Tenna is co-owner of Purgatory Golf Club. She comes to us with a management background in advertising, public relations, sales, and customer service. At Purgatory, Tenna is our general manager, overseeing finance, advertising, publicity, and our ladies programs.

It was Tenna’s experiences at courses like Pinehurst, Pebble Beach, and the Boulders that influenced what she wanted in her own course. Much of this has been realized, while some of her visions remain on her wish list.

One of her requirements for the course was that there be numerous on course bathrooms. While this was less important to the gentlemen involved in the design of the course, they respected her wishes. As a result there are three lovely bathrooms on the course, so you never go more than four holes with out passing one.

Tenna Merchent teeing off on the 10th hole.

Tenna was also interested in the forward and far forward tees. These tees were made with the same quality materials, and attention to detail as the back tees. The tees were made with a proper sand base, and were leveled with the same patented technology first used at Augusta National, home of the Masters. It provides for a perfect one degree fall. The forward tees are of the formal square type, again, just like the back tees. We have even added a few forward tees at Tenna’s request. As she played the forward tees, it became apparent to her that the location of some of them could be improved. For instance, one was a blind shot, another was improved by lining it up on the left side of the fairway rather than the right, since most amateurs have somewhat of a slice landing their ball in the trees rather than the fairway.

At Tenna’s request, we do not call our tees men’s, women’s, or senior’s. We simply call them by their color and suggest that guests select the appropriate tee based on handicap. We have had some very good women golfers out here, and we would not insult them by suggesting they play the forward tees. Most courses use red tees for the ladies tees, but we decided to use the red tees as our far back tees. We had much discussion prior to bucking the trend in this respect. It was our conclusion that women would play the proper tee for their handicap, and would not feel required to play a red tee, whereas most men would never play a red tee because they perceive red tees as women’s.

Our website was designed, built, and is maintained by Tenna Merchent. As the course was being built, Tenna took the time to learn web site construction for the club, and in the beginning she even programmed it in HTML. She enjoys the creative aspect of the website, and works to keep the content fresh, informative, and professional in appearance. Tenna monitors usage of the website, and adjusts the navigation to reflect the most popular pages.

Many of our visitors come to us through the instruction page, where you can find our golf instruction book, The Golf Swing in 20 minutes. As a result, it is a high priority in the navigation structure.

Tenna was the inspiration and co-author for our golf instruction book. Prior to writing our golf instruction book, she had previously written “Table Manners in 20 minutes”, and “Football in 20 minutes.”

Tenna is a graduate of DePauw university, with a bachelor in Economics, where she was a Pi Phi. 

Tenna is the mother of two beautiful little boys, Clay and Asher, and the wife of our Director of Golf, Mike Merchent.

Link to the Ladies Interests page to find out more about how we cater to women.