Breaking The Glass Ceiling

Spence hired and mentored her. "She was hands down the most qualified person for the job," he says. "That she was also a woman was kind of refreshing."

Some members of the club's U.S. Open committee were less than thrilled, but not for long. "Seeing someone work so hard on a daily basis and achieving results won everyone over," says Spence.

In the end, three decades of keeping courses playable while constantly feeling the need to prove herself took its toll. "I had done stuff that people dreamed about," Knaggs says, "but I wasn't willing to compromise on my life anymore. It was my turn to be selfish. When I started out, my career was a lot more interesting than those of most of the men I met, but it asks for more than most people want to give to their career. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but I didn't find out until I left the profession how out of balance things were." Plus, a woman may be Speaker of the House, but there are grill rooms--like the one Reedy is not allowed to enter at L.A. Country Club--that remain off-limits to women. "That's one of the reasons it was easy for me to step away," says Knaggs.

Candice Combs took her first step toward becoming a super 29 years ago at Balboa Park Golf Course, which like Torrey Pines is part of the San Diego municipal system. As an employee of the city she was protected and promoted by the system.

When she first arrived in San Diego with her boyfriend in 1976, Combs had no idea what she wanted to do, other than escape the harsh winters of her hometown, Dearborn, Mich. She had a degree in botany from Michigan and liked plants, the outdoors and physical labor (her father was a mason), but she wasn't a tomboy. "I was a real girl-type girl," she says. "I cooked. I sewed. I crocheted. I gardened."

She worked as a waitress and got a pilot's license and eventually landed a job in the city park system, spending a year picking up whatever dogs and people left behind. She hated it. Then came what Combs calls "a happy accident." She was transferred to the maintenance crew at Balboa. "I didn't know what a green was," she says. "I didn't know what a tee was." But Combs was a quick study, and in addition to keeping up with her coworkers, she also impressed her supervisors by taking turfgrass courses, learning advanced maintenance techniques and earning a pesticide license.

She became a supervisor and then, in 1984, the assistant superintendent. In 1993 she was named Balboa's head super. The news did not go down well in all quarters. "On the first day I was told flat out by one of the retired Navy men on the crew that he wasn't taking orders from a woman," says Combs. But she was better qualified for the job than anyone else in the system, and the city promotes from within with gender-blind eyes. "I'm a diversity queen," she says.

Combs became active in the local GCSAA chapter. "I went to the first meeting in a dress and high heels," she says, "and no one took me seriously." Not for long. She was elected chapter president and named superintendent of the year in 2001.

Then another happy accident occurred. After the smashing success of the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage State Park, the USGA sought another public venue for its signature event and awarded the '08 Open to Torrey. The consensus was that the bone structure of the South course was superb but its skin was a wreck. In 2005 the city went into overdrive, hiring GCSAA president Mark Woodward, a certified superintendent with years of experience in the municipal system of Mesa, Ariz., to manage Torrey's golf operations and improve the conditioning of the facility's two 18s. When he decided to hire a new super for the South course, "I had to first look internally," Woodward says, "and Candice was the only certified superintendent in the system."

The road to Torrey Pines (Combs calls Torrey "the glory place") has had a few twists. Woodward gave Combs and her assistant, Bill Sinclair, three months to prove themselves. They did enough--improving bunker drainage, ramping up overall maintenance schedules--to warrant a three-month extension, taking her through the 2006 Buick Invitational. "You could feel the pressure," says Sinclair, "but she's a rock. I'd panic, but not Candice."