Glenna Collett-Vare: Golf

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

You will not find the name Glenna Collett-Vare in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Hall of Fame, nor in the pages of books paying homage to the LPGA’s greats. After all, she didn’t win a single competition on tour. However, by all accounts, Collett-Vare was one of the greatest female golfers of all time. She certainly dominated women’s golf during her time, prior to a professional tour for women. Her accomplishments and notoriety likely went a long way in opening the door for women to make money playing golf, but Collett-Vare certainly did not set out for this glory. She was simply playing for her love of the game.

 

It should be of no surprise then that she was often referred to as the “female Bobby Jones.” Jones, whose career started slightly before, but mostly overlapped with Collett-Vare’s, exemplified sportsmanship before he chose to retire from competition when he was just 28 years old. The magnitude of his sportsmanship can be summed up in one short story. At the 1925 U.S. Open at the Worcester Country Club, Jones called a two-stroke penalty on himself for accidentally moving his ball even though nobody else saw it happen. He ended up losing the prestigious tournament by just one stroke. When the press praised Jones after the match for his honesty, he replied, “You may as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.”¹ The United States Golf Association’s (USGA) sportsmanship award is named after him, and Collett-Vare fittingly won this award in 1965. Bobby Jones personally mentioned that “aside from her skill with her clubs, Miss Collett typified all that the word ‘sportsmanship’ stands for.”²

 

Another moniker Collett-Vare earned was “Queen of American Golf.” Although she surely must have preferred a less royal nickname, her accomplishments in golf undoubtedly garnered such an honorable handle. She won six U.S. Women’s Amateur titles in 1922, 1925, 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1935. She also participated in several U.S. Curtis Cup teams. The Curtis Cup is an international competition held biennially that pits teams from the United States, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Collett-Vare actually played a hand in starting the famous event. In 1930, she took a team of American golfers with her to compete against British teams in unofficial matches. The following year, the British Ladies Golf Union and the USGA agreed to make these regular match-ups. She was a member of the first Curtis Cup team in 1932 as well as the 1938 squad, a player-captain in the 1934 and 1936 contests, and a captain of the 1948 and 1950 players. She also earned a place in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

 

Beyond the achievements and honors and in case any doubt remains, Collett-Vare simply dominated golf around the world in her day. “The women amateurs felt that they had a chance to win a tournament only when Collett-Vare did not play.”³ In addition to her U.S. titles, she also won two Canadian Women’s Amateurs and one French Women’s Amateur. Her most dominant year came in 1924, when she won a remarkable 59 of 60 matches in which she competed. Perhaps the only thing more extraordinary than that accomplishment is the fact that the only event she lost was the 1924 U.S. Women’s Amateur and how she lost it. Despite setting a record in the qualifying round, Collett-Vare lost the tournament when Mary K. Browne’s ball caromed off Collett-Vare’s and fell into the cup on the 19th hole! The only real gap on Collett-Vare’s golfing resume was a victory in the British Women’s Amateur, where she was twice the runner-up to her rival Joyce Wethered in 1929 and 1930. Despite this one disappointment, Collett-Vare’s dominance in golf is undeniable and her mark on golf has been honored since 1953, when the LPGA began awarding the Vare Trophy to the golfer with the lowest scoring average in tournament play each year.

 

Glenna Collett was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 20, 1903. However, when she was six years old, she and her family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where they remained during her transformation into a golfing legend. While there was no golfing tradition in her family, like many star players, there is typically some form of athletics in their blood, and Collett-Vare was no exception. Her father was a great bowler and a famous bicyclist, having won the national amateur championship in 1899. Collett-Vare possessed an interest in sports from a very young age, swimming and diving when she was nine and driving automobiles when she was 10. However, she was most fond of the game of baseball, which she played with her brother Ned and his team on a local field until she was 14, when her mother suggested she pick up a more feminine game. So she tried her hand at tennis and said she would have played indefinitely had she not accompanied her father out to the Metacomet Golf Club one afternoon.⁴ “As I came off the course after the first game, my destiny was settled. I would become a golfer.”⁵ She would later comment about her fate: “There was little or no choice in the matter, like many others who are intensely interested in the sport, the love of competition and the outdoors was in my blood. My temperament, natural ability, environment, and inclination pointed to such a hobby and all I had to do was ‘follow through.’”⁶ By the time Collett-Vare was 18 years old, at 5 feet, 6 inches and 128 pounds, her drive had been measured at 307 yards. This distance was 36 yards longer than Babe Ruth’s longest drive and the farthest ever recorded for a woman golfer. She would win her first U.S. Women’s Amateur a year later at the age of 19 and the rest is women’s golf history.

An intensely focused golfer and intelligent woman, Glenna Collett-Vare was well aware of not just the sports history, but the world history she was a part of, writing in one of two books she published in the 1920s, Ladies in the Rough (1928):

 

It was my happy fortune to come on the athletic scene at a most significant time—a period when women were breaking through the barriers in all fields of endeavor, from politics to swimming the English Channel, or flying across the Atlantic. American women in the first quarter of the twentieth century have won two rights: the right of exercising the suffrage and the right of participating in sport. The second of these seems to be as important as the first for the happiness and welfare of women themselves and of the world at large.⁷

 

No, you will not find Glenna Collett-Vare’s name in the LPGA Hall of Fame, but you will still see her impact on sports and society nearly a century after she began playing.

 

Notes

1 John Boyette, August.com, “Winning by the Book,” posted April 6, 2008, http://www.augusta.com/stories/040608/mas_193309.shtml (accessed May 25, 2008).

2 Brent Kelley, About.com: Golf, “Biography of Golfer Glenna Collett Vare,” http://golf.about.com/od/golferswomen/p/glennacollett.htm (accessed May 23, 2008).

3 Terri Leonard, In the Women’s Clubhouse: The Greatest Women Golfers in Their Own Words (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000). 71.

4 Ibid., 72.

5 Ibid,. 73.

6 Ibid., 72.

7 Ibid., 75.

This excerpt was written by Ryan Sleeper.