Jury Of Eight: SWA Players Remember Sept. 11 Tragedy

By Rhonda Glenn, USGA

Hot Springs, Va. – September 11.

There is only one 9/11 in the hearts of most Americans. While today is 9/12, we take time out to remember what occurred on 9/11 eight years ago.

It is 2001 and the 2001 USGA Senior Women's Amateur is underway at Allegheny Country Club in Sewickley, Pa.

And then it happened. The World Trade Center. The Pentagon. And finally United Flight 93 went to the ground in Shanksville, Pa., just 80 miles from this historic little club.

Teresa Belmont, director of the Senior Women's Amateur, is the USGA staff member in charge of the championship. She has, in fact, run the Senior Women’s Amateur for many years. It is now morning and the players have just started the second round of match play. Then the horror happens. Belmont – as we all do – has vivid memories of that day.

The players are immersed in their games. It is a national championship, so no one is picking up cell phone calls or watching TV. By the end of the day, the field will be reduced to eight quarterfinalists. As the players dash to the clubhouse between rounds, word filters to them about the national tragedy.

“I remember it so well,” Belmont says. “We took all of the quarterfinalists into the clubhouse. All eight of them. I even remember the murals on the walls, the scenes of horses and pastures. And then we let the players decide if they wanted to continue the championship.”

The quarterfinalists are from across the country with one from Canada. All are good enough to have national reputations: Taffy Brower of Boynton Beach, Fla., Liz Haines of Gladwyne, Pa., Toni Wiesner of Fort Worth, Texas, Marianne Towersey of Newport Beach, Calif., Anne Carr of Renton, Wash., Karen Ferree of Hilton Head, S.C., Marylou Henderson of Canada, and Carol Semple Thompson, the famed amateur playing in front of the home crowd at the club where she has played for all of her golfing life.

More than a thousand miles away, in St. Louis, Mo., the Senior Amateur is underway and USGA officials there are holding a similar meeting with the remaining players. The USGA won’t decide whether to discontinue play. The players will make the decision.

And so, in the old white frame clubhouse at Allegheny Country Club, the eight go over their choices. They can go home, and continue the championship at another time, or they can play.

The discussion is short, the decision unanimous. The players are stoic. Play on. Planes aren’t flying and there is nowhere for them to go. They will stay and they will play.

The Senior Women’s Amateur is televised this year. Belmont is pulled in front of the cameras. “I remember the intense lights, and then I was told that our championship, and the men’s senior, were the only sporting events in the country that did not cancel and I was asked, why?” she said. She could only say that the players made the decision.

They played and, in the end, Semple Thompson won her third of what would be four consecutive titles. She was thoughtful as she spoke of the 9/11 tragedy and the decision of the players.

“I think the prevailing opinion was that there wasn’t a thing we could do about what was going on in New York or Washington, and we probably should try to get back to some sort of normalcy, if there is ever going to be such a thing in our lives again,” Semple Thompson said.

In the analysis surrounding those tragic days, and in years since, we have been told that the goal of terrorism is to disrupt our lives. Terrorism is designed to force us to ground, so to speak, and to make us change our way of life and change everything we love.

In Sewickley, Pa., eight women said no. Eight women said, “Play on.” And perhaps in that one brief moment, they laid the first stone in the foundation of determination and perseverance that would help this country endure.

Rhonda Glenn is a manager of communications for the USGA. E-mail her with questions or comments at rglenn@usga.org.