Play concluded Wednesday in the New Hampshire Women’s Golf Association Amateur Championship, but a greater challenge lies ahead for the association that has governed women’s golf in the state for nearly 100 years.
Due to a mandate handed down by the USGA, golf’s national governing body, handicapping services will be limited to one organization in each state and region across the country. Currently, there are two associations in the state: the New Hampshire Golf Association, which oversees men’s amateur play, and the NHWGA.
Revenue generated by this service is the crux of contention, and NHWGA officials are concerned that if they lose control of these funds it could also mean a loss of identity in the state and mark the end of their long history.
“We’ve been accommodating the women in New Hampshire for 97 years,” said NHWGA President Dana Harrity. “Why would we want to stop doing what we’ve been doing? They (the NHGA) think they can do it better than we can do it.”
The sides will meet Friday at Manchester Country Club along with officials from the USGA. The NHGA declined to answer questions on the record until after a resolution is reached, but the association released a statement earlier this week.
“The NHGA looks forward to continued negotiations with the NHWGA,” the statement reads. “It has never been the NHGA’s intent to minimize women’s golf nor have we ever sought to diminish the important history of the NHWGA.”
Handicapping essentially levels the playing field for golfers. It factors a player’s score over several rounds, grades it against course difficulty, and generates the number of strokes a player is allowed to shave off their total for a round. Golf club members file their scores after several rounds, and the association, be it the NHGA or NHWGA, sends it to the Golf Handicap and Information Network, the handicapping service provided by USGA.
The cost for one player’s handicap is only a few dollars, but the associations charge more to create a net of revenue. This revenue goes back to the association and is used to subsidize tournament entry fees, as well as other services.
GHIN revenue adds up to about 85 percent of the NHWGA’s total income, Harrity said. If all of that revenue is taken away, she doesn’t how the NHWGA will continue to operate.
“If we’re going to give up our contract and let (the NHGA) be the contract holder, we need to come up with a solution on how much money we’re going to get,” she said.
That’s the stalemate.
The two associations have already negotiated and agreed on other areas of collaboration, such as course rules and course ratings. But when money hit the table and proposals were made, the two sides couldn’t have been farther apart.
“What we came up with was 85 percent of the net of the women’s handicaps,” Harrity said. “When we said that, they came back with 30 percent. We said that is unacceptable. So we sharpened our pencils and came back with 72 percent of the net on the women’s handicaps.”
The negotiations stopped there. It was June and the NHGA was about to enter the thick of its tournament season. Both sides stepped away and summer went on.
The NHWGA currently receives all of the revenue from women’s handicaps generated through GHIN, Harrity said. It has since 1984. The NHGA would not comment on the specifics of the negotiation beyond its prepared statement.
New Hampshire remains the only state in the nation not to have reached an agreement of collaboration or consolodation between its two golf associations. Now, the USGA is dispatching its own group to the Granite State to see the matter through.
“The USGA is flying up with four people, including an attorney, to figure out what to do with us,” Harrity said. “We are the last state, so they want to get this done. It’s interesting when you think about it that little, teeny New Hampshire is holding up the USGA.”
The NHGA and NHWGA will each have three representatives at the table Friday along with those from the national association. Harrity will represent the NHWGA along with Treasurer Dorene Bergeron and Secretary Chris Downall. Representing the NHGA will be President Glenn Walton, Executive Director Matt Schmidt and Vice President Joanne Flynn.
A Change.org petition titled “Save NH Women’s Golf Association” was created with the goal of finding 500 supporters. The petition boasted 453 supporters as of Wednesday afternoon.
“We’re trying to stay positive, but it is very frustrating that (the NHGA) does not understand that we want to stay as the NHWGA,” Harrity said. “They think that they need to be everything to everybody. We feel as though we can split those roles.”
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3339, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter
@NickStoico.)