Y E S T E R D AY ’ S C I T Y I
Golf and the Chicago Girl R AY M O N D S C H M I D T
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n 1924, Chicago celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its first municipal golf course as the links sport boomed across the city. The game—a healthy outdoor activity and sociable athletic competition with few age restrictions—had been popular among local women since the beginning of the 1900s. The city, in fact, was regarded as one of the major centers of American women’s golf from World War I to the mid-1930s. As such, competitive women’s golf in Chicago mirrored the changes evolving on the national links scene: improving skill levels of the better players, growing media coverage, and increasing spectator attendance. Golf at the time was divided between the public course and private country club versions of the sport, which exemplified much about Chicago’s social structure. Prior to 1920, the majority of local courses were the province of either private country clubs or golf clubs with dues-paying memberships. American Golfer magazine reported in early 1919 that Chicago and its immediate vicinity featured fifty-two golf courses—of which only six were open to the public. The first star of Chicago women’s golf was Elaine Rosenthal, who at age eighteen stunned the sport by taking second place in the increasingly prestigious US National Women’s Championship in 1914. Rosenthal was a member of the private Ravisloe Country Club, a primarily Jewish club founded in 1901 south of the city in Homewood. Ravisloe was part of a steadily growing circle of local private country clubs, ten of which joined together in 1899 to organize the Western Golf Association (WGA); the Women’s Western Golf Association (WWGA) was formed two years later. In 1915, Rosenthal quickly established herself as the top player in Chicago when she won the Women’s Western championship, which had first been played in 1901 and quickly became the second most important women’s golf tournament in America, behind only the US National. After winning the 40 | Chicago History | Fall 2012