NATCHEZ — Losing to his daughter Anastasia Carter in a game Tom Carter once taught her how to play is admittedly humbling for Tom, but when Anastasia becomes the first female golf participant in the 2014 Bill McKenney Memorial City Golf Championship this weekend, Tom is hoping she can introduce that humbling feeling to her male competitors.

Anastasia has done it before. In an Atlanta tournament during the summer, Anastasia competed in a predominantly male golf tournament and came out victorious.

“Well, they technically didn’t declare her the winner over the guys,” Tom said. “They ended up telling her that she was the woman’s champion even though she won the tournament.”

Such a result won’t transpire this weekend in Duncan Park. Competing with 70-plus male golfers, Anastasia will tee off where the men will and abide by the same rules as everyone else. If she were to pull off a victory, like her father Tom did in the city tournaments in 1969, 1971 and 1972, she knows what to expect.

“I’ve learned that guys do not like being beat by girls,” Anastasia said, laughing.

Her father isn’t an exclusion, as he grabbed a club and joined his daughter on the golf course, trying to hit a ball closer to the hole.

“Over or under I hit it on the green?” Tom asked as he carefully swung, nursing a torn rotator cuff. “That’s inside of Anastasia’s ball! Go walk it off and see.”

Tom, who was born in Natchez and graduated from Cathedral High School in 1968, benefited from the familiarity of the course, as working with ClubCorp in Dallas, the largest owner of country clubs in the world, has moved his family to five different places in the last seven years. Anastasia, a soon-to-be junior at the University of Southern Indiana, learned the game from her PGA member father.

“She really got serious four years ago in Indiana,” Tom said. “She ran into some really good players and said, ‘Daddy, I want to play like those girls.’”

Since, Anastasia has improved her golf game steadily, and entering this weekend’s tournament, she’s riding a wave of momentum from winning the Great Lakes Valley Conference in women’s golf last May.

As father and daughter took some practice strokes at Duncan Park, daughter outperformed father.

“Ah, it wasn’t inside of her ball,” said Tom, looking down and shaking his head. “It’s hard losing to her. She beats me now. She’s too good.”

Before joining ClubCorp and giving golf courses across the United States makeovers, Tom was a three-time city champion and played golf for then Northeast University, which later became the University of Louisiana-Monroe. Tom went into the golf business in 1973 following graduation, but his life would take a drastic turn when he decided to take a sabbatical and become a missionary for eight years. As a missionary in Asia, he found his wife Cora before moving back to the United States. Once he returned, he continued relishing the golf life and had two daughters — Maria and Anastasia — who he would later inspire to do the same.

Nineteen years later, after both daughters have taken up the golf club and followed in their father’s footsteps, Anastasia is playing collegiately while Maria works for the Golf Channel.

Anastasia followed up her conference championship win with victories in local tournaments in Atlanta this summer.

Little did she know she would soon be making history in Natchez. After Duncan Park Golf Course director Greg Brooking reached out to Tom with an invite him to participate in the city tournament, Tom suggested a better idea — bring Anastasia back to Natchez where she briefly spent some of her childhood.

“My dad called me and told me about it, and I thought it would be really cool because this is part of my childhood and my life,” Anastasia said. “I was excited. I actually should be a little more nervous.”

Excitement replaces Anastasia’s nerves heading into the tournament, perhaps because nothing excites her more than having her name etched on the same trophy her father’s name resides.

“That’s what’s so special about all of this,” Anastasia said.