Kathryn Davis has never needed much to stoke her competitive fire.
That was evident in her days as a University of Texas volleyball player, as well as when she ran her own consulting business that often served Fortune 100 and 500 companies, and as she’s brought her golf handicap index down more than a dozen strokes over the last four years.
“I’m one of those very competitive people,” Davis fully admits.
The CWGA hopes that attribute — and others Davis possesses — will serve the association well as she becomes the CWGA president on Jan. 1. The longtime Coloradan, who will succeed Joanne Braucht in the CWGA’s top volunteer post, is expected to serve two consecutive one-year terms.
“She has a real go-getter personality,” CWGA executive director Robin Jervey said of Davis. “I think she’ll be a great leader for us.”
Davis’ business background figures to be a big plus for the CWGA. For about 30 years until she retired four years ago, Davis’ consulting firm advised clients on leadership, executive and management development and strategic planning, among other things. She also has experience in banking- and marketing-related matters.
Besides that business experience, Davis brings an out-of-the-ordinary perspective to the CWGA presidency. She only took up the game a little more than a decade ago, when her husband became a member at the Country Club at Castle Pines, which remains Davis’ home club.
“She brings a little bit different perspective coming to the game as an adult,” Jervey said.
And it didn’t take long for Davis to take an active role with the CWGA as she joined the board of directors at the beginning of 2008. Since then, she’s served as treasurer, then vice president.
“I became involved about the time I was retiring (from the consulting business), and I wanted to be involved with the community,” Davis said. “And it was an opportunity to use some of my skills. It’s been a huge learning curve for me both with the game and the CWGA. But I was brought in not for my knowledge of golf, but of business.”
Davis has lived in Colorado since 1976, but nowadays she spends much of the cold-weather months in Arizona. And because she’s also a member of the Arizona Women’s Golf Association — and knows some of the leadership there — she may be in a position to share some things with the CWGA that the AWGA might do particularly well.
One of the issues Davis said she’ll be focused on as president of the CWGA is trying to bolster membership after several years of decline. That drop goes hand-in-hand with the recent downward trends the National Golf Foundation has reported. The NGF said the total number of golfers in the country dropped from 30 million in 2005 to 26.1 million in 2010. And the number of female golfers in the U.S. has declined even more, percentage-wise — from 7 million to 5.4 million over that same five-year period.
Davis hopes that ever-stronger strategic alliances with the CGA and the Colorado PGA can prove productive in battling such trends.
“I think that can benefit all three organizations,” she said. “They’re all faced with the same challenges as far as declining numbers of golfers. Three heads are better than one if all three of us can come up with ideas that increase the number of golfers that are out there in the state.”
