(July 05, 2002)

The Evolution of the LPGA Tour

HUTCHINSON KS (July 5, 2002) For almost two hours Monday, they sat smiling and chatting under a tent cover that the Kansas wind whipped with gusto. They signed autographs, listened to stories, posed for pictures.

Some in the long line waiting to talk to them knew exactly who the women were. Others weren't totally sure, just that they must be somebody special.

Marilynn Smith, 73, and Patty Berg, 84, had no idea when they gathered in Wichita in 1950 that what they helped form -- the Ladies Professional Golf Association -- would still be going strong 52 years later. Or that women could become millionaires from playing golf.

Today's superstars such as Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb, favorites for this week's U.S. Women's Open at Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, can thank a hearty group of women who were fierce competitors, yet fast friends.

They were determined to be professional athletes at a time when much of society regarded female athletes as somewhat comical aberrations. Many golf courses still didn't allow women to play. The idea of having a career while raising children -- which several of the golfers did -- was largely unchartered territory.

"Honey, we just went day to day," said Smith, chuckling. "We did whatever we could to make it work. Everybody had their own charisma and capabilities.

"People say now, `You must have had a vision.' I don't know that we thought of it that way. But looking back now, I guess it was courageous."

Smith, who was born in Topeka and grew up in Wichita, and Berg were among the 13 original founders of the LPGA, generally acknowledged as the world's longest-running women's professional sports association.

Eight of the 13 founders are still alive. One of the deceased is Kansas Citian Opal Hill, one of the top amateur players in the nation in the 1920s and '30s. By 1950, Hill was considered one of the "matriarchs of golf."

Although Kansas is not thought of as a hotbed of golf, its place in the women's game is of historical importance. It was at the 1950 U.S. Women's Open in Wichita that Fred Corcoran, business manager of legendary Olympian Babe Didrikson Zaharias, called a meeting to announce the formation of a new women's golf tour. Officers were elected, including Berg as the first president.

For six years previous, an organization called the Women's Pro Golf Association had struggled along, trying to establish itself. Corcoran, who worked with Wilson Sporting Goods and managed Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, thought a fresh launch for a women's golf tour was needed.

"He needed someplace to showcase Babe, a place for her to play," Smith said. "We didn't have big galleries, but people would come out to see Babe because she was famous.

"He called us all together and told us we were starting the new tour. So we were just there at the right time. We had to build it, so we'd speak at Kiwanis luncheons, give swing clinics, do anything we could think of. I didn't look at it as work, though. It was fun."

In the LPGA's first year, $50,000 was awarded in prize money. This year's Open will award $3 million, with the winner getting $535,000.

"They have a lot of respect from my generation," said 1999 Open winner Juli Inkster, 42. "I think it's our responsibility to give them their due."

Patty Sheehan, who won the Open in 1992 and '94, spied a youngster at Prairie Dunes whose hat bore the signatures of Smith, Berg, Peggy Kirk Bell and Kathy Whitworth, all of whom participated in a "Legends of Golf" clinic Monday. That and this report from The Kansas City Star's Mechelle Voepel

"Wow, you've got the all-time hat there," Sheehan, 45, told the boy. "You better put that in a case somewhere."

Bell, 80, would have been one of the founders had she been present at the 1950 Open. Whitworth, whose 88 titles are the most in LPGA history, began her career in 1958.

It's often said today's young people don't appreciate what their elders did for them. But Whitworth, 62, laughs and says she was guilty of that, too, way back when. Not anymore.

"I'm so fortunate there was a place for me to play," Whitworth said. "At the time, I probably didn't look at it like `If this thing hadn't happened that way, or they hadn't done something this way, it wouldn't have worked.' I didn't understand that then, not like I do now."

The U.S. Open for men began in 1895; the women got their Open in 1946. Berg, a native of Minneapolis, won the first. Since 1953, the event has been run by the United States Golf Association. It is one of the four major championships of women's golf and without question is the most prestigious.

Zaharias won the 1950 Open played at Rolling Hills Country Club in Wichita. The event was at Wichita Country Club in 1955 but hasn't been back to the Sunflower State again until now.

In the 1950s, golf was one of the few sports considered "suitable" for girls. There were tournaments for women, but most high schools and colleges didn't have teams.

Smith had won the Kansas Amateur title three years in a row before entering the University of Kansas in 1948. 

"My dad went to Phog Allen, who was director of athletics, to see if we could get some expense money for me to play in the intercollegiate tournament for women," Smith said. "And he said, `Mr. Smith, it's too bad your daughter's not a boy.' 

"So we didn't get any encouragement at all. Having a women's golf team was unheard of. So I didn't play much golf in college. I was president of the sophomore class. I always liked politics."

Still, she won the national women's collegiate title in 1949, then turned pro and left KU. She wasn't sure she was doing the right thing but decided to take the risk. "Our problem was getting tournaments and then keeping them," Smith said. 

"So we would write thank-you notes to the organizers and volunteers. It was the people in small towns that really helped us because they'd always come out to watch."

Smith ended up winning 21 tour events, the last in 1972, and around $300,000. She now teaches golf in Dallas and was honored along with the other founders in 2000 when the LPGA celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The gregarious Smith got the nickname "Miss Personality" on tour, and you can still see why in her enthusiasm to meet new people and talk golf. "Some people ask me if I wish I were playing now instead, when there's so much more money to win and things are easier for players," Smith said. "And I say no. "I'm so glad I had the opportunity to be there at the beginning."

[Source: Mechelle Voepel, The Kansas City Star's]