Women's league still swinging at Fox Ridge

DIKE – More than a decade ago, Pat Fisher was asked by Fox Ridge Golf Course management to take over the women's golf league.

A senior administrative assistant at John Deere, where she's worked for 44 years now, Fisher knew how to work with management to get things done. Since taking the reins, the league enjoyed an initial growth spurt and participation levels have remained high, with the ladies finishing the 2019 season last week.

For the third consecutive year, 80 golfers competed in the Fox Ridge Ladies Golf League this summer. Participants are not just from Dike but also other surrounding towns including New Hartford, Reinbeck, Waterloo and Cedar Falls.

The league is believed to be the biggest in Iowa, certainly the largest for a small-town course in Dike.

Fisher keeps everything impressively well-organized from league standings, scoring information and weekly matchups posted at the clubhouse to weekly result roundups mailed to the participants.

But the secret to the league's success, Fisher said, is the two-golfer, best-shot format. The teams compete for 20 total points every week – two points to the best score on each hole, one for each time in the event of a tie and two extra points for the low 9-hole score.

"I think maybe 50 percent of these women would not golf if they had to golf alone," Fisher said. "We wouldn't have lasted these 13 years if not for that."

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