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How 2 women make this Ohio golf course (literally!) one-of-a-kind

Champions Golf Course doesn’t look like anything special when you first see it. It’s a well-conceived layout, and challenging — one of the toughest public courses in central Ohio — but if you pull in for a tee time, nothing screams one-of-a-kind. That’s just fine, because Champions seeks to deliver the experience you’d expect from a city-run facility, providing locals easy access to get out and play at a reasonable price. In fact, the course architect — Robert Trent Jones Sr. — might seem at first like the course’s only notable claim to fame.




But focusing on the Columbus, Ohio course’s past misses the point, because it’s the course’s present that’s so remarkable. Champions has become one of the most noteworthy golf facilities in the country because of its current personnel: The head pro is Fran Kocsis. The head superintendent is Sherri Brogan. The two women occupy the top leadership positions at Champions, making it the only known all-female head pro-superintendent duo in the country. They have made the course an unlikely trailblazer in a game that can be slow to adapt.

 

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Just don’t count on them to brag about it. “I’m not sure either of us have ever given it a lot of thought,” Kocsis told the USGA, which first reported on the course’s unique one-two punch. “We both love what we do, kind of married to our jobs. We’re well-qualified to do what we do and we have years of experience.”




When analyzing the demographics of the game, it does come as a bit surprise that Champions is the only course nationally with an all-female leadership. According to the National Golf Foundation, women represent 23 percent of all players in the United States. That’s lower than any of us who work in the industry would want, but it’s still a significant percentage; you’d assume they would occupy more significant leadership roles in the game. But that’s not the case. Nor does that mean it’s been easy for either woman get to this point.

“It honestly hasn’t been very good,” Brogan said of her treatment in the golf industry. “It’s taken me quite a while to prove myself, but I’m not sure I’ve proved myself to everyone yet. But I’m at the point now where I really don’t care. I know what the golf course looks like and the product I give. I think I’ve accomplished a lot, but it has not been easy.”



Article originally appeared on: Golf.com

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