“This is the thrill of a lifetime,” Helen said then. “After her birth, this is the next biggest thing.”
Geddes was 26 then. She’s 62 now and one of 120 competitors in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which starts Thursday at NCR Country Club. She’ll tee off on the first hole at 7:45 a.m.
Geddes played on the LPGA Tour from 1983-2003 and won 11 tour events and two major championships. The U.S. Open victory was her first major victory.
“I look back now, and it’s funny because I took it for granted I would win more U.S. Opens,” she said Wednesday at a press conference after her practice round. “I thought, ‘I’ll win a lot more Opens. This is just one of many.’ If I could go back and recreate it, I think I would have appreciated it more — not that I don’t appreciate it now. It was the greatest moment of my life. It’s great to be back here.”
In the addition to the victory by Geddes, the 1986 major, one of five USGA championships held at NCR, will be remembered forever for a number of reasons.
• On Tuesday, two days before the tournament began, a train wreck in Miamisburg started a phosphorus fire that burned until Saturday. The course had to be evacuated Tuesday as the plume of smoke blew toward Kettering. Close to 30,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes. Some players had to leave their hotels. Geddes remembers fleeing a restaurant in the middle of a meal with her family.
• Rain hit the course during the first round Thursday. It poured so much the parking lots were a muddy disaster all week, according to Dayton Daily News reports at the time.
• Early Saturday morning, before the third round, an earthquake centered in Lima shook Dayton. It measured 4.2 on the richter scale.
• During the third round on Saturday, a 25-year-old security guard, Bill Schroeder, accidentally ran his Kawasaki KZ 400 motorcycle into the scoreboard while reporting for work at the press tent.
“I was at a dead stop,” Schroeder said then. “I was pulling the bike over a (concrete) parking block. I leaned back, accidentally hit the throttle and made a grand entrance into the tent.”
• There was even a swarm of locusts that bothered the golfers all week, as JoAnne Carner, the oldest golfer in the field this year at 83 remembered Wednesday.
“You’d make a mistake and wear a yellow blouse or a green blouse and they’d land on you all day,” Carner said. “I remember I think it was Donna Caponi had a little tap-in, maybe a foot, and she walked up there, and as she started to hit it, the locusts were in the cup, and she whacked it almost off the green. It’s different playing with locusts.”
There should be no similar disasters in Kettering this week. The weather forecast looks good all week. The chances of an earthquake, as always, are slim. The golfers who appeared at press conferences Wednesday spoke well of the course after they finished practice rounds.
“I love it,” said Laura Davies, who won the first U.S. Senior Women’s Open in 2018. “I played here in ‘86. I think I finished 11th, so I did well around here, but I don’t remember it at all. My memory is just not that good. But what a great course. It’s set up really nicely. I think the greens are going to bring the scoring down. When you get on the greens, you’re going to have to be in the right spots and that’s where the problems are going to be, but it’s a terrific test.”
The favorite is the defending champion, Annika Sörenstam.
“This is not a walk in the park by any means,” she said. “I felt like yesterday it was playing a little longer. I’m not really sure what the official scorecard says, but it’s been raining so we don’t get a lot of roll off the tees, and the greens are undulated. It’s got a lot of character to it. You need to hit the ball well. You can end up some places here that makes it really tough. I think the key here is to be patient and try and hit fairways.”
Sörenstam won the tournament by eight strokes at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Conn., a year ago.
“You want world-class players,” Davies said, “and she’s a world-class player. She dusted us all. Nothing has changed. She did that for 20 years, so why wouldn’t she come back and dust us again? Hopefully, we’ll get a bit closer to her this year. She’s obviously the player to beat. I don’t think anyone would think any different to that, but I can think of at least 10 players if they turn up on the week can give everyone a run for their money. It’ll be really interesting to see how it goes.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
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