Cherry Valley CC's Ference selected as a finalist in U.S. Open Challenge

  Margaret “Peggy” Ference wakes up every morning and prays.

  The Cherry Valley Country Club member is currently unemployed. Faith serves as her daily source of spiritual strength.

Margaret "Peggy" Ference Cherry Valley CC

  Perhaps her prayers have been answered in the form a USGA e-mail bulletin — the glare from the computer screen representing a heavenly beam of light, figuratively speaking. The bulletin featured an advertisement for the Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge. Ference followed the link and entered the contest.

  “I wondered if a woman could ever win this thing,” Ference said. “I didn’t think they had a woman before.”

  Nearly 50,000 contestants later, Ference is one of five finalists in the challenge, which awards an Amateur golfer with a chance to play a round alongside three celebrities under U.S. Open conditions. It started two years ago after Tiger Woods said a 10-handicapper couldn’t break 100 after the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club.

  “I really kind of thought that it might be a long shot,” Ference said. “I had no expectation that I would make it this far.”

  The contest’s winner will also be featured in a 90-minute special that will air on NBC prior to the final round of the U.S. Open, which will be held June 17-20 Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, Calif. The venue holds a special place in Ference’s heart, and it essentially inspired her to pursue the contest.

  When she was 10, Ference and her family took a vacation to Pebble Beach. Her father and older sister went to play the course, and since it was too cold to swim, Ference accompanied them. She sat inside the cart, marveling at Pebble Beach’s golf beauty.

  “My dad said to me, ‘when we get away from the clubhouse, I’ll let you hit a few shots,’” Ference said. “I can remember rounding a corner and getting to this hole where there a green surrounded by a bunch of ocean, which I now know is No. 7. My dad hands me my sister’s 4-wood and he’s like, ‘This is a great hole for you. Hit this shot.’ I got up there and put the ball on the green. I parred the hole, and I beat my dad and my sister.”

  “It was the first time I ever beat my dad. I was completely impossible the rest of the day.”

  The experience remains engrained in Ference’s heart. She cites Pebble Beach as her “course for life” in her candidate biography in this month’s issue of Golf Digest.

  “I’ve always had a thing for Pebble Beach,” Ference said. “I wanted to get married there. So when I saw the contest was at Pebble Beach, I knew I had to enter. I love Pebble Beach.”

  Ference, a Springfield, Ill. native, began to play golf at age 8. Her family belonged to Illini Country Club, and she participated in its junior program. Ference specifically credits her mother for introducing her to the sport.

  “She decided that she and I needed to learn how to play golf,” she said. “We took part in clinics at the YWCA. It was something my mom and I did together. My mom was quite a golfer. She was routinely in the 70s, except for nine holes.”

  Ference knew that golf was truly the sport for her after she won Illini’s Junior Club Championship at age 13.

  “It was the first thing that brought me any kind of recognition. That’s really what got me hooked,” Ference said.

  Golf remained a prime part of Ference’s life through college. She graduated from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy in 1981 and started a career in pharmaceutical sales. Ference joined the Country Club of St. Albans in St. Albans, Mo. and played there for two years until work took her to San Francisco, Calif.

  Golf then boarded a figurative trolley, but Ference didn’t follow. Professional and financial obligations limited her time on the course. She moved to Albuquerque, N.M. and joined Tanoan Country Club, but golf still took a backseat to daily life. Essentially, Ference didn’t play regularly for a decade.

  “I was a weekend hacker,” she said. “I worked and traveled 90 percent of the time, so I probably played about 10 times a year, if that.”

  In 2001, Ference’s career brought her to Skillman, N.J., and she set out to live on a golf course and rededicate herself to the sport. Ference, a then 16-handicapper, landed at Cherry Valley.

  “When I got here, I didn’t even know that you were supposed to use the same golf ball throughout your round,” she said. “I had never broken 80. I didn’t know how far I hit my clubs.”

  During a club barbeque that year, Ference told Head Pro Allan Bowman that she aspired to become a single-digit handicap and to win the club championship. Bowman suggested that Ference join him each morning, four days a week at 6 a.m. for practice before members arrived.

  She did. Today, she carries a 4.6 handicap index.

  “I learned how to really play golf,” Ference said. “By the end of 2001, I was a single-digit handicap. Since 2002, I’ve been between three and five and won 13 board events.”

  Two years ago, Ference lost her job and faced a future of uncertainty. In lieu of celebrating her 50th birthday that year, she decided to take the summer off and to play competitive golf. Ference dropped her first career ace on Memorial Day on the par 3, 136-yard 11th at Cherry Valley. She also played seven courses in five days during a trip to Ireland.

  However, the stock market soon absorbed a devastating hit, and the pharmaceutical industry experienced a “paradigm shift” that included massive layoffs and no start-ups nationwide. Ference’s professional life still appeared bleak.

  “It has been the most difficult time,” she said. “It is very demoralizing. How do you keep yourself upbeat, positive and in the moment without taking it to the extreme of being a bag lady? I’ve had my house on the market. I’ve applied for I can’t tell you how many jobs, not even having anybody call me back, and I’m an experienced, flexible person.”

  But Ference kept the faith and managed to transform her professional strife into personal success on the golf course. She competes in MGA, NJSGA and WGAP tournaments. Last year, she finished third in the NJSGA Women’s Senior Amateur Championship at Spring Lake Golf Club in Spring Lake Heights, N.J. and second in the first flight of the WGAP Amateur Championship at Gulph Mills Golf Club.

  Ference has a “lucky hat” superstition when it comes to golf. She wears the same hat to each “big tournament.” Last year’s selection was a Merion GC cap, which she purchased during the 2009 Nonna Barlow Cup. So it comes as no surprise that her choice for the season ahead is a “2010 U.S. Open Pebble Beach” hat.

  “That came in the mail, and I was like, ‘Whoa. This is it,” Ference said.

  With her new hat set aside for the year ahead, Ference entered the contest by submitting a required 60-word essay on what golf means to her and how playing Pebble Beach would change her life.

  “When I think of the U.S. Open, I think of something that’s played on Father’s Day,” Ference said. “As it’s all gelling in my mind, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Pebble Beach and my dad may be something that’s intriguing to them.”

  It worked. During the first blizzard in February, Ference received notice that she was one of 50 quarterfinalists. She went to the Golf Club at Chelsea Piers in New York, N.Y. for an interview. Ference returned home, uncertain if she would be selected as a semifinalist.

  Soon enough, Ference boarded a flight to Orlando, Fla. She was one of 13 semifinalists set to play golf for and to meet with contest officials.

  “I was like, ‘wow, I can’t believe this is happening,’” Ference said.

  In Florida, Ference met and roomed with Cathleen Devlin of Plymouth Country Club, who was the only other woman to be chosen as a semifinalist.

  “They kept saying that it was time for a woman to be a finalist,” Ference said. “They said, ‘but we do need to know you can break 100 from 7,000 yards. You need to convince us.’ And I felt pretty good because I played pretty well (at Orlando’s Reunion Resort). They wanted to see if you could hit shots under pseudo-pressure. Every time they were watching, I hit greet shots.”

  A complacent Ference certainly convinced contest officials. She felt “overpowered” when she found out that she was a finalist.

  “I started crying,” Ference said. “I feel like I’m a winner already. Imagine a person who’s played golf since they were 8 years old. I went and bought the May issue of Golf Digest. Can you believe it?”

  Since the announcement, Ference has received an “outpouring of support.” She distributes daily e-mails to her followers reminding them to vote.

  “I’m exhausted already,” Ference said. “It’s completely overwhelming. I’ve reconnected with a lot of people. They all want to help. If I win, I don’t want to let anybody down, so there’s that added pressure.”

  “This is a unique opportunity to make history. It’s, to me, the ultimate literary irony, if you will. The contest was based on a remark made by Tiger Woods. I think it would be the ultimate irony if it’s a woman that breaks 100 this year.”

  This year’s winner will get to play Pebble Beach alongside New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and actor Mark Wahlberg under U.S. Open conditions. Ference has ties, in a “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” sort of way, to all three. Brees? Her brother graduated from Purdue University. Gretzky? His wife is from St. Louis, where Ference went to school and lived.

  “He was No. 99, which is what we’re trying to do here, break 100,” she added.

  And Wahlberg? He was formerly known as Marky Mark, which was her ex-husband’s nickname.

  “He (Wahlberg) could get the 9-iron whacked over his head,” Ference said jokingly.

  Through this experience, Ference hopes to raise money for SPARC, the Springfield, Ill. chapter of The Arc, which is a national organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Five years ago, her brother Mike, a SPARC volunteer, embarked on a golf trip to see The Masters. After playing a round at Cherokee Run Golf Club in Conyers, Ga., he suffered a heart attack and went into a coma. Mike Ference was taken off life support and died at age 59.

  Each year, SPARC conducts a golf tournament, which is a fundraiser that Mike Ference started. The event is now known as the “Mike Ference Scramble for SPARC,” and Peggy Ference is dedicating her experience as a finalist (and potential winner) to the organization.

  “This is a great way to honor my brother and nephew (who has Down syndrome),” she said. “That’s what this is all about. If I win this contest, I will represent all amateur golfers in a classy manner and help the SPARC organization raise money.”

  If you wish to ensure that fortune follows Ference’s faith, click here and vote for her. You can vote once a day, and every time you do, you'll receive an entry into Golf Digest’s sweepstakes to win an all-expenses-paid golf vacation for two to Pebble Beach. Voting ends April 30.