Tea Cup Classic’s Denise Woodard (Mesa Verde Country Club) playing
with a full deck
Richard Dunn
COSTA MESA - If you’re looking for a way to relax before the Tea
Cup Classic, just follow Denise Woodard of Mesa Verde Country Club.
Woodard’s recent vacation to the wine country in Napa and Sonoma with
her husband, Ted, has helped, she believes, get her clubs in order.
“We played a round of golf every day and went to a winery every day,”
said Woodard, who will play Friday in the fourth annual Tea Cup Classic
at Big Canyon Country Club (2 p.m.) as the Mesa Verde women’s club
champion.
The only grandmother and full-time working woman in the Tea Cup
Classic foursome, Woodard is an entrepreneurial type with her business,
Mail Boxes Etc. in Costa Mesa, where she employs all three of her
daughters: Lisa, Coralee and Serena.
Woodard, who could easily be the poster girl for the Executive Women’s
Golf Association, also has a son, Brian, the oldest of her four at 31,
and two grandsons from Lisa, who has been married 11 years.
“Coralee just got married April 22, so she’s a newlywed and we were
busy with the wedding,” said Woodard, whose youngest child, Serena, 18,
graduated from Estancia High in June with a 4.25 grade-point average.
Woodard’s idea of a good golf game includes, above all, fun. And, in
the previous three Tea Cup Classics, she exhibited nothing less than the
thrill-a-minute pearls of smiles and laughs, while always finding a way
to make the spectacular shot and bring great applause from the gallery,
which usually numbers a couple hundred.
“(The Tea Cup Classic) is fun, and I always look forward to it,
especially with the possibility of a hole-in-one and getting that car --
that’s great!” Woodard said, referring to the brand new Mercedes-Benz
ML320, which will be placed at the par-3 hole No. 7 (141 yards) at Big
Canyon Country Club.
“You can hack the whole golf course and possibly still get a car.
There’s always hope.”
In Tea Cup Classic III last year, Woodard wasn’t exactly a hack,
considering she secured runner-up honors with an 82 behind repeat
champion Marianne Towersey of Santa Ana Country Club.
On her home course, Woodard enjoyed her best finish in three Tea Cup
Classics, nearly sinking a 30-foot birdie putt on the par-3 No. 12 at
Mesa Verde.
Always accompanied at the Tea Cup Classic by her parents, Alan and
Norma Garwood of Hemet, Woodard said she told her folks about the 2000
Mesa Verde club championship at her daughter’s wedding, which led to her
mother’s response: “Oh, great, we get to come to the Tea Cup Classic
again!”
It can, indeed, become an annual summer affair for the women’s club
champions in the Daily Pilot’s circulation, which covers four private
clubs -- Big Canyon, Mesa Verde, Santa Ana and Newport Beach Country
Club.
Last year, Woodard set a Mesa Verde Country Club record with her
fourth straight women’s championship, breaking the mark of three titles
in a row held by Shirley Kinder (1983-85). Kinder won five Mesa Verde
club championships, spacing them out from 1975 to ’89.
Next year, Woodard will try to tie Natalie King for the club’s
all-time lead in women’s championships with six. King, who won six titles
from 1982 to ‘95, continues to be one of Mesa Verde’s top players,
finishing third in the 2000 women’s club championship.
This year, Woodard shot 335 in four rounds (an 83.75 average) and
captured her fifth straight title by 16 strokes. Izumi Sueoka (351), King
(352) and Debbie Brown (354) all placed in the championship flight.
The Tea Cup Classic was launched in 1997 mainly because of the large
margins of victory by the four ladies club champions in the Newport-Mesa
community. The event is also staged to bring the golf community closer
together and promote women’s golf.
Woodard played Big Canyon in May during team competition and said she
“didn’t play the course that well.”
Towersey set the course record with a 69 at Big Canyon on April 25.
Even though Towersey will enter Tea Cup Classic IV as the favorite,
based on her aforementioned accolades, Woodard isn’t ready to hand over
the 2000 title to the 15-time Santa Ana champion.
“She’s human,” Woodard said of Towersey. “Some days you have good
games, and some days you don’t. But you always want to bring your ‘A’
game to the Tea Cup Classic. People are watching.”
Last week at Mesa Verde’s Ladies Two-day Member/Guest Invitational,
Towersey and King won low gross, finishing two strokes ahead of Woodard
and Candy Meyers (Glendora Country Club) in the better-ball of partners
format.
“(Meyers) was a blind date,” said Woodard, who never met the 1999
Southern California women’s match-play champion before the Mesa Verde
event.
Woodard, who takes lessons from Mesa Verde assistant pro Jeremy
Clevenger, started playing golf after meeting her husband about 13 years
ago at a bowling alley in Las Vegas. Ted Woodard had been a member at
Mesa Verde for several years and encouraged Denise to play.
Previously, softball and bowling were her sports of choice, after
growing up as a Hemet farm girl who would clean horse corrals for fun.
Now, she sips tea with the golf queens of the Newport-Mesa community.
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