Tracy Elser, the 2025 women’s club champion at Greenhorn Creek Resort in Angels Camp, has spent most of her life around golf. Her father, Dixon Robb, was a television page for NBC and aspiring scriptwriter before finding his calling as a head golf professional.
Dixon’s creativity wasn’t stifled in his new line of work. It’s what set him apart.
“I still hear his lessons,” Tracy says, recalling swing theories her father would expound over the family dinner table. “Keep your weight back, left arm firm.”
Tracy Elser helped her father give lessons and carry out his “theatrical” member golf tournaments at River Island Country Club in Porterville, where Dixon was the first head professional in the late 1960s. There was a Viking-themed tournament where Dixon shot flaming arrows through the winner’s names; and a member-built showboat where Dixon handed out prizes on the first tee.
Tracy built her own passion for golf. The family moved to Santa Cruz where Tracy often played golf with her brothers at Seascape Golf Course in Aptos. She married a head golf professional, Don Elser, and began working as a dental assistant in Capitola. She raised and taught golf to sons Brian and Sean and made time to play the great courses across California with her family.
Elser later retired and moved to Calaveras County. There, she married her second husband, Cort Hellenthal, a building contractor, and joined the women’s golf club at Greenhorn Creek.
“Golf has really been wonderful to me,” said Elser, whose favorite foursome is with her sons and brother Coult. Golf, she said, has opened “experiences and thrills that I couldn’t believe at this amateur level.”
In 2023, though, after winning her first club championship, Elser was playing four or five times per week and “needed something else.”
Enter Nelson’s Columbia Candy Kitchen, a 100-year staple in the Sierra foothills with shops in Columbia, Murphys and Sonora. “I just saw an ad in the window for job openings,” recalls Elser, who packages and sells toffee, almond bark and chocolate creams, with fellow golf members stopping by the store. “From dentistry to candy. It felt like a weird move.
“My friends joke that I’m creating more work.”
She laughs at all the unexpected thrills the game has given her.
“Golf is like a box of chocolates,” Tracy said.
The game has been extra sweet lately.
In 2023, Elser served as a marshal at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and spent time at Spyglass Hill with friends Debbie Miller and Joni Nelson. She has volunteered as a golf coach with the local high school, Bret Harte, and once won a trip to Florida by making a hole-in-one. At a tournament at Sequoia Woods, she entered a putting contest through a raffle and made $5,000 by sinking a 60-footer. Topping Elser’s bucket list is to play a round with her grandkids — Emery, 5; Wyatt, 3; Sadie, 2; and Taylor, 1.
At the club championship this past September, Elser ran away from the field with rounds of 89 and 92.
“I don’t get bored playing this course,” she said of Greenhorn Creek, where golfers can see geese, deer, foxes, quails and doves during a round. Her favorite hole is the par-5 18th, with bunkers down both sides of the fairway and a lake protecting an undulating green.
“You can bail out right,” Elser said, “but to me that’s a waste of a stroke.”
The women’s club has grown to 70 members, some who now expect a sweeter experience from their confection connection. “Where is my candy today?” they joke with the reigning champion.
“I’ve been a lucky golfer,” Elser said. “I just love it. I get a thrill out of hitting a long and making a long putt.”
Larry Williams puts it plain.
“I don’t go drinking. I don’t go gambling. I don’t chase women,” laughs the third-flight senior net champion at Sunnyvale Golf Course. “So I got to do something. They have beautiful golf courses in California. I enjoy being outdoors. It’s good exercise. I enjoy the game.”
Williams, 63, took up golf 35 years ago after moving to Northern California from Miami, where his main hobby had been deep sea fishing. Out West, he became inspired to play golf after passing the Half Moon Bay courses. His usual loops became Seascape in Aptos and Pasatiempo and DeLaveaga in Santa Cruz, where he posted his best round (scratch for nine holes) and won a tournament with his son.
After retiring from auto sales, Williams moved back to San Jose and three years ago met senior club members at Sunnyvale GC. His favorite hole at the par-70 layout in the heart of Silicon Valley is the par-4 first, because the dogleg right fits his fade. The toughest hole is the par-4 8th, with its narrow fairway, trouble from both sides and, for good measure, a pond protecting the green.
California is where Williams found his passion on the links. He has played rounds at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill and even Cypress Point, thanks to a friendship with the late legendary Jim Langley, the longtime pro there. “Right behind us was Clint Eastwood,” Williams remembers of a round that included parring Cypress Point’s signature par-3 16th. Williams laid up and executed his short game.
Williams has played other great courses across the globe. But these days the game is kept Stateside.
“I can’t get away that long,” says Williams, who is a caregiver.
Back in Florida, Williams didn’t have his own clubs growing up when he tagged along with his cousin. “Sometimes he’d let me take a shot or something out of it,” Williams thinks back.
Now he has his own bag.
“I like my driver and my putter,” he says.
Now that’s a rare combo.
Jamie Kolkey gave up competitive golf to pursue a career in engineering. Two decades later, as reigning women’s club champion at Serrano Country Club in El Dorado Hills, she is doing both.
Jamie’s father, Gerry, began taking Jamie to the range when she was 5. One day, Gerry’s golf bag fell on Jamie’s head as she rummaged through the closet. “From then on I was hooked,” she said, thinking of rounds at Copper River Country Club in Fresno and junior tournaments at Monterey Peninsula. Parents Gerry and Juanita Harlan both worked but still found time to take Jamie to tournaments. Jamie played on the middle school boys’ team and won four valley titles at Clovis High School. Soon though, golf would take a backseat to career ambitions.
“I had offers to play college golf, but they wouldn’t allow for engineering,” Kolkey thinks back to her decision to study at UCLA. “For me it was a pretty easy choice.”
Kolkey’s career in civil engineering, where she oversees water infrastructure projects, brought her back to Northern California. She and husband Chris, who played golf maybe once or twice a year living in Los Angeles, joined Serrano Country Club in 2020. Jamie was 17 years removed from her Clovis days. Member Melissa “Missy” Richards introduced her to the women’s club.
Daughter Kendall was born in 2021. The next year, Jamie played more and more golf. Marc Levine, the director of golf at Serrano Country Club, helped Kolkey fine-tune her swing and regain the consistency that made her a high-level junior player.
“I met so many wonderful women who have been my biggest cheerleaders and friends,” Kolkey said. “Missy, Darria Deatherage (the 2024 club champion who teamed with Jamie to win the member-member tournament), Laura Kitson, and Michelle Latini (the head golf pro) have encouraged me to get out there and play as much as I can. I love competing with friends.”
Kolkey says problem-solving skills learned in engineering can help on the golf course, admitting that engineers are a “pretty competitive” bunch. She enjoys the elevation changes at Serrano, and a back nine that has three par-4s and three par-5s to make for many scoring opportunities.
“It’s a beautiful layout, Kolkey said. “We love the leadership there.”
Serrano was playing tough both days of the club championship last summer, with fast greens and tough pin locations. Kolkey jumped to an early lead and held on.
“I’ve rediscovered my love for the game again and I’m incredibly thankful,” Kolkey said of joining Serrano. “I forgot how much I loved it.”
Now she can share it.
“My husband and l have the best time taking our daughter to the course. She is still so young, but we love seeing her eyes light up when she makes a putt or has her longest drive yet.”
