Hanging with a LPGA Legend

KarenFeatured, Golf Fitness

Back in 1950, 13 women dreamed of playing professional golf. A tour did not exist for women, so if they wanted to play for a living, they needed to band together to form a tour of their own. They established the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association), which is now the oldest continuing women’s professional sports organization in the United States.  There were 14 tournaments with $100,000 in total prize money in that first season of existence. Now 66 years later, the LPGA Tour has more than 30 tournaments in one year and the women play for more than $60 million in total prize money.

I had the unique opportunity to attend the LPGA’s JTBC Founders Cup tournament in Phoenix, Arizona last week at the Wildfire Golf Club at JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort and Spa.  The tournament is designed as a tribute to the founders of the LPGA. I was able to spend the day with one of the original founding members Marilynn Smith. Nicknamed “Miss Personality”, Ms. Smith lived up to her reputation, entertaining me the entire day with stories of the tour in the early days as she held court with spectators and mingled with tour players who would go out of their way to come and say hi to her even in the middle of their rounds.

Ms. Smith was instrumental in developing the tour into what it is today.  She along with the 12 other founding members including Alice Bauer, Patty Berg, Bettye Danoff, Helen Detweiler, Marlene Bauer Hagge, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Betty Jameson, Sally Sessions, Shirley Spork, Louise Suggs and Babe Zaharias did whatever it took to get the tour off the ground. She told me that they just tried to survive, day by day. They not only had to play in the golf tournaments and practice their games, but they had to run the events they were playing in, they also had to market the tour and promote it and then sometimes drive 1,600 miles to the next tournament.

Ms. Smith, who won 21 tournaments, became the first golfer in LPGA history, in 1971, to score a double-eagle. She was a 2006 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame.  She played in her last LPGA event in 1985, but has remained active in promoting the LPGA and women’s golf ever since. She was a co-founder of the LPGA’s T&CP which is the Teaching and Club Professional Division of the LPGA organization.

As a member of the LPGA T&CP for more than 20 years and now vice-president, I can’t thank Marilynn Smith and the 12 other founding members, as well as other LPGA pioneer tour players and teachers, enough for elevating the status of women’s golf to what it is today and for forging a path for women like myself to pursue my dreams and make a living in the golf industry.

References:

  1. http://golf.about.com/od/progolftours/tp/lpga-founders.htm
  2. http://www.lpga.com/tcp/historytcp
  3. http://www.worldgolfhalloffame.org/marilynn-smith/

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