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 “It is the best time to practice since you can’t play and there isn’t anybody around,” said Cryan, a spry 81-year-old who last month won the Women’s Southern California Golf Association’s Super Senior Division Championship at Yorba Linda and Western Hills country clubs. While she still plays and excels at the game these days, golf wasn’t her first love. Cryan, a native Californian, was a professional baseball player for the Kenosha Comets in the All-American Girls Baseball League depicted in the movie “A League of Their Own.” “I was drafted in 1945 to play and had the time of my life,” recalled the shortstop-turned-catcher-turned-second baseman who retired from baseball in 1951. “I saw the world, made more money than my father and met some wonderful people.” After her playing days were over, Cryan came home to be with her ailing mother in Montebello. It was then that she took up golf. “I was bored to death,” said Cryan, who set up a net using a clothesline in the back yard and hit balls for hours. “I would sometimes sneak onto the golf course in Montebello, but I didn’t think I was good enough to join a club.” After some coaxing, she joined Hacienda Country Club and went from a 16 handicap to a 1 in just a year. True to her competitive nature, she’s won the women’s club championship more than 20 times — in between getting married and raising a family. She’s also won the California Senior Women’s Amateur Championship eight times. “I don’t pay attention to how many wins I have, but others tend to remind me since there have been so many,” Cryan said. So how did she get so good at the game so fast? “The golf swing and the baseball swing are fairly similar,” she said. “You have to swing through and release.” Advances in club technology also have helped. “I can hit my driver close to 200 yards if I get a little roll, and I don’t have to work as hard,” she said, adding that “the short game is where it’s at. If I really practiced my chipping and putting, I could regularly break 80.” That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Cryan has shot her age many times in the past three years, and her athletic lifestyle has made her a fixture on the WSCGA circuit, where Deby Anderson of Mission Hills won this year’s senior division honors by one stroke over Madeline Campbell of Costa Mesa. “I still think I can win in my division every time I go out, but now I play more for the fun,” Cryan said. “It used to be if I didn’t place in the top three, I was really upset. I am not as hard on myself as I used to be. I can relax some because, really, I am just happy to be out there.” |
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