The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG – Waitsburg Council member Jillian Henze and her older sister, Alison Beaudry, are golfing buddies. They play together about once a month every year during golf season. It’s a bonding time for them but it has a competitive side.

“She has always been able to outdrive me,” Henze explains. “She would hit the ball much harder than me, but it’s usually off in the trees somewhere. I can hit the ball straight, but it takes me two hits to get the distance she can get in one.”

Henze has been playing golf for a while now. In 2017, she took group lessons at Tumwater Valley Municipal Golf Course under Kathy O’Kelly, a member of the Teaching & Club Professional (T&CP) Division of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).

“I loved it,” she recounts of that summer. “I loved the camaraderie, and I loved the quiet. It’s just you and the ball in a beautiful setting. I just fell in love with it. Of course, Kathy told me to ignore the men on the driving range who would walk up and tell me how to improve my swing. ‘Ignore them and do exactly what I tell you to do,’ she said.”

She bought her first set of clubs in 2017 and never looked back. She was still golfing while five months pregnant. An early athletic career gave her an advantage in learning the sport. She grew up dancing and doing gymnastics.

“When you’re doing handsprings on a balance beam, you’d better be precise,” she says. “Golf is a whole-body workout. It’s about precision and power, and it has to be a combination. It’s just like gymnastics or dancing.”

Henze notes that her short game – on the putting green – was always better than her sister’s. Yet, this year, she decided it was time to improve her overall play. Taking advantage of early release from work on Friday afternoons, she put in a call to local golf pro Tyler Huff at Touchet Valley Golf Course. He asked her what she wanted to work on. She didn’t have to think about it.

“I want to beat my sister,” she told him. “I have to find my power. I have to hit the ball farther than Alison.” She didn’t keep it a secret, either. She called her sister, who lives in Renton.

“I told her she would be seeing some different things the next time we played.” Henze possesses a competitive bone or two.

However, the first order of business was replacing her driving club, which Huff judged too heavy. As a nationally recognized club fitter, he knew exactly what she needed.

“He wanted me to have the best,” she says. Of course, this involves taking a number of things into consideration, such as the material the club is made of. But it also involves color. Huff knew enough about Henze to pick just the right one - a PING Ladies G LE 2 Driver in raspberry pink.

Then Huff told her she needed to give it a name. She calls it Betty.

Henze has spent the entire summer, June through August, at weekly lessons with Huff. It has been hard work.

“I spent one session just working on putting power into my swing,” Henze recounts. “I spent an hour twisting my body as fast as possible so my arms would follow through. The next day, I’m sitting in my office wondering why my legs are so sore.”

Huff enjoyed recalling sessions this summer with Henze.

“She’s a fireball,” he said. “One of the things I teach people is not to overthink their swing. It’s easy to do because you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You just learn to accept that, and you start to relax. It takes practice, but it’s so easy for your mind to get in the way.”

He describes an early lesson where he and Henze played catch with a golf ball. As they threw it back and forth, he asked her questions, and they chatted about things as if visiting over coffee. Meanwhile, he was walking circles around Henze, moving further and further away from her.

“All that time, she never once had to think about catching the ball. She just caught it,” Huff says.

By the end of summer, Henze knew that the lessons had paid off.

“Early August Alison and I played in Port Orchard, and I did it. I redeemed myself. I whooped her. I outdrove her.”

She called Tyler when she got home and said, “Mission accomplished.”

Of course, this isn’t the end of the sisterly fun. Tyler Huff has something new planned before that happens: Touchet Valley’s first Glow Golf Tournament.

As you might guess, Glow Golf is played at night. You read that right—golfing in the dark. According to Huff, night play features translucent balls charged with LED lights, or a glow stick placed inside. A glow stick is also hung on the flagpole at the green.

“When you hit the ball, it flies like a tracer in the dark,” said Huff. “It’s just fun to watch.”

And you might wonder how anyone can see what they’re aiming at in the dark. But that’s where the idea of not overthinking comes into play.

“One of the best slogans of all time is Nike’s ‘Just Do It.’” said Huff. “The first time I played Glow Golf, my game had been in a funk. I just wasn’t playing well. But something happened while playing that game in the dark. I relaxed. I got out of my own way. I had fun. My son and I ended up winning the tournament. Glow golf totally got me out of my funk.”

Huff is planning a free golf clinic at Touchet Valley from 10-2 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, when folks can drop by just to chat about the golf course and ask questions or get some tips and a brush up on their game before the game on October 28. Eighteen holes are being planned for the event (twice through Touchet Valley’s nine), and it will begin sometime late afternoon - the exact time yet to be determined. Players are invited to play in Halloween costumes, but they will want to dress warmly.

“I’m a fair-weather golfer,” admitted Henze. “If it’s 85 degrees, I’m good to go. If it’s raining, I won’t go out. Less than 60 degrees, nope.

Ahem. She might have to get comfortable with being a bit uncomfortable. Alison Beaudry plans to be on the Touchet Valley grass that night to tee off against her little sister once again.