Maggie Giesenhagen was in the real-estate business in her younger days, but she fully admits it wasn’t her cup of tea. However, she soon found her calling when an avocation turned into a vocation. And suffice it to say that real estate’s loss has been golf’s gain.
Giesenhagen — the CWGA’s first executive director, a Colorado Golf Hall of Famer and a respected longtime USGA director — plans to retire at the end of the year, leaving a void that will be hard to fill.
“In my opinion, she is the premier woman golf administrator in the world,” said Mark Passey, a Colorado-based regional affairs director for the USGA. “She’s a tremendous ambassador and representative of the game. We’re all replaceable, but Maggie is going to be a toughie. She’ll leave a great legacy. You hate to lose talented people like her.”
After serving as the CWGA’s executive director from 1988 until ’92, Giesenhagen has worked for the USGA for almost 19 years. For most of that time the Coloradan was a director of regional affairs — in addition to overseeing several USGA women’s amateur championships — but in the last couple of years she’s been a director of rules and competitions.
“She’s a goer, and so capable,” said Colorado Sports Hall of Fame inductee Joan Birkland, a former chair of the USGA Women’s Committee and a fellow Denver Country Club member with Giesenhagen. “She’s one of those meticulous people. If she’s running an event, she makes sure everything is right. She’s a wonderful rules and course-setup official, the best of the lot. Whenever I get in trouble (with a rules issue), I call her if I don’t know.”
Giesenhagen, 67, said she’s retiring now because “I felt it was the right time,” but she fully acknowledges that it won’t be easy to step away after so many years working in the game.
“I’m going to miss it very much,” said Giesenhagen, who has lived in Colorado since 1967 and currently resides in Highlands Ranch. “I have no current plans what I’m going to jump into, but I hope to stay involved in golf in some way because I’ve loved it for so long. It was the perfect job for me for many years, but it’s time to move on and take a breath a little — and play a little golf.”
As is the case with many golf administrators, Giesenhagen doesn’t play much even though she was once a top-level amateur. She estimates that she’s averaged about three or four rounds per year, and most of that has been business-related.
Before getting into the golf business, Giesenhagen had a strong record as a player, though she downplays it. She finished second in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship in 1961 (as Maggie Martin) and competed in nine U.S. Women’s Amateurs and three U.S. Women’s Opens. She also won the 1965 Big Ten Women’s Championship while at Ohio State and the 1974 CWGA Match Play title.
In the 1970s, Giesenhagen started doing some golf-related volunteer work, with a heavy emphasis on course rating. She credits Birkland for getting her involved, and both played major roles when the Curtis Cup matches were played at Denver Country Club in 1982.
As Giesenhagen remembers it, in her first paid job in golf, she worked as a clerk for the CGA under then-executive director Warren Simmons beginning in the mid-1980s. The CWGA, which was sharing office space with the CGA, started considering adding a full-time executive director of its own, and Giesenhagen was hired in that capacity in 1988.
Not only was Giesenhagen the first executive director of the CWGA, she noted she was the first full-time E.D. for a women’s golf association.
“We kind of knew Colorado was doing something special,” she said. “I knew it was a big deal. The (women’s) regional affairs movement was getting going with the USGA and they were encouraging golf associations to set up their own (women’s) board and executive director. And Warren Simmons and the CGA board gave it their blessing.”
Giesenhagen stayed with the CWGA for roughly four years, but then an opportunity with the USGA came knocking.
“Getting the job with the USGA was very special,” she said. “That’s what I’m most proud of. I basically fell into it. The USGA started the women’s regional affairs department in the late 1980s, and they needed a second (director). I heard about it and applied and got the job. I covered everything west of the Mississippi (River). It was a job very similar to what I was doing with the CWGA, but instead of jumping into a car, I’d go in a plane.”
Indeed, travel became a significant part of the job as Giesenhagen estimates she’s spent 80-100 days on the road per year for most of her time with the USGA.
“But I enjoyed the travel, and the USGA made travel as easy as they could,” she said.
Up until the last two years, Giesenhagen was a mainstay in the regional affairs department for the USGA, working with state and regional golf associations, running USGA qualifiers, etc., primarily in the Rocky Mountain region and western U.S. Then at the end of 2008 she became a director of rules and competitions. In addition, for roughly the last decade, Giesenhagen has been the USGA staffer in charge of running the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Curtis Cup matches when they were held in the U.S. And more recently, she also oversaw the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship.
“We’ve been to some fantastic places together” in their USGA roles, notes Passey. “Maggie and I live about a quarter-mile apart (in Highlands Ranch), but we can just as easily bump into each other in New Jersey. We’ve joked about that.”
After excelling as a player, and as an administrator at both the state and national level, Giesenhagen was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2002. And the state that has been her home since 1967 — she’s lived in Colorado Springs, Lone Tree and Highlands Ranch — will continue to be in retirement.
“We love it here,” Giesenhagen said, referring to she and her husband Bill.
Good thing. The Colorado golf community just wouldn’t be the same without Maggie Giesenhagen around.
