The 2026 Honoree
Celebrating Elaine Moulison Greenhalge — the pioneer who started it all — who will present this year's trophy at York Golf Club, July 18, 2026.
Elaine Moulison · Wenham Golf Club
Elaine Moulison Greenhalge
Tournament Honoree · Trophy Presenter · The matriarch of the Greenhalge game
Long before the family filled a tee sheet, there was Elaine. A
Salem girl who picked up the clubs at twelve and never really put them down, she became
the only girl in the state on a high-school golf team — playing (and
beating) the boys at a time when the game hadn't made room for her yet. So she made her
own.
Six decades and countless trophies later, the tournament she inspired regroups at
York — one of the two clubs where she reigned as champion. Fittingly, it's
Elaine who will hand this year's winner their trophy. In 2017 she was inducted into the
Bishop Fenwick Athletic Hall of Fame; her story was told by
The Salem News ↗.
A true pioneer of the game
Elaine Moulison grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, in a family where everybody played
golf — pile in the car after supper, go play nine. She had a knack for it from the start.
When she reached Bishop Fenwick (Class of 1963) the only golf team was
the boys' team, so she tried out and made it. Coach Bob Clancy had to get special
permission from the North Shore Schoolboys Committee just to let her play. The boys
weren't thrilled — until she started winning.
And win she did. Moulison lost only one match in her entire high-school
career — by her own telling, on purpose, to a boy she thought was “absolutely
adorable” (they didn't need the point). Playing mostly against boys sharpened her
game: at 16 she became the youngest United Shoe Club champion in history,
and while still in high school she finished runner-up in the Women's State Amateur
Championship. She traveled the region with the United Shoe interstate and tri-city
teams as one of the top seven girls in the state.
1963Bishop Fenwick grad
Age 16Youngest United Shoe champ
2×Franklin County champ
2017Fenwick Hall of Fame
She won across the North Shore and New England — and famously carded a
hole-in-one at Wenham Golf Club while six months pregnant with her second
child. She married John Greenhalge of Beverly (they met, of course, on the golf course),
raised three children, and moved to Ohio, where she earned a degree from
Ohio State, graduating Summa Cum Laude in psychology and going on to work
with children coping with the loss of a parent.
Champion at Delaware & York
The connection to our courses
Her game only got better with time. Elaine was club champion at Delaware Golf
Club for eight years — the site of the 2025 inaugural Open — and
club champion at York (Country) Golf Club in Worthington for sixteen years
— where the family tees it up this July. She was a two-time Franklin County champion
(1973 and 1984), competing against standout Ohio State collegians in Jack Nicklaus's
backyard, and played until arthritis in her wrists finally made her hang them up at 55.
Then came the next generation. “Once the grandkids came along, I had to get out
there and teach them how to play,” she said. She put her kids in junior programs, and
eventually the whole family caught the bug. The tournament they play today traces a
straight line back to her — and to those nine-hole evenings after supper.
Presenting the 2026 trophy
When the final putt drops at York — Elaine's own club — it's the matriarch herself who
will present the champion of the 2nd Annual Greenhalge Open with their
trophy. A torch passed from the pioneer who started it all to the next name on the cup.
See who's in the running →
