She’s the Boss : Kerry Hopps Remains True to Golf Traditions in Role as Club Pro

Older male golfers--usually the ones who wear those neat, just-above-the-ankle, lime green polyester pants with tiny walruses on them--like to tell the joke about a man stuck on the course behind a group of incredibly slow women golfers.

Finally, after watching them hack their way through five holes in about four hours, he bellows an insult that causes one of the women to stalk back down the fairway and confront him.

“What’s the matter?” the woman asked, “Don’t you like playing behind women golfers?”

“I don’t really know,” the man responded. “I’ve never seen one.”

If any male golfing member of the Woodland Hills Country Club would like to spend the rest of his life getting those oh-so-hard-to-get 4:15 a.m. or 9:45 p.m. tee times for the rest of his life, all he has to do is tell that joke to the club’s head golf professional.

She is Kerry Hopps, one of only two women to hold down the top pro job at a public or private golf club in the Los Angeles area. Of the more than 6,000 such jobs in the nation, only 38 of them are currently filled by women, according to the PGA.

“There are more and more women playing golf every day in this country,” Hopps said, “and I think you’ll start to see more and more women serving as the head golf professionals at courses. But for now, it’s a pretty small group. For me, it was just a natural progression. I played golf since the age of 5, played in high school and college and just continued on here.

“I can’t imagine having another job. I love this so much. The people at the Woodland Hills Country Club are like family to me. And when your office is this green and beautiful, there’s just no other job like it.”

Hopps, 30, played golf for the Rio Mesa High team in Camarillo and then played for the Cal State Northridge squad that won three conference championships between 1977 and 1980. During her collegiate career she began working at the Woodland Hills Country Club part time. She eventually was named one of the club’s assistant pros and in 1983 was promoted to head professional.

“When I began playing seriously in high school, and even during my college days, golf seemed to be a much more male-dominated sport,” Hopps said. “But following the progression of everything in the world, women are doing more and more and taking on jobs once held exclusively by men.”

Hopps wants it known, however, that she is not a banner-waving feminist. She is first and foremost, she points out quickly, a golfer.

“I am in no way a women’s libber type,” she said. “I worked hard to get here, but I’m in this for the golf and the life around a golf course, not to set any examples for anyone.”

And if that doesn’t make a militant feminist want to slug Hopps with a pair of construction boots, perhaps the schedule of events at Hopps’ golf course might. On Saturday until 11 a.m. and Sunday until 9 a.m., no women need lace on the spikes. It’s men only during those hours, which, by the way, are the prime golfing hours each week. The women get exclusive use of the course each Tuesday and on a few other selected days each month.

Such rules are common at private country clubs. But at the Woodland Hills Country Club, with its woman head professional, it seems a bit more unusual.

“It’s tradition,” Hopps said. “Through time golf has always been broken down like this. The thought when the tradition began is that men work all week and they only have Saturday and Sunday to play golf. The women could play during the week because they didn’t work.

“But, I have never received any complaints about our schedule. The men think it’s OK and the women think it’s OK too. They adjust their schedules and play Saturday and Sunday afternoons. And I really don’t want to get dragged into a long conversation about this. As I’ve said, I’m a golf pro. That’s all.”

Hopps said that she was never inclined to give the LPGA a shot, leaving the fierce competitiveness of professional high-stakes tournaments to those with more of a killer instinct.

“I just never leaned towards the LPGA,” she said. “It’s an awfully tough life out there. For me it was a question of mental toughness more than a talent thing. I honestly don’t think I have that mental toughness that it would take. There’s such tremendous pressure on those women.

“When I worked here as an assistant pro I found that I liked it so much, I just never thought about doing anything else.”

Hopps also found something else during her early years as a teaching assistant at the club. She found Paul Hopps, who was then playing golf for Pierce College and is now an assistant pro at Rancho Park course in West Los Angeles. They are married, and wouldn’t you just love to see the millions of golf shoe spike marks in their kitchen linoleum?

And, if you happen to be walking by their home at 4 a.m. nearly any day and hear loud bells ringing, relax. There is no burglary in progress nor any fire.

“It’s the alarm clock,” Kerry Hopps said. “The life of a teaching golf pro means getting up before the sun. There aren’t many days that our alarm doesn’t go off at 4 o’clock and we’re off to our separate golf courses for the day. It may seem crazy, but there’s nothing like it.”