I actually had four stories in the most recent issue of L. Here is the second one. It is on a local person named Laura Saf. She is currently in Scotland at the Curtis Cup, an event for amateur women golfers. Laura is an official with the USGA. Maybe some day you will see her on TV making a ruling. She would probably hope not.
Laura Saf. By Brian Reetz.
“What are your favorite sand traps in Lincoln?” I asked. I thought it was a fair enough question to ask of Lincoln’s Laura Saf -- a longtime golfer, a member of the United States Golf Association Women’s Committee and a USGA tournament official.
Being a golfer myself I thought it would be of interest to other golfers in the city of Lincoln too.
“Bunkers you mean?” Saf responded with piercing eyes that every tournament official should learn how to use, followed by a light-hearted laugh. “I don’t ever try to be in them so I can’t say if I have a favorite.”
I quickly moved onto the next question. But I was curious. When I got home I had to look up the definition of a sand trap from about.com: “Sand trap is the vernacular term for a bunker filled with sand. The term actually does not exist in the Rules of Golf, where "bunker" is always used.” Oh, now the official glare made perfect sense from a person with her expertise of the 536-page decision book, written and interpreted by the Royal & Ancient in Great Britain and the USGA, that includes the 34 Rules of Golf. She reads the book every year, cover to cover, before she goes to the Rules workshop where she is tested on her knowledge. Her decision book is marked with tabs and filled with all kind of notes for her knowledge.
“I like to say that I have been chewed up and spit out by a few players, but not very many,” Saf said, who by the end of this year will have officiated at 30 USGA championships. “My technique as an official has certainly evolved. I know how to speak; especially if it is something I know the player isn’t going to be very happy about and that happens more at the Women’s Open level, amateurs are pretty accepting of whatever. I know how to speak very authoritative, not bossy, but you make the ruling, you turn around and get out of the way. If you stand there you are just asking for a response. This has come over 12 years of experience. I didn’t always know that.”
The only child born to “great” parents in Oakland, the Swedish capital of Nebraska, Saf learned about playing the game by tagging along with them on trips to the Oakland Golf Club course, where her dad was the president. “I can remember the day, I think I was 8, and I went along with them and I was running around the course. I was getting a little too active,” Saf said. “I remember my dad sat me down and gave me a choice. My dad was great about giving me choices. He said you can either learn to play golf and play with us or we are going to have to leave you home with the babysitter. It didn’t take me long to figure out that spending time with the babysitter wasn’t something I wanted to do.”
After graduating with a degree in Communications from Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Missouri, Saf started working at K-Mart. She was in management with the company for 11 years, which included a move to Garden City, Kansas with her husband, Roger. While in southwest Kansas, her parents’ health started failing (her mother was battling Multiple Sclerosis) and Saf decided to stop working and focus on them, making frequent trips back and forth to Nebraska. “Then one day my husband suggested that it was time to go home,” Saf said, who has since lost both parents. “The day he suggested that I couldn’t jump high enough! I was so thankful. It was a good move for him too because his parents are elderly and he lost his dad last year.”
But it wasn’t until 1993 when the “golfing” life of this now 53-year-old changed dramatically. The Safs, who had played quite a bit of golf in windy southwest Kansas, had recently moved back to Lincoln and Firethorn head professional Laura Gunia approached Saf with a simple question.
“She came to me one day and said that Firethorn is going to host the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1996 and we think that you would be a wonderful chairman from the club,” Saf recalled. “I was like, holy cow!”
Even though she knew what the U.S. Amateur was Saf didn’t know what being the chairman would all entail. After discussing the possibilities with her husband she came up with a short list for Gunia. “One of them was that if I did it, I wanted her to stay. Golf pros move around and I didn’t want to start the process and have her leave in the middle of it. I think it took me six months to say yes. That was when the fun began!”
Saf worked on the buildup to the Amateur for two and a half years. Even though it was hard work, she had a great time and a lot of fun in the volunteer role. During that time she was nominated to the Women’s TRANS National Golf Association board of directors, which led her down another route. “I thought at the time that they required me to go to the Rules of Golf workshop to learn the Rules,” Saf said. “In retrospect they just strongly encouraged it. I thought I had to go so I went and I scored pretty well on the test.”
Then something amazing happened. Saf got invited to be an official at the U.S. Women’s Open in 1997. “I got this letter and I hadn’t officiated anything yet. I had just gone to the Rules workshop, I had a good score and then I get this letter to officiate at Pumpkin Ridge (Golf Club in Oregon). I’m telling my husband they made a huge mistake,” she said giggling. “So I called back to the USGA and checked. I talked to Kendra Graham and they said no we didn’t make a mistake. We all know you and think you can handle it. I was like, oh my gosh. My husband said you better go because you might not ever be invited again.”
Despite not sleeping well for three days due to nerves, Saf did decide to go to Pumpkin Ridge for her first officiating duty. “I jokingly say that I don’t talk to God much about my golf game because I have so many more important things to talk to him about but let me tell you I was praying then. You never know when you are on TV and when you’re not on TV. I did have to make a couple of rulings.”
And Saf’s golf volunteerism continued to grow from there. First came a spot on the USGA regional affairs committee and then she was nominated on the women’s mid-amateur committee. Then in 2001, Saf was nominated for the USGA Women’s Committee. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Golf is a sport that at the highest level is governed by volunteers. Obviously we have a staff. There is a staff of about 350 people back in New Jersey at Golf House. There is an executive committee made up of 15 volunteers that govern the business of the USGA. Right under the executive committee is the women’s committee that I’m on. There are 15 women from across the country and we govern the women’s championships. We stay up on everything that is going on in women’s golf in the nation. I’ve been on it ever since 2001. It’s fun.”
Saf is required as part of the women’s committee to attend the USGA annual meeting in February, the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Curtis Cup, when it is in the United States. They also have subcommittees under the main women’s committee and Saf is currently the chairman of assignments. She assigns all of the rules officials to the groups at the U.S. Women’s Open. “At the Open we walk with the group so we have between 50 and 60 rules officials and there is a method to it. It’s a big job. I’m kind of anal about details so I really get into it. It’s fun, but challenging. If we have any weather issues at all then that really throws a wrench in the assignments. Like if you can’t get the first round in, what are you going to do tomorrow? You have to be able to adapt. When I go to the Open of the 15 of us, there are 10 or 11 that are qualified rules officials, which means that we score a 92 or above on the Rules of Golf test, which is extremely difficult and gets harder and harder for me each year. We are assigned a specific group each day and we walk with them. If they need a ruling or have a question you are right there. We don’t do it at all of the USGA championships but they do it at all of the Opens. We are starting to do it at more and more championships. There is nothing better than being out there inside the ropes.”
Since she has officiated the championships since 1997, it’s on the courses where Saf has had the chance to get to know some of the bigger names in women’s golf. “Not that you really talk a lot, because you don’t, but it’s fun when you get up to the tee and someone like Natalie Gulbis, comes up and says, ‘Hey Laura, how you doing?’ I always look forward to having someone that I’ve had before.
“As I say about rules officiating, it’s 95 percent sheer boredom and 5 percent sheer terror if something goes wrong. So you have a lot of time to just watch the golf. I’ll watch their grip and their stance and I’ll listen to the caddies talk to them and I think that I will always come back and play really good but it never works,” Saf said jokingly. “There just isn’t something in the mechanics for a 53-year-old woman. I’m a dreamer though.”
Actually playing the game is something Saf, who is a member at both Firethorn and the Country Club of Lincoln, rarely gets to do anymore. “I talk a lot of golf,” she said smiling. “Most people don’t know what I do, the scope of it and how much I travel. They will say, have you been playing a lot. I will say no, but I’ve been talking a lot.”
But she does continue to have a competitive spirit about golf. “One of my dreams, my bucket list so to speak, is to try to qualify for a USGA Championship and the only one I would be handicap eligible for is the Senior because I’m like a 12/13 handicap. To just be able to say that I tried it, I’m sure that I wouldn’t be able to make it in a billion years, but I would like to say I tried. Another goal is to get my handicap under 10, just to be able to say it for a two-week period. So when I am in the rocking chair in the nursing home I can say that I used to be a single-digit golfer. I don’t know if I will make that but I’m still trying.”
For now Saf will continue to focus on her golf volunteerism as Mid-Amateur chairman, assignments chairman and a member of the future sites committee and others. As a member of the international team selection committee, Saf and her husband attended the Curtis Cup at St. Andrews in Scotland in late May. But she is also active on the state level as she is the tournament director for the women’s amateur association and is the first woman to ever serve on the Nebraska Golf Association board.
“The Lord didn’t bless us with children so luckily I’m able to do this,” Saf said. “It’s fun and it’s not going to last forever. It’s demanding. By the end of the year, I’m ready to stay home. I never, in million years, thought I would be where I am.”
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