women, don’t think that GAP isn’t for you because it can be. And I want it to be,” Jane Skeels, who championed the event’s creation, said.
The Women’s Four-Ball, a better-ball-of-partners event, is open to any female member of a GAP Member Club with a handicap index of 32.0 or less. Cost is $180 per team and includes golf, lunch and prizes.
“I hope this event is successful on all points. Good turnout, good weather, good time.”
“We’re excited to add the Women’s Four-Ball to the championship calendar this year,” Patrick Lloyd, GAP Director of Northeast Operations, said. “This is a great way to expand our women’s programming specifically in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Women’s Four-Ball is the perfect forerunner to our Women’s Coal Scuttle Championship.”
Consider the aforementioned Women’s Coal Scuttle Championship a quasi-catalyst. Skeels rekindled her interest in golf five years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. She became a GAP volunteer, lending a hand at events in the Northeast Pennsylvania region.
“They were all for men. The only one that was open to women was the Women’s Coal Scuttle Championship, which chose the best four players from every club. That meant that up here in Northeast Pennsylvania, I was never going to be able to play in a GAP event,” Skeels, 67, of Dalton, Pa., said. “The population of women is growing in the sport, and they’re going to be new and they’re going to be green like me with higher handicaps. Having a women’s tournament that had a wider handicap registration criterion would open it up to a whole new market segment. There’s a lot of women in Northeast Pennsylvania who golf.”
Skeels approached Glen Oak, her home club. Would it host? All in. She approached GAP. Would it administer? All in.
“I hope this event is successful on all points. Good turnout, good weather, good time,” Skeels said. “The Women’s Four-Ball is about opening up golf to let the women in Northeast Pennsylvania know that GAP is also for them.”
GAP
Celebrating Amateur Golf since 1897, GAP, also known as the Golf Association of Philadelphia, is the oldest regional or state golf association in the United States. It serves as the principal ruling body of amateur golf in its region. The Association’s 345 Member Clubs and 125,000 individual members are spread across Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland. The GAP’s mission is to promote, preserve and protect the game of golf.
