Home cookin’

Richard Dunn

In her third decade as the darling of women’s golf at Santa Ana

Country Club, Marianne Towersey doesn’t appear to be slowing down

anytime soon. If there was a ladies professional senior tour, she

could qualify and make a living.

Towersey, the Newport-Mesa community’s all-time leader in club

championships (18), continues to shoot career-low scores, despite

reaching senior-division eligibility last year at age 50.

After shooting a women’s course-record 68 at Newport Beach Country

Club in early August, Towersey, who grew up playing Santa Ana Country

Club, posted her first career sub-70 round at the venerable Santa Ana

Heights course -- the oldest golf club in Orange County and one of

the state’s fewest golf-only country clubs.

“I think that was the first time I played a round without a

bogey,” Towersey said of her 68 in the Ladies’ Member/Guest at

Newport Beach with Sandi Coffer, a longtime former Newport Beach club

champion who knows how to pick a partner.

Towersey repeated her bogey-free golf -- she called it

“serendipitous” -- when she carded a 3-under 69 at Santa Ana Country

Club on Aug. 22. It is the lowest round ever recorded by a female

amateur at her home course (LPGA Tour pro Pearl Sinn holds the

women’s course record at 63).

A three-time Tea Cup Classic champion, Towersey has also captured

two championships since May, winning the California Senior Women’s

Amateur Championship at Bayonet Golf Course in Monterey and the

Women’s Golf Association of Southern California title at the PGA of

Southern California Golf Club in Calimesa.

“You’ve got to either get better or worse, and I’d rather get

better,” Towersey, a former junior golf sensation, said of her always

improving game.

Towersey, one of two Tea Cup Classic VI participants who will

compete in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship later this month

at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore., will face defending Tea Cup

champion Debbie Albright of Newport Beach Country Club, Olivia

Slutzky of Big Canyon Country Club and Akemi Khaiat of Mesa Verde

Country Club (the other U.S. Mid-Am qualifier) in Tea Cup Classic VI

on Wednesday at Santa Ana Country Club at 1 p.m.

“You know and I know that anything happen,” Towersey said of

trying to win a Tea Cup Classic for the second time on her home

course, a 5,399-yard layout from the women’s tees. Towersey won Tea

Cup Classic II at Santa Ana in 1998 to trigger a three-year title

run.

In 2001, Towersey’s first year playing in the seniors division,

she was the medalist at the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship,

a feat proudly recognized during the club’s centennial celebration

last September.

In fact, an entire section of the club’s centennial museum

prominently displayed many of Towersey’s career highlights, including

her stunning upset victory, at age 16, over future LPGA Hall of Famer

JoAnne Carner (nee Gunderson) in the first round of match play in the

1967 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship. A 1999 issue of Golf World

magazine included Towersey’s win over Gunderson as one of the

country’s 10 greatest upsets of the last century.

Known as Marianne Cox in those days, she followed the footsteps of

her mother, Pat, and late father, Alvin, as a golfer. Pat Cox is a

four-time women’s club champion at Santa Ana Country Club, capturing

titles before and after getting married and having children (1947,

‘52, ’61 and ‘62).

This year, Towersey won her 18th Santa Ana women’s club

championship in 21 years, becoming the area’s all-time leader, for

men or women, in club titles -- breaking a tie at 17 with Dee Dee

White of Newport Beach Country Club.

Towersey, also the Newport Harbor High girls golf coach, took an

eight-year hiatus from golf in the 1970s, then returned to the game

when she and her husband, Brian, purchased her family’s membership at

Santa Ana Country Club. When Towersey was pregnant with her second

son, Patrick, she won the 1981 California Women’s Amateur

Championship. Her oldest son, Chad, is a regular contender in state

amateur championships.

Towersey, who lives in Newport Beach, is also the women’s

course-record holder at Big Canyon Country Club.