Golfer Sidney Garrett won the women's championship at the Lawrence Amateur Golf Association tournament earlier this summer at Alvamar Golf Course. She will participate in the Kansas Women's Golf Association Tee-Fore-Two event this week.

Kansas University women's basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson, right, chats with Dave Dunlap while waiting to tee off at last summer's Bonnie Henrickson Golf Tournament.

A couple of men who had booked an early tee time recently on a Lawrence golf course were told by a woman to cease and desist hitting their drives because 12 women, she said, had booked the next three tee times. She ran to the clubhouse, learned she was off by 10 minutes and signaled to the men to go ahead already.

After belting their drives, the two gentlemen waited a few seconds on the tee box for an apology. When none was offered, they drove off, and one of them raised the question as to whether golf is an acronym for “gentlemen only, ladies forbidden,” as suburban lore holds.

It’s not, but many erroneously believe that to be the case.

Writing for about.com, Brent Kelley cleared up the issue as to the origin of the word “golf.” He wrote that it came from the medieval Dutch word “kolf,” which meant club. Why the word for “addiction” wasn’t chosen remains a mystery.

Monday through Thursday at Lawrence Country Club, it will be a case of ladies only, gentlemen forbidden. The course will play host to the biggest event since it re-opened last Sept. 30 when the 40th Annual Kansas Women’s Golf Association Tee-Fore-Two Championship comes to town. Many of the state’s most talented amateur women golfers will be among the 62 two-woman teams. The women will play a practice round Monday and then play a 54-hole stroke play championship in the gross/net event that features a different format each day.

Ladies from throughout the state will test the tricky greens and get a feel for just how amazing a feat was LCC assistant pro Megan Menzel’s course-record of 65.

Menzel, former women’s coach at Kansas University, carded that round from the women’s tees. This event will be played from the silver tees favored by many senior men’s players on eight of the holes and from the women’s tees on the other 10.

Linda Chesbro, Sidney Garrett, Michele Johnson, Jaime Keating, Celeste Leonardi and Janet Magnuson will be among the golfers playing with a home-course advantage. Bobette Puderbaugh, one of LCC’s most avid golfers, is the site chairperson.

“I’ll be interested to see how they like the golf course,” Puderbaugh said of the out-of-towners coming in for the event.

The event is so popular, Puderbaugh said, that not everyone who applied to play could be squeezed into the field. A lottery left some on the outside. For example, Vickie Friend, a serious stick who plays out of Alvamar Country Club, will not be in the field.

Women’s golf has come a long way since the days of slow-play stereotypes. For the most part, men and women have learned to share the local courses amicably, though some men still can’t bring themselves to let faster-playing ladies play through them.

“We play faster than the men,” Puderbaugh said. “That’s why we go first.”

Unless, of course, someone has the earlier tee time booked.

¢KU women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson is in Australia with her team, which is playing a series of exhibition games in the cities of Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns.

Fans of the team will have a chance to pick Bonnie’s brain on how she thought the Jayhawks performed and, at the same time, help raise money for the Lawrence Memorial Hospital Breast Center by signing up to play in the Bonnie Henrickson Golf Tournament. The tourney will takes place Saturday afternoon and be played on both Alvamar golf courses.

Monday is the deadline for online registration at kuathletics.com.