While lacrosse, soccer and football benefit from the advantage of on-campus facilities, the Hoya golf team could never dream of having more than 18 holes of mini-golf in the quaintly cramped Georgetown community. The only glimpse most students will ever get of the golf team may be the sight of players lugging their golf bags on the way to practice.
Where are they headed? To pelt the Healy clock tower from the top of Kehoe? To work on their chipping on Copley Lawn? No, the new home of the Hoya golf program is the Members Club at Four Streams in Beallsville, Md., a private golf club with a world-class practice facility. The club has welcomed Georgetown, building the program its own practice tee at their range furnished with ball buckets emblazoned with the Georgetown logo.
“It’s a beautiful golf facility,” women’s Head Coach Patricia Post said. “The golf course is very challenging.”
Georgetown vehicles shuttle most players the 45-minute drive to Four Streams in the morning while others make it out in the afternoon, according to class schedules. Once on the course, the team works on the range, perfecting their short game and putting.
The biggest shame about the lack of awareness about the golf program on campus is that Georgetown was highly recognized within the country’s golf community last month. Golf Digest, in its third annual college guide, named the Hoya women’s golf team among the top programs in the country, ranking them No. 17 in their balanced category. The guide’s aim is to help high school student athletes discover the best school for them, and the balanced ranking category looks at the schools academic and athletic benefits.
“I think it’s great, and I think it’s pretty on,” Post said of the ranking. “Georgetown offers a great academic environment, and everybody knows that. And I think golf-wise, we’re just getting on the board.”
“There’s been a lot of improvement in the program since I was a freshman, and with Patty coming it’s only going to get better exponentially,” senior golfer Katie Dwyer added.
The merits of the golf program definitely flow from the top. Patricia Post may be in only her second year as women’s coach, but her resume more than proves her abilities. Before coming to Georgetown, she spent four years working first as the Teaching Professional at Fair Oaks Park in Fairfax, Va., and then as the Assistant Golf Professional at Lakewood Country Club in Rockville, Md. A 1999 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Post was the Wisconsin Amateur Champion in 1998 and learned to combine academics and athletics while earning Academic All-American honors. She started playing golf during her freshman year of high school, but it hasn’t always been smooth swinging.
“I didn’t like it at first,” Post admitted. “The last ten years, I’ve had much more progress.”
Balancing her responsibilities at Georgetown, Post has also found time to continue her career as a professional golfer. Last month she tied for fourth at the SkyCaddie LPGA Teaching and Club Professional Championship, finishing four strokes behind champion Lisa DePaulo. In June, Post became the second woman, following Suzy Whaley in 2002 and 2004, to qualify for and participate in the PGA Professional National Championship for club professionals and teachers who are members of the PGA of America.
“It was a great summer for me, personally,” Post said.
“Lot’s of professional play, which was unexpected. Every time that you play it gives you different experiences. It was great for me as a coach and a player to participate with the best golfers in the world.”
Patricia was not alone at the Professional National Championship. She and her husband Brendon Post became the first husband-wife combination in the event’s history. Brendon got the best of his wife, finishing tied for 65th place at 12 over par, while Patricia failed to advance past the second round.
“I would love to be able to get the opportunity again had I had my ‘A’ game with me,” Post said of the experience and the rivalry with her husband. “It was fun. We actually play in a two-man event together, and we’ve been very successful at that, always being in the top five. We practice and play together. He’s my golf swing coach, and I’m his. We’re more of a support network than competitors.”
If anyone benefits from the professional experience of Coach Post, it’s definitely her players.
“I think it’s great,” Dwyer said of having an active player as a coach. “We can relate better with each other. She’s done things that we’re aspiring to do. She’s been through the college circuit … Also some of us aspire to play professionally when we graduate, so we have that mentor there, somebody who’s been down that path.”
Post is ready to use her experience to take her squad to a higher level. Rain cancelled the final round of the Wisconsin Badger Invitational at the beginning of last week, leaving the Hoyas in eighth place.
“I see great things,” Coach Post said of this year’s team. “We know we’ve set some lofty team goals this year. We want to win the Big East. That’s their goal, not necessarily my goal, but it’s their goal. I’m there just to kind of facilitate that, and hopefully we achieve that in the end.”
Although making a trip to Four Streams or further to cheer on the women may be too much for most students, the girls aren’t ready to let student fans off the hook.
“We had a lot of people who came out and volunteered who were students, which was great,” Dwyer said of support they’ve received in the past. “They kind of helped shuttle us around and run our tournament, and it was nice to run into some people that I knew. Any kind of recognition at all at this point is great.”
