Big hitter Liz Dodds shows a taste of what she’ll bring to the varsity golf team and shoots a 93 at Palmira

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

After a jittery first day, the second day of the season went much better for Chesterton’s girls golf team.
Coach Pat Ward had five players compete Wednesday morning at Palmira Golf & Country Club in St. John and five different players to play in the afternoon at Legacy Hills in LaPorte.
Wednesday’s four best scores added up to 352, compared to 380 on Monday at Sandy Pines. Kristin McCoy (86) and Liz Dodds (93) played at Palmira and Genevieve Driscoll (85), Kristin Taylor (88) and Caitlyn Robison (99) played at Legacy Hills.
Legacy Hills lends itself to lower scores than the other two rounds, but an improvement of 28 strokes in one day still is significant. Of course, it didn’t hurt having Dodds in the lineup either.
She had gone four consecutive weeks without touching a golf club late in the summer at a YMCA camp in Three Rivers, Mich.
“It’s called Camp Eberhart,” Dodds said. “I go there for fun. Every summer I go there and hang out with a bunch of different people, meet new people. No sports or anything. It’s just for fun. You can go for from a week to eight weeks, so I went for four weeks, and I’ll go for four weeks again next year.”
She said she hadn’t played enough golf to either regain her confidence or show the new coach what she could do in time to be in the varsity lineup for Monday’s opener. She shot a 100 on Tuesday playing with the JV at Pretty Lake in Plymouth. She joined the varsity Wednesday at Palmira, which she said she considers to be a more difficult course than Pretty Lake and still trimmed sevens strokes.
Before heading to camp, Dodds said she spent far more time playing golf than in previous summers.
“This year after graduating so many of our top people I knew that if I wanted to play I needed to get my scores lower and show that I wanted to be out here,” Dodds said from the Sand Creek Country Club putting clock. “I was out here at least twice a week.”
She plays basketball and softball for Chesterton but said golf has become her favorite sport.
“It’s nice to come out here even just to play by myself,” Dodds said. “It’s peaceful, listen to some music, just be by yourself for a while. And I really like to be outside.”
As for what music she listens to, she said, “Everything. I have been into a lot of 80s music lately. I like The Police. I like Fleetwood Mac. I like a lot of different genres across the board.”
She considers driving the ball to be her greatest strength and needs the most work on chipping.
“If I hit my driver well, I can get it out there about 250 (yards) but normally it’s around 220, 230,” she said. “Almost every hole that I’m hitting it I’m getting it out there. Almost every time it’s a fade, so I aim to the left.”
She likely will fill the No. 4 slot in the lineup behind No. 1 Kristin McCoy, No. 2 Taylor Kisic and No. 3 Genevieve Driscoll. At the moment, senior Caitlyn Driscoll leads the competition for the No. 5 spot.
The top four players in the lineup, all juniors, have more in common than a passion for golf.
“Genevieve, Taylor, Kristin and I all went to preschool together,” Dodds said.
That can make for enjoyable practices, as well as rides to and from tournaments.
Ward gives Dodds high marks for listening.
“Very coachable,” Ward said. “I tell her what to do and the ball goes there.”
He also gives Driscoll high grades for applying advice, so look for both golfers to show improvement.
Driscoll and Dodds both seem to have the all-important positive mindset aspect of the game down, which is huge.
Dodds said the best golf tip she ever received was “to have fun. When you stress about it, and you worry about it, that’s when you’re shooting bad. Go out there and have fun. It’s high school. You’re doing it for fun.”
The fun bunch resumes competition Monday with a match against Plymouth at Sand Creek at 3:30 p.m.