Whaley led the way as a golf pioneer
Six female coaches were on various sidelines during the NFL playoffs in January.
Becky Hammon, an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, became the first woman to coach an NBA team on Dec. 30 when head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected in the first half of a game.
The San Francisco Giants hired the first female coach in MLB history last January and the Marlins hired a female general manager in November.
But before these women broke the glass ceiling in traditional men’s sports, there was Suzy Whaley. Whaley, a former Farmington resident, became the first female PGA of America president two years ago. In 2003, she became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event in 58 years when she qualified for what was then the Greater Hartford Open.
Whaley, 54, is now living in
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and working as the PGA director of instruction at the Country Club at Mirasol. Her term as president expired last November but before she left, she had helped the PGA guide its members through a pandemic that shut down golf courses all over the country and put its members out of work.
Last week, Whaley reflected on her two-year tenure as PGA president and what she had hoped to accomplish during that time. March is National Women’s History month and Whaley is certainly a trailblazer who shaped women’s sports history in Connecticut.
On her legacy as the first female president of the PGA of America
“What’s happening today is great. The ability of women to break through what has traditionally been male-only roles is keenly important for those that are watching. Some people say I’ve never seen anybody who looks like me in that job so I’m not sure that job’s for me. I’m celebrating the fact that more women are taking on nontraditional roles within sports.
“It’s your responsibility when you’re in that seat to make sure you have a pipeline coming behind you that can fill that seat.
“It wasn’t just about me being the president, it was, ‘How can I make this room more diverse? How can I bring in more women?’ Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s better for business when you have diversity of thought within the room.”
To that end, Whaley helped bring in three women — PGA Hall of Famer Renee Powell, Bank of America Chief Administrative Officer Andrea Smith and AT&T CEO Lori Lee - onto the PGA board of directors. Smith, Lee and another woman, Cathy Harbin, are currently on the board of directors.
“That is important for women who break through,” Whaley said. “It is your responsibility to bring other women with you.”
Sexism? Of course, Whaley has experienced it
“It’s a culture thing sometimes in our game that is thankfully shifting,” she said. “Even sometimes when you answer the phone at a golf facility as a female, oftentimes somebody calling will ask for the golf professional. Then they’re mortified.
“It’s not intentional. It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful. But I always tell young woman in the business to make sure they just don’t take offense, just educate — ‘I’m the golf professional, how can I help you?’
“I’ve done that before, where I’ve walked into the golf shop and asked for the golf professional to a female standing behind the counter and they said, ‘I’m the head golf professional.’ ”
On growing up in a household with no barriers
“I didn’t think about the fact that I was a girl playing T-ball with the boys. I didn’t think about the fact I was skateboarding with 12 boys. It wasn’t pointed out. It wasn’t something that was weird. It wasn’t abnormal. It was just something we did in our neighborhood. We played together.”
Whaley played golf for the first time wearing a swimsuit when she was nine years old. Even though her mom was summoned off the course to remove her “improperly dressed” daughter from the driving range at the Cavalry Club in Manlius, N.Y., Suzy didn’t get in trouble.
“True story. I went from the pool with the boys in my swimsuit to the driving range at Cavalry Club. I walked across the parking lot to the driving range. I was hitting balls in my swimsuit. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. The golf professional must have gone out and got my mom off the
course because I was dressed inappropriately — and that in itself is changing in today’s golf world but not everywhere, not that you should wear a swimsuit to play but — as my mom drove up, this is the epitome of my incredible mother, instead of her being angry with me, you know better… all she said to me was, ‘Do you like this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, this is fun.’ And she said, ‘Well, let’s go get you an outfit.’
“That to me was a moment in time that changed my whole life. It sounds super dramatic but I don’t know if my mom had yelled at me I would have ever gone back to the driving range. But she didn’t. I got an outfit and I became my mom’s golf pal and we played as much as we could.”
Impactful decisions
Two things stand out in the past year as far as the PGA was concerned: The pandemic and the decision to move the 2022 PGA Championship from Donald Trump’s Bedminster course in New Jersey after the Capitol riot in January.
Whaley spearheaded an effort to develop an $8 million emergency relief fund for workers in the industry who had their clubs shuttered early last year.
“We diverted money to the emergency relief fund and that’s something I’ll always be proud of, helping our members,” she said. “Then we spent time convincing legislators around the country and in Washington, that golf could be delivered responsibly.
Whaley was not in the room during the vote to move the PGA Championship, but she did draft a letter last year to members regarding the George Floyd incident and spent time developing diversity programs within the PGA.
“The PGA of America does not take a political stance in anything and I will tell you when everything was going on last summer with George Floyd and other things, I did come out with an open letter to our membership in regards to my feelings about what was happening in the world. Many people thought that was political; I think it’s humanity.”