Louise Suggs: Golf

 American Star of the Women’s International Sports Hall of Fame

Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Award

Louise Suggs won a total of $3,000 in prize money during her rookie season in 1950. Ayear before turning professional she predicted, “I believe I may have arrived 20 years too soon, but the day is dawning for women golfers.”¹ Twenty years later, Rookie of the Year, JoAnne Carner collected nearly $15,000 in prize money—five times that of her legendary predecessor. Beyond the ever-increasing growth of tournament purses from which she could have benefited, Suggs brought a business-like personality to the links well ahead of her time. When she originally co-founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) nearly 60 years ago, Louise Suggs could not have prophesied the level of corporate partnership the game has today or that the 2007 money leader would collect $4,364,994.

This prediction probably would have been even harder for Suggs to imagine while she was competing against Babe Zaharias, a colleague with an opposite personality from herself, in what has been described as a flamboyant, sometimes sideshow atmosphere during the tour’s early years.² The two had a fierce rivalry, and were often matched with Patty Berg, who brought her own, more comedic, personality to the game. Suggs described those matches “like watching three cats fighting over a plate of fish.”³ Zaharias, who by many accounts is the greatest athlete of all time, male or female, attracted great media attention and figured out this interest could reap financial rewards. Suggs felt that Zaharias’s boisterous personality unfairly overshadowed the accomplishments of herself and other golfers on tour. After all, Suggs frequently defeated the much more well-known Berg and Zaharias. For evidence of Suggs’s belonging in the “Big Three,” you need not look any further than the inaugural year of the LPGA. Not only was Suggs the lowest-scoring professional in the LPGA’s very first event, she was the tour money leader that year, with a lower scoring average than Berg and less than half a percentage point higher scoring average than Zaharias.⁴

In her true stoic fashion, Suggs never commented publicly on her feelings toward Zaharias and the environment on the tour in their day, but it is evident that she struggled to find a place for her personality in the early days of the LPGA. For taking the high road throughout her career, Suggs was awarded the Bob Jones Award in 2007, which recognizes distinguished sportsmanship in the game of golf.

Due to their shared character, Suggs was often referred to as the “Ben Hogan” of women’s golf. Ben Hogan, another of the greatest golfers in history, was known internationally as the “ice man” for his emotionless demeanor on the course. Suggs and Hogan also shared an uncanny ball-striking ability. This talent prompted comedian Bob Hope, himself a very competent golfer, to give her the nickname “Miss Sluggs.”⁵

Mae Louise Suggs was born September 7, 1923, in Lithia Springs, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Like many star athletes who are often born with competition in their blood, Suggs was no exception. Her father, Johnny Suggs, was a star pitcher for the Atlanta Crackers. The Crackers, a Class AA Southern Association minor league affiliate, won more games than any other team in the history of the association, and were Atlanta’s home team until the Braves moved in from Milwaukee in 1966. Johnny gave up his spot on the team and joined the front office after meeting and marrying the owner’s daughter. Plans for the young couple changed drastically when Johnny lost his job after a fire destroyed the all-wood stadium and offices on September 7, 1923, the same day Suggs was born.

After moving on from baseball, the family owned and operated a golf course where Suggs began learning the game. “At age ten, during the height of the Depression, the young Suggs found that golf was one of the few forms of entertainment easily available to her.”⁶ She would grow into one of the most accomplished golfers, male or female, the world has ever seen, and despite her quiet demeanor, her opinions about women playing golf are as strong as her golf game.

In an excerpt from her 1953 book, Golf for Women, Suggs writes:

Golf has been a part of my life for twenty-six years, so it’s not easy for me to be objective about it. By and large, it’s been a good life, too, so the prejudices show up more than they might with someone else. But when it comes to this fascinating and frustrating game, there are a few convictions I hold that are based on observation and are not to be classified as prejudices.

One of these convictions has to do with women and golf. There’s been far too much of this nonsense, so far as I’m concerned, about women being inferior on the golf course, the people who make this claim usually basing their argument on the female’s physical structure. To them I say, “If a woman can walk, she can play golf!”⁷

Not only did Suggs play golf, she dominated the game. As an amateur, she won both the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the British Women’s Amateur in 1947 and 1948, respectively. She capped off her amateur career by playing on the 1948 U.S. Curtis Cup team. The Curtis Cup is an international competition held biennially that pitted teams from the United States, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Upon turning professional in 1948, she won 11 more major championships, including an LPGA Championship in 1957, two U.S. Women’s Opens (1949 and 1952), four Western Opens (1946, 1947, 1949, and 1953), and four Titleholders Championships (1946, 1954, 1956, and 1959).

Her honors also include two years as the tour’s money leader (1953 and 1960) and a Vare trophy in 1953 for being the tour’s scoring leader, culminating in spots in the Georgia Athletic, LPGA Teaching and Club Professional, and the World Golf Halls of Fame. To truly bring her victories, awards, and honors full circle, each year the LPGA awards the tour’s newest young star with the “Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Award.” Suggs must surely be proud that the organization she co founded warrants such corporate sponsorship. Women’s golf has come a tremendously long way since

Louise Suggs so accurately predicted the day was dawning for women in professional golf in 1949.

Notes

1. Jackie Williams, Playing from the Rough: The Women of the LPGA Hall of Fame (Las Vegas: Women of Diversity Productions, 2000), 59. 

2. Ibid., 60.

3. Terri Leonard, In the Women’s Clubhouse: The Greatest Women Golfers in Their Own Words (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000), 145. 

4. Williams, Playing from the Rough, 63.

5. Brent Kelley, About.com: Golf, “Biography of Golfer Louise Suggs,” http://golf.about.com/od/golferswomen/p/louise_suggs.htm (accessed May 23, 2008).

6. Williams, Playing from the Rough, 61.

7. Leonard, In the Women’s Clubhouse, 146.

 

This excerpt was written by Ryan Sleeper.