Golfing pioneers: celebrating the LPGA’s founders

The LPGA owes its long and distinguished history to the hard work and commitment of its 13 founding members. These trailblazers are responsible for creating one of the most successful women’s sports organizations in history and were dedicated to golf as a game and a career.

They “did it all” back then: planned and organized the golf tournaments, drafted the bylaws, supervised membership, set up the courses, and much more. The LPGA recognizes the sacrifice and devotion of this group of distinguished women and honors them through several respects, including the annual LPGA Tour event, the Founders Cup. In these pages, learn more about the LPGA’s 13 founders.

Alice Bauer

(1927-2002)

Rookie year: 1950

Career earnings: $26,156

At the age of 22, Bauer became one of 13 founders of the LPGA Tour in 1950. As one of the “moms on tour” at the time, Bauer was one of the first to travel to golf tournaments with her two children. Being a mother was her first priority; therefore she only played on the tour occasionally. She had an outstanding amateur career, was voted South Dakota’s Amateur Women of the Year when she was 14 years old and won the South Dakota Amateur title.

She was accompanied by her sister, Marlene Bauer Hagge, as LPGA founding members and together they were widely known in golf circles because of their history as prodigy performers in the game. Bauer never won on the LPGA Tour, but she forced a playoff against Marilynn Smith in the 1955 Heart of America tournament. In 1956, she finished 14th on the LPGA’s season money list.

Patty Berg

(1918-2006)

Turned pro: 1940

LPGA victories: 60

Career earnings: $190,760

Nicknamed “Dynamite” in the early ages of the LPGA Tour, Berg was one of the most dominant players of the 13 founders. To this day, she is credited with more wins in women’s majors than any other golfer, topping off at 15 championship titles.

Berg’s golf career began well before the formation of the tour with eight majors before 1950. She was a major force on the course during the first decade of the LPGA Tour, winning majors, money titles and scoring titles. Because of her stellar play during her career, she was in the first class inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.

All her life, Berg remained an ambassador for the game she loved, playing recreationally with friends well through her 70s and conducting more than 10,000 golf clinics in her lifetime. The LPGA annually awards the Patty Berg Award, established in 1978, to “the lady golfer who has made the greatest contribution to women’s golf during the year.”

Bettye Danoff

(1923-2011)

Rookie year: 1950

Known to the founding members of the LPGA Tour as “Mighty Mite,” the shortstatured Danoff joined the tour with an impressive golf resume. She began playing golf at an early age after her family opened its own driving range and ninehole golf course. She won four straight Dallas Women’s Golf Association Championships from 1945 through 1948, the women’s division of the Texas PGA in 1945 and 1946, and the Texas Women’s Amateur in 1947 and 1948.

Although she was winless on the LPGA Tour, she still played a huge role in its formation. She earned her the LPGA Commissioners Award in 2000, which honors a person or organization who has contributed uniquely to the LPGA and its members, who has furthered the cause of women’s golf, and whose character and standards are of the highest order.

Helen Dettweiler

(1914-1990)

Rookie year: 1950

Growing up in a family of golfers in the Washington, D.C., area, Dettweiler graduated from Trinity College with degrees in history and English and headed to Florida to launch a golf career with money her grandmother had given her as a graduation present. Dettweiler won the first tournament she entered, capturing the 1939 Women’s Western Open as an ama- teur. Later that year, she joined Wilson Sporting Goods as a staff professional, along with fellow future LPGA Tour cofounders Opal Hill and Helen Hicks; Patty Berg followed in 1940.

Dettweiler was instrumental in getting the Women’s Professional Golf Association off the ground in 1947, later serving as the vice president of the LPGA when it was formed in 1950. While she was there for the LPGA’s beginning, Dettweiler left the tour in the early years to teach golf, returning to California to become the head professional at Indian Palms.

Marlene Bauer Hagge

(1934- )

Rookie year: 1950

LPGA victories: 23 Career earnings: $481,032 Hagge and her sister, Alice Bauer, got an early start in golf at age 3, thanks to golf pro father, Dave Bauer. In fact, their father billed them as “The Bauer Sisters” in golf exhibitions around the country in the mid-1940s. By age 10, Hagge had won California’s Long Beach City Boys Junior Championship and, by age 13, she had captured crowns at the Western and National Junior Championships, the Los Angeles Women’s City Championship, the Palm Springs Women’s Championship and the Northern California Open. Just before her 16th birthday, she joined the LPGA Tour in 1950 to launch her professional career.

From 1952 through 1972, Bauer recorded 26 victories and was voted into the LPGA and World Golf Halls of Fame in 2002, through the Veteran’s Category ballot. One of the 13 founding members of the LPGA, Bauer will long be recognized for her longevity, playing in each of the LPGA Tour’s first five decades. The petite blonde will also be remembered as the player who brought a splash of California glamour to the LPGA Tour.

Helen Hicks

(1911-1974)

LPGA victories: 2 Hicks launched her golf career with several top amateur wins, including a victory over legendary American amateur Glenna Collett Vare at the 1929 Women’s

Canadian Open. She recorded two other key wins at the 1931 Women’s Eastern Championship and at the 1931 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, where, once again, she defeated Vare in the finals.

Known for her length and strength, as well as her non-classic reported “baseball swing,” Hicks was also the first woman to have signature Wilson golf clubs bearing her name. The company actually gave her the title of “business woman golfer” and sent her out on the road to engage customers with the power of her game and her big personality. Hicks then helped train future LPGA co-founders and Wilson staff members Opal Hill and Patty Berg on how to conduct golf clinics.

Opal Hill (1892-1981)

Rookie year: 1950

LPGA victories: 2 Hill began playing golf at age 31, when physicians urged her to add gentle exercise as she battled a longtime kidney ailment. At one point, she was told she only had three years to live. She not only conquered her illness, but grew to love the game, ultimately winning the Kansas City Championship nine times, capturing three Doherty Cup titles, being the 1928 North and South Women’s Amateur champion and being named to four U.S. Curtis Cup teams.

She was sometimes called “the matriarch of women’s golf” because she entered the game late and was older than many of her fellow competitors. She was the first LPGA Teaching and Club Professional honorary member from the Midwestern Section. Hill also was the first recipient of the National Golf Foundation’s Joe Graffis Award and was a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

Betty Jameson (1919-2009)

Rookie year: 1950

LPGA victories: 13

LPGA earnings: $91,740

Jameson established her reputation as a top American amateur long before she became one of the LPGA’s 13 founders. The lanky player, who possessed what her peers

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