Category: Feature

The history of women’s golf is embedded in the Sandhills

By Ron Sirak

From its earliest days, the road for women’s professional golf has wound its way across the Sandhills of North Carolina, not as a regular stop but rather as a special place where special people commanded center stage. This year, for the fourth time, the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines will be the site of the U.S. Women’s Open. And if the past is truly prelude, the Donald Ross masterpiece will have something special in store for 2022. The first three times the women’s championship of the USGA was at Pine Needles the winners were Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Cristie Kerr, a trio of LPGA royalty.

Sorenstam, with 72 wins, including 10 majors and three U.S. Women’s Open titles, and Webb, with 42 victories, seven majors including the U.S Women’s Open twice, are both in the World Golf Hall of Fame. They are also the last two who successfully defended the U.S. Women’s Open title, both sealing the double at Pine Needles. Kerr, with 20 victories and two majors, likely will join them in the Hall of Fame when she becomes age eligible.

Who will be part of that rich tradition this year? Nelly Korda or Jin Young Ko, whose battle for the 2021 LPGA Player of the Year went down to the last tournament? Lydia Ko, who won 14 times before her 20th birthday and after a lull of several years seems to have rediscovered that form at the age of 25? Americans Danielle Kang or Lexi Thompson? Seven-time major winner Inbee Park from South Korea? Or Nasa Hataoka of Japan, who might be the best in the women’s game without a major? Will Yuka Saso of the Philippines join Sorenstam and Webb and successfully defend the title she won last year at The Olympic Club?

While the special place the Sandhills holds in the game of golf was dug out in large part by the shovel of the architectural genius Donald Ross, the bold vision and sheer determination of the Bell family contributed greatly in solidifying that legacy. Also enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame is Peggy Kirk Bell, regarded by many as the 14th founder of the LPGA Tour.

A pioneer as a player, an instructor and a businesswoman, Peggy and her husband, Warren “Bullet” Bell, purchased Pine Needles in 1954 and restored it to its former glory. She is as much a part of the history of Pine Needles as Ross and those who have won championships there.

Bell, who died in Southern Pines in 2016 at the age of 95, was not one of the 13 women to sign the original LPGA charter, but she was there from the beginning, finishing runner-up in the eighth LPGA Tour event ever played, losing in the finals of the 1950 Women’s Western Open 5 and 3 to Babe Zaharias at Cherry Hills Country Club in Colorado.

Born in Findlay, Ohio, Bell started playing golf at age 17 and quickly won a number of titles. She played college golf at Rollins College and won the Ohio Women’s Amateur three times, and in 1949 took the Titleholders Championship and the North and South Women’s Amateur. She was also a member of the 1950 U.S. Curtis Cup team.

When the U.S. Senior Women’s Open was played at Pine Needles in 2019, one of those in the field was Sally Austin, a former women’s golf coach at the University of North Carolina and an instructor at Pine Needles who was uniquely positioned to assess the impact of Bell on the women’s game.

“It is so special and I’ll get emotional thinking about this and how much she would’ve loved being here for this and seeing her friends playing and some of her students, of which I was one,” Austin said. “When they brought the first Open here, she was super excited. I know she’s looking down and smiling, so glad that it’s here. This is her legacy, and this golf course and all that her family has done to keep this alive.”

Bell’s early presence in the women’s professional game previewed the role Southern Pines was to play in women’s golf. The first time the LPGA Tour visited here was the 1951 Sandhills Women’s Open at Southern Pines Country Club. Patty Berg won and Zaharias was second. In 1959, Joyce Ziske won the Howard Johnson Invitational at Mid Pines Golf Club.

The first women’s major in Southern Pines was at Pine Needles in 1972, when Sandra Palmer won the last Titleholders Championship by 10 strokes over Mickey Wright and Judy Rankin. Palmer, who’s now 79, won 19 times on the LPGA, adding the 1975 U.S. Women’s Open to the Titleholders as her major championships.

“Pine Needles will certainly go down as one of my finest feats,” says Palmer, whose one-under-par 283 was the only score in red numbers that week. “No one really knows what remarkable golf I played that week except the Bells. Bullet had the course set up from the back tees. It was hard.”

Dick Taylor, writing in Golf World magazine, gushed about both Palmer and Pine Needles, calling Palmer’s performance “one of the greatest showings seen on a genuine test of golf under valid conditions.” He likened the challenge of the Pine Needles set-up that week to that faced in a U.S. Open.

“If it is to be a major championship, a title bestowed by the thinking players and fans alike, then the course must be as dominant in the proceedings as the players,” Taylor wrote. “The 6,500-yard (and up) Donald Ross-designed Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C., superbly fit the bill to such a point you would have thought by the complaints it was the men’s U.S. Open.”

The LPGA returned to the Sandhills in 1995 when Rosie Jones edged Dottie Pepper in a playoff to win the Pinewild Women’s Championship at Pinewild Country Club of Pinehurst. Since then, major championship women’s professional golf has visited the area five times — and it has never disappointed.

In 1996, Sorenstam backed up her breakthrough triumph a year earlier at the Broadmoor Golf Club by successfully defending her U.S. Women’s Open title with a magnificent display of shotmaking, hitting 51 of 56 fairways at Pine Needles as she topped Kris Tschetter by six strokes. Sorenstam was on a mission that week to prove she was not a one-hit wonder.

“Majors are always full of pressure,” says Sorenstam, looking back more than a quarter-century. “Being the defending champion adds to the pressure. I wanted to make sure that winning at the Broadmoor was not a fluke and that I belonged in the major champion circle.”

Sorenstam not only proved she belonged, she established the foundation for her Hall of Fame career, attacking Pine Needles with the relentless consistency that became the Swede’s trademark. Her worst effort that week was an opening even-par 70, which she followed with rounds of 67, 69 and 66 to finish at eight-under-par 272.

“I was totally in the zone that week,” she says. “I was on autopilot. I had prepared very well, and I loved the course. Also, being a friend of Peggy Kirk Bell made it even more special. She has done so much for the game, especially for women. Peggy shouted ‘Heineken’ after my last putt dropped. That was her nickname for me since my amateur days.”

The next time the U.S. Women’s Open came to Pine Needles is the last time anyone has taken home the trophy in back-to-back years as Webb romped to an eight-stroke victory over another future Hall of Famer — Se Ri Pak. That 2001 U.S. Women’s Open was contested in the midst of an incredible run of dominance in the four major championships by four future Hall of Fame players.

From 1998 through 2003, 18 of the 24 majors were won by Sorenstam, Pak and Juli Inkster, who captured four majors each during that stretch, and Webb, who took a half-dozen of the grand slam titles in that six-year period.

In 2001 Sorenstam, Pak and Webb — who also won the LPGA Championship (now the KPMG Women’s PGA) — swept the four majors and the next year, those three plus Inkster each took home a major trophy. Webb, however, was simply overwhelming at Pine Needles in 2001, carving out rounds of 70, 65, 69 and 69 to finish at seven-under-par 273, eight strokes ahead of Pak.

“My first U.S. Women’s Open had been in ’96 at Pine Needles,” Webb says. “I loved the course then and knew coming into ’01 that it fit my game. That was possibly the only time in my major career that I came in playing well, and I went to the first tee on Thursday knowing and expecting to be there on Sunday with a chance to win. I’m not sure I’ve played a major from start to finish as well.”

Webb, who is among the most gifted ballstrikers in the history of the women’s game, loved the challenge presented by the course, which demands not only precise physical execution but also a disciplined and well thought out mental approach.

“Pine Needles is very much a second shot golf course,” Webb says. “It’s a true Donald Ross test in that way. Understanding where to hit in on the greens and where the slopes are that could feed the ball away from the hole or off the green completely is a big key. Being able to hit irons with the precision and distance control to certain spots on the greens is the key to playing well around there.”

Cristie Kerr tied for fourth place in that 2001 U.S. Women’s Open, and when she returned to Pine Needles in 2007 it was with the burden of being known as the best player on the LPGA Tour without a major championship title. She had nine career victories and had won eight of them over the three previous seasons, emerging as a contender to challenge Lorena Ochoa to succeed Sorenstam as the best player in the women’s game.

Kerr began slowly, opening with rounds of 71 and 72 on a layout that now played to a par-71. Then she put the hammer down in the third round, taking the lead with a 66 that began on Saturday and ended Sunday morning because of a rain delay. She took the lead for good with a birdie on No. 14 in the final round, then closed with four consecutive pars to better Ochoa and Angela Park by two strokes.

“I had won a bunch of tournaments but I had never won a major championship,” Kerr says about her mindset coming into Pine Needles in 2007. “My intention was to play myself into contention, and that’s exactly what I did. I got a lot of chances (in the third round) and my putter was hot. I was a freight train and nothing was going to stop me that week. I made a lot of 30-foot par saves.”

History was made in the Sandhills in 2014 when, for the first time, the U.S. Women’s Open and U.S. Open were held at the same venue in back-to-back weeks as Michelle Wie edged Stacy Lewis by two strokes at Pinehurst No. 2 for her only major championship a week after Martin Kaymer mastered No. 2 for an eight-stroke victory.

“One week changed my life,” Wie says. “That’s what the U.S. Women’s Open does. It creates opportunities for us to create life-changing moments. It’s not just one tournament. It’s a major that we look forward to, watching it when we were kids and playing on venues like we do. It means so much to me. That elevated visibility for our tour so much, and us being able to play on these top venues.” In 2029, the USGA will reprise the men’s and women’s back-to-back championships in Pinehurst.

And in 2019, the second-ever U.S. Senior Women’s Open was played at Pine Needles, following the event’s debut a year earlier at historic Chicago Golf Club, one of the five founding clubs of the USGA in 1894. Helen Alfredsson, who had her heart broken in the U.S. Women’s Open several times, won the U.S. Senior Women’s by two strokes over Inkster — yet another Hall of Fame member — and Trish Johnson.

“I get goosebumps,” Alfredsson says about looking back on that victory. “The USGA events (are) the toughest events. It took everything and then some to win it. You had to have everything, all the ducks in a row, and you have to have putting, playing, ballstriking, and mentally because you know you’re going to make bogeys or even double bogeys, but you just have to keep going. I was very thrilled to also get it on a golf course like Pine Needles, which I thought was an amazing test.”

Just as the legacy of Donald Ross is burnished by the brilliance of Pine Needles, the enormous contributions of Peggy Kirk Bell and the Bell family to the game of golf are remembered each time a major championship returns to one of their properties. During the more than 60 years Peggy was the owner and head instructor at Pine Needles, she pioneered methods of teaching — especially to women — and infused students with her passion for the game.

Today, Pine Needles remains in the Bell family. Her daughters, Peggy Bell Miller and Bonnie Bell McGowan, are instructors, and her two sons-in-law, Kelly Miller and Pat McGowan, serve as Pine Needles’ president and director of instruction, respectively. Peggy has passed the torch to them.

When the 77th U.S. Women’s Open tees off on June 2, the quest will commence to see who takes the torch passed from Sorenstam to Webb to Kerr. The Sandhills of North Carolina serve as a cradle for golf in the United States. It is a place where the courses, as Dick Taylor said, are “as dominant as the players in the proceedings.”

Time and again, Pine Needles has shown that dominance. Now we find out which player is up to the challenge. Now we find out who will live up to the legacy of Ross and Bell as well as the standard of excellence established by Sorenstam, Webb and Kerr. Now it’s time to write the next page in the storied history of Sandhills golf.  PS

Ron Sirak worked for The Associated Press for 18 years, followed by 18 years with Golf World and Golf Digest magazines. He is past president of the Golf Writers Association of America and recipient of the PGA of America Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award; the LPGA Media Excellence Award; and the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association Lincoln Werden Award.

Dorothy Campbell Hurd — first international star of the women’s game

By  Bill Case   •   Photographs from the Tufts Archives

In March 1912, Miss Dorothy Campbell arrived in Pinehurst for a month-long stay at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W.C. Fownes. The 28-year-old Scot was no ordinary houseguest. Acclaimed as the greatest female golfer in the world, she had already won 10 national titles in an astounding run from 1905 to 1912.

It began modestly. To her genuine surprise, in 1903 at age 20, Campbell reached the semifinals of her native country’s most important title, the Scottish Ladies Championship. “I only possessed four clubs at the time, and I had no experience at match play,” she later wrote.

But she was just getting started. In 1905, she reached the semis of the British Ladies Amateur. Two weeks later, her breakthrough victory came in the Scottish Ladies, contested on her home course, North Berwick’s West Links. A throng of 4,000 cheered the hometown lass to a hard-won, 19-hole victory over Molly Graham in the final match. Miss Campbell would repeat as Scottish champion in 1906 and win the title a third time in 1908.

Campbell seemed poised to win her first British Ladies Championship in 1908 when she made the finals at St. Andrews’ Old Course. A massive crowd of 9,000 spectators, including Old Tom Morris, attended. Battling abysmal weather marked by hail and gale force winds, the drenched Campbell heartbreakingly lost the match to Maud Titterton on the 19th hole.

Her disappointment would be assuaged in 1909 when she finally won the British Ladies at Royal Birkdale. After the final match, an overbearing official blocked Campbell’s path to the awards ceremony.

“Are you a golfer?” the official demanded.

Campbell replied, “I don’t think so, but I believe they will want me inside to receive the championship cup!”

The victory resulted in an invitation from the United States Golf Association — itself only 15 years old — to play in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship that summer at Philadelphia’s Merion Cricket Club, now Merion Golf Club. Campbell accepted and made her first Atlantic crossing. She adapted quickly to Merion’s parkland layout and sailed through preliminary matches to the final, where she faced a tough challenge. Her opponent, Mrs. Nonna Barlow, was a Merion member. Barlow had Campbell one down after nine holes, but the unflappable Scot took control down the stretch, winning the match 3 and 2, making her the first foreign-born player to win the U.S. title and the first to take the British and U.S. championships in the same year.

She successfully defended her U.S. Women’s Championship in 1910 at Homewood Country Club in Illinois, the first to win back-to-back. Although it was match play, her “medal” score of 78 in the second round was the lowest ever posted by a woman on a course longer than 6,000 yards. Campbell crossed the border into Canada, too, to capture the first of three consecutive Canadian Ladies Championships, and even established a permanent residence in Hamilton, Ontario. She returned to Great Britain in 1911 to compete in the British Ladies at Portrush and won that title for the second time, rebounding from a 3-down deficit to win 3 and 2.

During her 1912 sojourn in Pinehurst with the Fownes family, Campbell set her sights on winning the prestigious United North and South Amateur Championship. She posted the best score in the qualifying round by four shots and was a heavy favorite to add the championship trophy to her burgeoning collection. She reached the final match but was upset by Kate Van Ostrand, who clinched victory when her pitch on the final hole hit the pin.

The Fowneses, Campbell’s Pinehurst hosts, were kindred spirits and golf royalty. W.C. (Bill) Fownes won the 1910 U.S. Amateur. Bill and his father, Henry Fownes, founded and ran Oakmont Country Club, considered America’s most exacting test of championship golf. Bill and his wife, Sarah, saw to it that Campbell’s Pinehurst golf calendar was filled with matches and club competitions. 

As esteemed members of the “Cottage Colony,” the Fowneses knew everybody in the village’s upper crust. Among their many friends was 35-year-old bachelor Jack Vandevort Hurd, who, like Bill and Henry Fownes, worked in the steel business in Pittsburgh and was a member at Oakmont.

The Fowneses introduced Jack and Dorothy, and a year later, on Feb. 11, 1913, they were married in Hamilton, Ontario, in front of relatives and a few close friends. Following the ceremony, handsome and dapper Jack whisked his bride back across the border to his home in the Steel City. For a champion golfer like Dorothy, with a husband who was a member at Oakmont, Pittsburgh was an ideal place to begin married life. Better yet, she and her husband would be making extended winter visits to Pinehurst. Dorothy would become an American citizen, though forever retaining “her delightful Scotch burr as well as the poise and graciousness of her kind,” according to another champion, Glenna Collett.

Before the end of 1912, Dorothy gave birth to a son, Sigourney Hurd, and golf began to play second fiddle. She supervised the building of a second home in Pinehurst that fronted on the town’s village green. The turreted house at 10 Village Green East, fashioned after an English hunting lodge, was part of a Hurd family compound since Jack’s parents and brother, Nat, owned homes just a niblick shot away. A woman of many talents, Dorothy authored frequent and lengthy instructional articles for Golf Illustrated and Golf Monthly, played the piano and composed songs. She even knitted socks for Allied soldiers during World War I.

While her collection of national championships slowed after her marriage, Hurd still dominated club play in both Pittsburgh and Pinehurst, where she played regularly during the winter as a member of the club’s female golfing society, the Silver Foils. “The Pinehurst courses are proverbial,” she remarked in an article, “for the way they can become dry in a few hours and the next day see play go gaily on.” 

During her 10 seasons in Pinehurst, Hurd won the prestigious North and South Women’s championships held in 1918, ’20, and ’21. The number of trophies collected by “Mrs. J.V. Hurd” in other Pinehurst tournaments is incalculable, but the Pinehurst Outlook provided a glimpse of her dominance in winning the St. Valentine’s Day tournament of 1918: “Mrs. Hurd was going (on) in her famous and invincible fashion — not long, but straight and inevitable.”

By 1922 the Hurds’ marriage was unraveling. One telltale sign was the terse paragraph in a March edition of the Outlook reporting that Mrs. J.V. Hurd would not be around to defend the North and South title she had won the previous two years. The couple divorced a year later and Dorothy steered clear of the Hurd family haunts in Pinehurst and Pittsburgh thereafter. Since the couple’s new Pinehurst winter home was completed not long before their separation, it seems unlikely that she spent much time there. She moved her primary residence to Philadelphia and joined the Merion Cricket Club, site of her first U.S. triumph.

With the divorce in the rearview mirror, Hurd dedicated herself to climbing back into golf’s top ranks. Never a long hitter, she’d managed to overcome that deficiency during her championship run with the deadly use of her vaunted goose-necked mashie — an adored weapon that eliminated a previous tendency to shank. She used the club, christened “Thomas,” for run-up shots near the green. It proved especially effective from around 40 yards. In the 1921 North and South, Hurd holed two such shots in the final match to clinch the championship. In emphasizing the importance of the mashie in a Golf Illustrated article, she flashed her dry wit, writing, “Bernard Shaw’s axiom that we should exercise great care in the selection of our parents can be applied with equal force to the choosing of a mashie.”

But several women in the newest wave of fine amateurs — most notably Marion Hollins, tennis star Mary K. Browne, and the powerful Glenna Collett — were driving the ball 50-70 yards past Hurd’s. It was too great an advantage for Dorothy and or “Thomas” to overcome. At 40, could any pro help an aging champion find enough driving distance to enable her to compete against the new wave?

The Merion pro who stepped forward to assist was a man Dorothy Campbell had known in North Berwick: George Sayers. “George was born and brought up in my hometown, and I have known him since he was a boy,” she later recalled. “He told me he could help me change my swing but it would entail inordinate practice.” She had nothing to lose by trying.

Sayers wasn’t the first member of his family to teach golf to Hurd. Thirty years previously, his father, Ben Sayers, taught young Dorothy Campbell back in North Berwick. Dorothy’s home, Inchgarry House, was located hard by the 18th tee of the West Links, and she absorbed the game almost from birth, taking her first swing with a “six-penny” club at 18 months. It became common for golfers mounting the West Links’ 18th tee to encounter the toddler swinging a miniature club outside Inchgarry’s garden gate. In a piece for Golf Illustrated, Hurd wrote “that the fates decreed that I should be fairly impregnated with a golfing atmosphere from the very beginning, even if the family fable that I cut my teeth on the head of a cleek be not true.”

George Sayers switched Hurd’s unorthodox grip (the right thumb under the shaft) to the more conventional Vardon grip. He convinced her to jettison her stiff-wristed sweeping style in favor of a more fluid and athletic move to the ball. A grip change is one of golf’s most daunting projects, and Hurd worked on her new swing and grip for eight months with the sort of single-mindedness that would later mark Ben Hogan’s unceasing practice. She hit balls until the joint on her index finger became a raw wound, but once the changes began taking hold, she unlocked more power. Encouraged, she set her sights on entering the 1924 U.S. Women’s Amateur, held that year at Rhode Island Country Club, the stomping grounds of pre-tournament favorite, Glenna Collett, then in the midst of the greatest year of her Hall of Fame career.

With her best days more than a decade behind her, it was going to be a steep climb for Hurd. The mental aspect of the game was a subject she frequently wrote about in Golf Illustrated. She stressed “absolute concentration on the matter at hand, determination not to let bad luck discourage us and the resolve never to give up hope until the match is over . . . If it can be instilled into a player’s mind he can do a thing, he will generally be able to do it.”

Hurd cautioned against fits of pique with her customary drollness. “A certain theologian whom I have met has more than once told me that he considers the game of golf to be a most dangerous and harmful one, confiding that it’s bad for a man’s character for the same reason that a Presbyterian sergeant in the Boer War objected to bayonet charges — because it makes the men swear so.”

But whether her mental strength would be enough to give Hurd a meaningful chance against the likes of Collett, Browne and Hollins was open for debate. Even with her newfound distance, she would still be hitting second shots from 30 yards or more behind the long knockers.

Having cut her teeth in North Berwick, Hurd was quite comfortable coping with the stiff breezes off Narragansett Bay at the championship site. Her drives were traveling respectable distances, and chips by her ever-reliable mashie were resulting in “gimme” putts. Hurd breezed through to the final, where the smart money had her facing Glenna Collett — once Collett took care of two-sport star Browne in the other semifinal, that is. Collett hadn’t lost a match all year, but Browne scored an upset when her off-line putt at the 19th hole caromed off Collett’s ball and into the cup for victory.

In the final, Hurd was slow getting off the mark and trailed early. Then her putter — nicknamed Stella — caught fire. After 27 holes, Hurd had a 7-up lead. Three holes later, the match was closed out 7 and 6. Hurd’s victory set two U.S. Women’s Amateur records that remain unequaled — oldest winner (41), and most years between titles in the championship (14).

Hurd continued to play well throughout the 1920s and ’30s, winning five Philadelphia district titles. Stella, her deadeye putter, brought her another record in 1926. Playing Augusta Country Club, she used just 19 putts in 18 holes, finishing that amazing round with a chip-in by Thomas on the 18th.

In 1937 Hurd married banker and non-golfer Edward Howe, but the marriage only lasted six years. At age 55, Hurd — then Howe — won the U.S. Women’s Senior Championship. By her own estimation, during her lifetime she won over 700 first prizes.

Tragedy befell Jack Hurd and his second wife, Caroline, when they both perished in an automobile accident in Wilmington, North Carolina, in May 1930. An accident would also end Dorothy’s life.

In 1945, after visiting friends in Beaufort, South Carolina, she was traveling by train to Pleasantville, New York, to visit her son’s wife, Ruth, while he was serving in the Army in the Philippines. As she was changing trains in Yemassee, South Carolina, Dorothy inexplicably lost her footing and fell into the path of an oncoming locomotive. She was 61 at the time of her death.

Dorothy Campbell Hurd Howe — with her mashie Thomas and her putter Stella — was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1978. She wrote that the great shots she played so often with her favorite clubs were “almost second nature to me.” So was winning. PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

By Bill Fields

Se Ri Pak, who retired from a Hall of Fame career in 2016, didn’t compete in the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open, but as sure as there was drama during a topsy-turvy final round at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, her enduring influence on golf was clear.

By winning the U.S. Women’s Open in 1998 — along with the LPGA Championship that same season — Pak ignited a golf revolution in the Republic of Korea. Many girls in Pak’s home nation were brought into the sport through the groundbreaking achievements of the 20-year-old major champion, with South Koreans soon becoming a force on the LPGA Tour. Nearly a quarter-century since Pak motivated her countrywomen to excel, women golfers from across Asia have made an astonishing impact in majors and beyond.

Chako Higuchi of Japan (1977 LPGA Championship) was the only Asian, female or male, to win a major title prior to Pak’s breakthrough. Starting in 1998, 25 women representing six Asian countries have won 45 of the 104 majors that have been played. Trophies have been lifted by athletes from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, China and the Philippines. (Two major victories by Korean-born Lydia Ko, who plays for New Zealand, where she grew up, aren’t counted in the total.)

Their success has been particularly striking at the U.S. Women’s Open, where Asian players have captured 11 of the last 14 editions of the oldest major in women’s golf — a championship that was won by only three international players in its first four decades: Faye Crocker, Uruguay, 1955; Catherine Lacoste, France, 1967; Jan Stephenson, Australia, 1983.

Yuka Saso wasn’t a familiar name to American golf fans until early last June. That changed when the 19-year-old representing the Philippines steadied herself from a rough start on Sunday at The Olympic Club. Saso capitalized when Lexi Thompson lost a large lead over the final eight holes, coming home in 41 strokes on a course notorious for being the place where Arnold Palmer blew a seven-shot advantage after 63 holes at the 1966 U.S. Open to fall into a tie with Billy Casper, who defeated him the following day in a playoff.

With Thompson throwing away her hold on the championship, Saso, who trailed by six strokes through No. 10, closed with a 73 and tied Nasa Hataoka of Japan at 280. On the third playoff hole, Saso made a birdie to win the Harton S. Semple Trophy and the $1 million first prize. The daughter of a Filipina mother (Fritzie) and Japanese father (Masakazu), Saso matched Inbee Park of South Korea (2008, Interlachen Country Club) as youngest U.S. Women’s Open champion. Uncannily, Park, who has gone on to win seven major titles, and Saso were each 19 years, 11 months, 17 days old at the time of their victories.

“I was just looking at all the great players on (the trophy),” Saso said after winning. “I can’t believe my name is going to be here.”

Five other golfers from the Far East finished in the top 10 behind Saso and Hataoka at The Olympic Club, further proof of the region’s strength in the women’s game. A milestone was reached last fall when Jin Young Ko won the BMW Ladies Championship in her homeland. It was the 200th LPGA victory by South Koreans.

“This is a tremendous honor,” said Ko, No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings, the ninth Asian golfer to sit atop the list since its formation in 2006. “And I think it’s very fortunate that I am the player, the 200th-win player, and I actually think that it’s really fortunate that it was an event held in Korea as well. Obviously, being the player of the 200th win by Koreans was not a goal that I was working toward. It just happens that I was really focused, and I did my best and this came along.”

The trail of success for South Koreans that culminated with Ko’s landmark victory began with little fanfare in 1988. Ok-Hee Ku broke through that spring at the Standard Register Turquoise Classic in Arizona, defeating standouts Dottie Pepper and Ayako Okamoto, of Japan, a 17-time winner on the LPGA Tour. Because the 1988 Summer Olympics were being held in Seoul, the country’s attention was focused on that, and Ku’s victory got little attention — certainly compared to the fanfare that greeted Pak’s double-major success a decade later. It was a start, though, and brought to mind a Korean proverb: “If you collect pieces of dust, eventually you will have a mountain.”

Ku, who won 23 tournaments on the LPGA of Japan, never added to her lone LPGA victory. She died at age 56 in 2013, by which time Koreans had become a dominant force on the LPGA Tour.

“I can’t imagine that so many Korean women are playing and succeeding on the LPGA, even in my dreams,” Ku told Golf World two years before her death.

The timing for golf to bloom was better when Pak, a golfer who interspersed smiles between powerful and accurate shots, came along. When Pak returned to her native soil in late 1998 after triumphing in America, her hero’s welcome was complicated by the fact that she was worn out, hounded by paparazzi even as she was treated for exhaustion and a viral infection in a hospital.

Pak knew she would be a beacon for women golfers coming up behind her, but that so many talented players emerged surprised her. “To be the best, you have to put everything into it,” Pak said a decade ago. “But they shouldn’t have too much pressure, extra pressure. But I think they feel it. There is only one No. 1 spot.”

The battle in 2021 for first place at The Olympic Club’s Lake Course — hosting the women for the first time after being a five-time U.S. Open site for the men — was intriguing. Megha Ganne, a 17-year-old amateur from New Jersey, shared the first-round lead and remained in contention at three under par, tied for third place, through 54 holes. Ganne’s performance put her in the final grouping on Sunday with Thompson, whose Saturday 66 put her at 7 under, one stroke ahead of Saso.

It was just Saso’s third appearance in the U.S. Women’s Open. Although Thompson was only 26 years old, she was competing in her 15th national championship, having debuted at Pine Needles in 2007 when she was 12. The talented and popular Floridian arrived in San Francisco with 11 career LPGA victories, the most recent two years earlier. Despite her skills, Thompson had only one major title, the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship.

When Thompson played a steady front nine at Olympic and Saso carded double bogeys at the second and third holes, it looked as if her major drought would be coming to an end and Saso would be left with a learning experience. “I was actually a little upset,” Saso said of her shaky start. “But my caddie talked to me and said, ‘Just keep on going. There are many more holes to go.’ That’s what I did.”

Strange things tend to happen at the famed Bay Area club — in addition to Palmer’s 1966 collapse, favored Ben Hogan (1955) and Tom Watson (1987) suffered U.S. Open disappointments there — and Thompson played a poor back nine, unable to close. A bogey on the final hole meant Thompson wasn’t even going to make the playoff and give herself a chance for redemption the way Ariya Jutanugarn did in the 2018 championship at Shoal Creek, where the Thai star lost a 7-shot lead with nine to play but won a playoff against Hyo-Joo Kim.

In contrast to Thompson’s back-nine slide, Saso birdied Nos. 16 and 17 to tie Hataoka, whose 68 was one of only four closing scores under 70. After both players parred the two holes of an aggregate playoff, Saso’s birdie in sudden death made the difference as she became the 11th consecutive major champion from outside the United States, the longest American drought in women’s golf history, that Nelly Korda soon ended at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

To see Saso swing — taut, complete turn going back, hips quickly and fully clearing on the way through — is to think of another world-class golfer. Saso modeled her action after that of four-time major winner Rory McIlroy, watching his swing for many hours on YouTube. The similarity of their movements is striking when viewed side-by-side on video. Two weeks after winning the Women’s Open, Saso got to meet her idol as he played a practice round at Torrey Pines Golf Course for the U.S. Open. His advice to Saso: Keep a swing journal. “Everyone’s got a blueprint of what their swing is,” McIlroy told reporters. “If they keep on top of it and they do the same things, do the same drills over time, you fast forward 20 years you’re probably going to have a really good career.”

The first major winner from the Philippines, a country of more than 100 million with just 100 or so golf courses, Saso isn’t the first talented Filipina to earn golf headlines. More than 80 years ago, Dominga Capati, a laundress on a Manila sugar estate that bordered a golf course, picked up the game and defeated visiting foreign women players in the Philippine Women’s Open. A couple of decades later, in 1964, Capati played for the Philippines in the inaugural Espírito Santo Trophy, an international women’s competition. The Dominga Capati Memorial Tournament is still played to honor her contributions to golf.

Saso had plenty of support as she made history at the Olympic Club. Nearby Daly City is known as “Little Manila” for its large number of Filipinos. “I don’t know what’s happening in the Philippines right now, but I’m just thankful that there’s so many people in the Philippines cheering for me,” Saso said. “I don’t know how to thank them. They gave me so much energy. I want to say thank you to everyone.”

When the defending champion tees off at Pine Needles, she will be playing under a different flag. Saso, who competed for the Philippines in the Tokyo Olympics last summer, is now representing Japan. Under Japan’s Nationality Law, a person must choose one nationality before turning 22 years old. Saso cited business reasons, particularly the ease of global travel with a Japanese passport, for making the switch.

“We are obviously saddened to see her go, but she will always be Japanese and Filipino to us,” Bones Floro, an executive with the National Golf Association of the Philippines, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “We hope that our countrymen understand and respect her decision. It’s sad that we lost her in terms of representation. But Yuka will always have a special place in our hearts as a Filipino, and we are happy for her.”

A golfer representing Japan has never won the U.S. Women’s Open. If Saso successfully defends her title — Australian Karrie Webb is the last to do so, at Pine Needles in 2001 — she would make history two years running. Given the Asian success of the last couple of decades, it wouldn’t be wise to bet against her.  PS

May

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

— Oscar Wilde

In a sunny meadow, where the soft grass glitters with morning dew, she is gathering wild violets, singing the blue into each petal.

One handful for candy.

Two handfuls for syrup.

A heaping third for tea.

She moves like water, stirring swallowtails and skippers as she drifts from flower to quivering flower. Constellations of buttercups manifest before her. A choir of bluebirds twitters in her wake.

Her gaze is tender. Her presence full. Everything she touches seems to blush.

The Southern magnolia offers its first fragrant blossom.

The tulip poplar blooms in boundless rapture.

An oxeye daisy sings out: She loves me. She loves me lots. She loves me. She loves me lots.

No flower is forsaken.

A sweep of dandelion brightens beneath her feet, yellow blossoms plump as field mice. There is nothing to do but bask in the playful light of spring.

As the maiden lowers herself onto the lush and golden earth, one hundred songbirds pipe her name. The mockingbird repeats it.

May is here! May is here!

All hail the giggling maiden of spring.

Flowers for Mama

Mother’s Day is celebrated on Sunday, May 8. Not that the garden would let you forget. (Read: Bring her flowers.)

Sometimes simple is best. A sprig of dogwood. A vase of bearded iris. A single magnolia blossom.

Or get creative. Wildflower bouquets. Pressed flower notecards. Wild violet jelly. 

If she’s the “roses only” type, you know what to do.

But if your mama’s busy scratching and clawing around in her own garden, perhaps you can glove up and join her.

Prune the hedges if she’ll let you.

Since May is the month to plant summer annuals, plant them together.

In July, when her prismatic zinnias are the crowning glory of the block, she’ll surely be a happy mama still.

The Night Sky

According to Smithsonian magazine, two of this year’s most “dazzling celestial events” happen this month: a meteor shower and a lunar eclipse.

If you haven’t yet downloaded an astronomy app, consider doing so before the Eta Aquariids peak on May 5. Why? So you can locate Aquarius, the faint yet richly fabled constellation on the Eastern horizon. If conditions are favorable, and you are, in fact, gazing toward that water-like configuration of stars, then you may catch up to 20 meteors per hour beginning around 4 a.m. What you’re actually seeing? Debris from Halley’s Comet, of course.

A total lunar eclipse will paint the moon blood-red in the wee hours of Monday, May 16. The moon begins entering Earth’s shadow on Sunday, May 15, around 9:30 p.m. Totality occurs around midnight when, for 84 glorious minutes, the moon will appear to glow like a sunset. Dazzling indeed.  PS