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Mary Queen of Scots can't have been the only woman in 16th century Scotland, nor the first, to play golf. We have to start somewhere however. Her obligatory mention is indicative of the blank spots
that obscure women's golf. Terri Leonard's circling the wagons provides a point of reference to a significant void.
More recently the trouble hasn't so much been obscurity, it's been the formulaic sameness of the literary accounts (perhaps a sign of progress on the road to parity for LPGA stars, but dull reading nonetheless).
The worst are the instructionals meant for "The Women's Market" - as if there were only one. They
often labor under a familiar bias - that of the better player far removed from the foibles and experiences of the novice. The results are often plodding, near-sighted, even pejorative.
Books meant for dummies and idiots are the least of it. It's as if the dastardly "intimidation factor" has been carried over into print. One work includes a photo with a caption explaining that a sleeve contains three balls! Another reminds readers to "be prepared" and carry Band-Aids and lunch money. Don't get me started.
The experts assembled in this capable collection do what they can, but, sadly, we fall back too often on instruction (which even the most chauvinistic among us would concede is gender neutral; a golf swing is a golf swing.)
The elegance and insights of the best from this sampler - particularly from Joyce Wethered and Mickey Wright - are matched only by their enthusiasm and skill for the game that indelibly marked their lives.
For these women, golf provided a competitive release; Wright found winning to be a "secret satisfaction of a little girl with a most cherished possession." The game gave them purpose, direction and a creative outlet - and, for the professionals, a livelihood and a public stage. In the display cases of the World Golf Village there resides a Barbie. Young Nancy Lopez got a new one for each junior golf win.
We cover a lot of ground: from the days when ladies wouldn't think of playing golf without "Miss Higgins," a band to help keep down billowing sleeves and folds, to Patty Sheehan, a Vermonter who grew up with a ski jump in the backyard, a sand pit for a pole vault, and a miniature golf course (the putting green was in the garage).
A playoff may have been "searing on the nervous system," as Jane Blalock found it, but these women found golf companionable, if also revealing of their fragility as athletes.
Few wrote as incisively as the British immortal Joyce Wethered, later Lady Heathcoat-Amory. We don't get enough of her.
"Driving from the first tee on the following morning," she confesses, "I was not altogether free from terror. My knees were inclined to be unsteady; the tee seemed a vast and empty space, and my ball and myself very small and insignificant in the middle of it." (Such was her precision, she had her skirts tailored to the exact width of her stance.)
A vast and empty space indeed. The humorous interludes are few and far between, unfortunately. There is the Babe sidling up and disarming two kilted Scots during a match. And when Amy Alcott strolls up the 72nd fairway of the 1980 U.S. Open with a ten-stroke lead, her nearest competitor, Hollis Stacy, advises: "Don't 15-putt."
The jury is still out. We may yet hear from some other modern pioneers. (Chapters from Patty Berg and Betsy Rawls are lifted from the seminal Getting to the Dance Floor). Perhaps Marilynn Smith, and, hopefully, someday, JoAnne Carner, and amateurs like Polly Riley, who grew up with Nelson and Hogan, will sit down in front of a mic.
Until then, relish these reflections with the understanding that they are just the tip of a vast neglected store, part of a long, distinguished tradition.
Rating: Cat-Stroker * * *
Duly Noted - Edition I
Duly Noted - Edition II
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