Two 99-year-old golfers reflected on nearly half a century of friendship and their time playing together at Onion Creek Club in Austin.

AUSTIN, Texas — For nearly half a century, Central Texas women MaryLou Bledsoe and Nalette Butler have watched golf balls fly, friendships form and the game they love change around them.

Now, at 99 years old, the longtime Onion Creek Club golfers are still making their way onto the course.

Bledsoe, born Feb. 13, 1927, joined Onion Creek in 1980. Butler, born June 9, 1927, joined in 1976.



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Eventually, the game brought the two women together. Bledsoe and Butler met through the Women’s Golf Association at Onion Creek and continued to share decades on the course. Neither can begin to estimate how many rounds they’ve played over the years.

For Bledsoe, the appeal of golf has always been less about competition and more about the people around her.

“It’s always been just for fun, games, things like that. Be with your friends, that type of thing,” she said.

But their decades at Onion Creek Club haven’t just been about playing the game. Butler remembers a time when women didn’t have the same opportunities on the course as men.

“We were on the backside of golf,” Butler said. “We didn’t have a lot of privileges that the men had. At Onion Creek, we fought for them and we got them.”

Butler said women were once prohibited from playing golf at the club on Saturdays and were not allowed inside an area reserved for men. She said members of the Women’s Golf Association (WGA) pushed for those rules to change.

“The WGA fought long and hard for some of these things,” Butler said.

Decades later, Butler said the game has “progressed a lot” for women.

The years have also changed how often the two friends play.

Butler said she now makes it to the course about twice a week at most and sometimes doesn’t play a full 18 holes. Bledsoe, who lives at Onion Creek, said she also plays about twice a week.

Nearly 50 years after they joined Onion Creek, neither woman offers a complicated explanation for why they’re still playing.

Asked what has kept her on the course for so long, Butler credited “the good Lord.”

For Bledsoe, the answer was just as simple.

“You just wanna do it, that’s all,” she said.

And after nearly a century of life and decades spent around the game, they still do.