Busy Life Doesn’T Keep This Golfer Off Course Barbara Melbourn Says She’Ll Never Give Up Sport

Hayden Melbourn was just looking out for his little sister Barbara’s best interests when he dragged her to the golf course.

They had just arrived from Bradbury, Calif., after their parents, Ann (a deputy sheriff), and Tom, (a district attorney investigator), retired from law enforcement and headed north. Hayden thought golfing would be a great way to meet people and get out. He was excited about playing golf, until … “I started liking it and I was outscoring him,” Barbara said, laughing. “He didn’t like his younger sister beating him. So he didn’t golf anymore.”

Barbara, who graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School in 1999, never gave up the game. For the next four years she took lessons and earned her way onto the Viking varsity golf squad.

“I took lessons from Darryl Hull,” she said. “He really fine-tuned my game. He was a great coach.”

When she graduated, she was the No. 1 female player. She chose to attend the University of Idaho for the same reason she started golfing.

“Hayden was going to school there,” she said. “It was close to home and he liked it, so I wanted to go there, too.”

“They are very close,” said their mother, Ann Melbourn. “They have always had a great relationship and like to do things together.”

Barbara had trouble deciding not to try out for the Vandal team. But she feared her scores in the mid-90s would fall short.

“I just love golf,” she said. “It’s my sport. The girls are super good here. They shoot in the 70s, and I am not near that yet. I still go out about three or four times a week, but I am not at their level yet.”

Academically, she felt her best interests lay in her budding architecture career.

“They also travel a lot, and I would miss a lot of school,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to fall behind in classes.”

Melbourn is studying architecture hoping to fulfill a lifetime dream of creating and building.

“I always loved architecture ever since I was a little kid,” she said. “I took a class in it when I was a senior and just fell in love with it.”

She seems to have laid out the blueprint for her success by making the dean’s lists each semester. It’s that type of dedication to herself, her education and family that allows her to thrive in any environment. She picked that up during 15 years as a Girl Scout. She just returned from England to attend a large Boy and Girl Scout jamboree.

“Scouting is something I was in before we moved here,” she said. “In California there were a lot of people involved, but when we moved here, there were maybe five (older girls), and that number has dissipated.”

Still, she earned the highest ranking scouting has to offer, the Gold Award.

“We go on a lot of trips and do a lot of projects for the community,” she said. “There was camping, so I know I am pretty safe in the woods. I am sure I wouldn’t get lost.”

That comes in handy while on the golf course when an errant drive finds timber, but even that would be a rarity since she golfs mostly with UI’s Jarod Batchelder, who is no slouch with a swing.

“It’s great playing with him,” she said. “He’s my best friend and knows a lot about the game. He can tell me what I am doing wrong with my game, and it really helps it out.”Although she spares time for the links, things are quite busy at the UI with Rush Week in full progress and the upcoming school year. The self-proclaimed “social butterfly” also keeps active in her sorority, Pi Beta Phi. The hustle and bustle of a crowded house and a hectic schedule is as calming to her as listening to the ocean gently kiss the surf.

“I have met a lot of nice people,” she said. “I golf with some, and it’s wonderful. I am living with 63 girls and loving it.”

One thing for certain is this former California girl will keep her roots planted in Idaho soil.

“We were just in Los Angeles when I flew to England,” she said. “All the smog, congestion, traffic and heat - we don’t miss it at all. I mean, here we have the mountains, trees, the lake and can’t see the air we breathe. Who wouldn’t love that?”

Melbourn would love a chance to golf on a team but isn’t counting on that anytime soon. She figures that day will come, along with pants suits and blue hair.

“I have a goal of being part of a team in golf someday,” she laughed. “I’ll probably play on a team when I am an old lady. We are out there for fun; isn’t that what the game is about? I am never going to give up golf.”