What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of women who have teed it up against the men (on any level, from state amateurs to mini tours) but instead, these are some of the more iconic moments of women teeing it up in a different arena and making history.
The induction ceremony will be June 10, 2024, at Pinehurst and will coincide with the U.S. Open.
Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf, Sandra Palmer, Johnny Farrell and Beverly Hanson will join the remaining seven of the 13 LPGA Founders in the World Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2024, it was announced on Wednesday.
Harrington has 21 victories worldwide, including three majors. He was a part of six Ryder Cup teams and he was the captain of the 2020 European squad.
“This is very exciting, obviously a huge honor,” said Harrington. “It’s somewhat humbling. At this stage of my life, it gives me some validation to what I’ve done in golf. Brings back a flood of memories. This is a deep-down satisfaction, and I’m very proud to be included with the players before me. Seeing your name beside the names that I’ve looked up to as a boy and young golfer, it’s very nice. Everybody on the ballot deserves to be there. It’s unfortunate that everyone can’t be in, but it’s great to be included in the Class of 2024.”
Six LPGA Founders – Patty Berg, Marlene Bauer Hagge, Louise Suggs, Babe Zaharias, Marilynn Smith and Betty Jameson – were already in the Hall. They will soon be joined by Alice Bauer, Bettye Danoff, Helen Dettweiler, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Sally Sessions and Shirley Spork.
Hagge is the only living LPGA founder.
The induction ceremony will take place on June 10, 2024, at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in the Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina, and will coincide with the 124th U.S. Open.
Final selections for the 2024 induction class will be announced the week of March 6, 2023.
Last March at the Chevron Championship, the LPGA announced that all 13 of the tour’s founders would be included in the LPGA’s hall in an honorary category. Only five of the LPGA’s original founders were in the tour’s Hall of Fame at that time.
Now, seven founders not already in the World Golf Hall of Fame have been named a finalist. Alice Bauer, Bettye Danoff, Helen Detweiler, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Shirley Spork and Sally Sessions could join the other six – Patty Berg, Marlene Bauer Hagge, Betty Jameson, Marilynn Smith, Louise Suggs and Babe Zaharias – in the WGHOF.
On Wednesday, the WGHOF released the names of 12 finalists considered for induction in 2024: Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf, Johnny Farrell, Jim Furyk, Dottie Pepper, Sandra Palmer, Beverly Hanson, Cristie Kerr, and contributors Peter Dawson, Butch Harmon and Jay Sigel, with the remaining founders collectively making up the final spot.
Final selections for the 2024 induction class will be announced the week of March 6, 2023. The induction ceremony will be June 10, 2024, at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in the Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina, and will coincide with the 124th U.S. Open.
When it comes to true impact, Shirley Spork was a giant in the game.
Shirley Spork deserved to be in the LPGA Hall of Fame decades ago. Truth be told, she should’ve been part of the inaugural class in 1967 along with every other LPGA founder. But how wonderful that only two weeks ago, during the Chevron Championship, Spork received word from LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan that she’d finally be in the Hall as an honorary member.
Spork died April 12 at age 94 in California knowing that her name would forever be included among the all-time greats in the game. Exactly as it should be.
While she never won on the LPGA, the witty and wise Spork influenced the game in profound ways, first as one of 13 LPGA founders and then as the woman who championed the LPGA Teaching & Club Pro Division. She taught generations of women how to play and teach the game, specifically tailoring instruction to women.
“I feel I’m very deserving of it,” said Spork of the Hall of Fame honor last month, “having developed the teaching division from 0 to 1,700 people. That is my trophy.”
To know Spork was to feel connected to the very roots of a league.
Born and raised in Detroit, Spork collected golf balls from the creek that ran along her family’s property adjacent to Bonnie Brook Golf Course. She’d sell the balls back to the players as they made their way to the green. With the dollar she’d earned from the balls and 13 cents from her mother, Spork rode a streetcar to the S.S. Kresge dime store and bought her first golf club, a putter, at the age of 12. She even designed her own golf hole in the field across from her parents’ house, cutting the grass herself.
In the 1940’s, women were mostly encouraged to play intramural sports, not individualized ones. Spork, a physical education major at Eastern Michigan, knew her teachers wouldn’t sign her application to compete in the national championship. So she waited until a substitute teacher arrived to get the required signature.
Spork always found a way.
Shirley Spork on the first tee at the 2019 Solheim Cup (Photo: Beth Ann Nichols/Golfweek).
In her book, From Green to Tee, Spork recounted how she hitched a ride to college in a hearse, a bread truck and an ambulance. In 1947, she paid her own way to Ohio State’s Scarlet Course for the national championship, and when her golf shoes got soaked, a restaurant chef stuffed them with newspaper and put them in the oven.
She won the event as a sophomore, but when she returned to Eastern Michigan, the women’s athletic department wouldn’t recognize her victory. In 2014, 67 years later, Eastern Michigan presented Spork with a varsity letter “E” for winning the only national title of 1947.
In her late 80’s, Spork started a pro-am in the California desert to raise money for the women’s golf program at her alma mater, and the First Tee of Coachella Valley. She always was looking out for the next generation.
Spork ultimately turned professional because the great Babe Zaharias turned to her one day and said “Kid, why don’t you turn pro? We need players out here.”
And so, in 1950, Spork became one of the 13 women who signed the original charter of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
“We had to mark the courses and rule on ourselves,” said Spork. “We did a swing parade and passed the hat and collected money to pay for a starter who had a table, a chair and a blowhorn to announce us.”
LPGA Founders Shirley Spork and Marilynn Smith at the 2013 RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup at Wildfire Golf Club in Phoenix. (Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
In 1953, Spork came to the first LPGA-sanctioned tournament on the west coast in the desert at Tamarisk Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, and a lightbulb went off: She could teach there in the winter and play the tour in the summer.
She presented the idea of a teaching division to the tour’s executive committee and was twice turned down, in 1955 and 1956. In 1959, Spork’s idea passed by a single vote.
Spork gave lessons at Monterey Country Club well into her 90s, and artificial hips and knees did nothing to slow down her game. She’d often play in the Founders Cup pro-am with then-LPGA commissioner Mike Whan, who started the tournament, in part, to honor the past and help current players connect with the living legends who built their tour.
Spork liked to tell the story of how she was the first female professional invited into the Royal and Ancient clubhouse in the early 1950s. In a boardroom, members were admiring Spork’s ability to get her wedge airborne around the greens and asked for a demonstration.
“There wasn’t any room so they said get up on the table,” Spork recalled.
And so Spork gave a lesson on top of the table, giving tips on an alternative to the classic bump-and-run.
“I’ve been very fortunate to teach golf for seven decades,” Spork said last spring. “Every 10-year span the methodology has changed.”
And Spork kept up with it all, as passionate about the game as she was when she bought that first putter and used it to hit full shots.
Shirley Spork and Mike Whan at the RR Donnelley Founders Cup in Phoenix.
A few years back at the Founders Cup, Mike Whan implored everyone – including the media – to take up the baton and do something to drive the game forward for girls.
“Do something that makes you feel like Marilynn (Smith) and Shirley (Spork),” said Whan. “They have to wake up every morning and think, ‘Thank God we didn’t give up. I didn’t give up.’ ”
Spork can now rest peacefully knowing that players on the tour she helped create will compete for $90.5 million in prize this year – the average tournament purse in 1950 was $3,000! – and thousands upon thousands of women will take up the game in the coming years because of the teaching program she founded.
When it comes to true impact, Spork was a giant in the game, though she wasn’t exactly revered as one. But she knew what she’d done for golf and for women.
Shirley Spork was inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame two weeks ago.
Shirley Spork, one of the 13 founders of the LPGA and who found out just two weeks ago that she was finally going into the LPGA Hall of Fame, died Tuesday at the age of 94. In addition to helping found the LPGA in 1950, Spork was the main driver behind the creation of the LPGA Teaching & Club Pro Division.
Spork was informed of her achievement at the LPGA’s first major of 2022, the Chevron Championship. She gained her long overdue induction into the Hall alongside Lorena Ochoa, after the committee removed the 10-year playing minimum, which allowed Ochoa to get in.
The two celebrated their good news together the day before the 51st and final edition of the major was played at Mission Hills Country in Rancho Mirage, California.
Shirley, 94, wanted to know if Lorena was going to play today! Also asked to see pics of her kids. So great for them to share this moment. Lorena thanked Shirley, who said “We had to mark the course and rule on ourselves and play for $3,000.” pic.twitter.com/hlVON4tyfU
Spork and Ochoa practically bookend this tour, and no Hall of Fame would be complete without them.
RANCHO MIRAGE, California – Lorena Ochoa was out walking behind her house in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, with her dog when Nancy Lopez called. Ochoa thought the call, organized by her brother, was going to be about her foundation or playing in an exhibition. After a brief catch-up, an emotional Lopez told Ochoa that she was going into the LPGA Hall of Fame.
A stunned Ochoa, 40, didn’t know what do to. Her husband was at work in Mexico City, and it was time to pick up the kids from school. She tried to explain to her three children, ages six, eight, and 10, what had happened.
“They didn’t care. They didn’t understand,” said Ochoa, tilting her head back with that infectious laugh.
“Mom, can you please put music on?” came the request from the backseat.
Perhaps another time.
It’s a sweet story, especially given that school pick-up lines are among the million little reasons Ochoa chose to leave the LPGA after amassing 27 titles, including two majors, in seven seasons.
Ochoa, who arrived at Mission Hills on Wednesday to meet with the media, said she thanks God to this day that she was strong enough to make the choice to walk away, regardless of the rule. She likened the news that she’s in to a present.
“Some of the media as well, or my sponsors or fans, golf fans in Mexico, they always ask me about this all the time,” said Ochoa, “so finally I can say, that’s it. I’m in. I think I completed my career with this great honor, so in a way I feel relief and relaxed and happy, and just this is going to be great.”
Of course, Ochoa’s wait for the Hall pales in comparison to the woman who came over on Wednesday afternoon and asked to look at a picture of her kids. LPGA founder Shirley Spork, still spry at 94, is one of eight LPGA founders who are finally being inducted as honorary members of the tour’s Hall of Fame.
Of the 13 founders, only five were already included. Spork, a local desert resident, is one of two founders still living along with Marlene Hagge, who was already in the LPGA Hall.
Shirley, 94, wanted to know if Lorena was going to play today! Also asked to see pics of her kids. So great for them to share this moment. Lorena thanked Shirley, who said “We had to mark the course and rule on ourselves and play for $3,000.” pic.twitter.com/hlVON4tyfU
Spork heard the news earlier this week from LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan and said she was surprised.
“It’s a great honor,” said Spork. “I feel I’m very deserving of it, having developed the (LPGA) teaching division from 0 to 1,700 people.”
Spork, who still gets out and plays nine holes, asked Ochoa if she planned to tee it up today at Mission Hills. Ochoa, who recently played in a mixed event in Portugal in which she tied for 10th alongside Miguel Angel Jimenez and Thomas Levet, said she needed to get home.
Ochoa said she was “responsible” going into the event and did adequate preparation. Even with little media onsite and few fans, Ochoa admitted to being quite nervous.
“I started thinking, I cannot imagine being in an LPGA tournament,” said Ochoa, “like a big one or a real LPGA tournament crowded with the media and me trying to play good. Too much.”
Fellow Mexican Gaby Lopez annually asks Ochoa to partner with her in the LPGA team event, the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. This year, Ochoa said she will have to tell her once again that she isn’t going to play.
But that’s not a no forever.
“I don’t want to say no because maybe two, three years I will come and play with Gaby and have a good time,” said Ochoa. “I do see maybe playing in the senior, you know, in the Senior Tour, just coming back and playing couple tournaments just to enjoy.
“My kids are going to be older and maybe they understand a little bit more than today, so we’ll see.”
Stacy Lewis was one of several players who came over to greet Ochoa near the putting green as she met with the press. Lizette Salas declared that she was speechless.
“She did so much for this game when she played,” said Lewis. “When she retired we had three events in Mexico; we still have players from Mexico on this tour.”
Lorena Ochoa of Mexico and caddie Greg Johnston walk across a bridge on the second hole during the third round of the Tres Marias Championship at the Tres Marias Country Club on May 1, 2010, in Morelia, Mexico. (Photo by Darren Carroll/Getty Images)
While Ochoa isn’t out at LPGA events much, she’s still having a great impact on the next generation in her country through the IGPM, Impulsando al Golf Professional Mexicano. Currently there are 14 Mexican women in the program. Ochoa is part of three to four fundraisers a year that help pay for caddies, coaching, equipment, medical costs – whatever is needed.
“We’re very close to them,” said Ochoa, “because all of them are so particular, so they have different necessities. Once a year we get together for four or five days. I invite them to my home and spend time with them to see how are they feeling, how are they with their families, if they are happy, what are their goals for the year, how are they going to start the year or the changes that they’re making, if it’s working or not.
“And they call me, and we keep in touch and they ask me. I try to help them a little bit to make, I guess, less mistakes and be a little bit easier, and in a way to feel that they belong to something. They were part of the family, and all the Mexicans get together and support each other.”
It is the ultimate founder-like mentality. Ochoa became the first Mexican player to reach No. 1 in the world and lit a fire in minds of boys and girls across her country to take up a new sport. She now works to help the next generation continue what she started.
Spork and Ochoa practically bookend this tour, and no Hall of Fame that bears its name would be complete without them.
