Out and About Kentucky Style: Golf

Golf is big. Even though I haven’t played in more than five years, I still really enjoy watching it. It’s better if Tiger is playing.\

Where I live backs up to number four tee, and it seems rain or shine, hot or cold someone is always teeing it up.

Over the years the game has been a fun part of my life since I began playing in 1963, while in college. In fact, after playing only two weeks, I knocked a hole-in-one at the City Par 3 course in Elizabethtown. The newspaper came out, took my picture and a few days later presented me a small engraved trophy with the unbranded, not perfectly round ball mounted on top. Looking back, a Titleist golf ball might have been more impressive. Heck, I didn’t know what a Titleist was. Any golf balls I had were the ones given to me or I had found.

To show how big golf was at my house, when I got home that day I opened the door and yelled, “I got a hole-in-one.” My mother yelled back, “Wipe your feet off before you come in the door.” That night at supper my accomplishment was never mentioned and never was thereafter.

Still, I really didn’t take up the game seriously.

For two years at Fort Bragg, I lived only a few miles from some of the great golf courses in the world at Pinehurst, North Carolina, and never played.

In an odd sort of way, Golf Magazine, in 1969, invited me for a job interview at their New York City office. My lack of being a good golfer was not an issue. No thanks New York City.

I had covered some semi-local golf tournaments during the summer months of college in E’town working at the newspaper. The country club hosted numerous women’s tournaments, and I would show up to take a few pictures, get a quote from the winner and put together a story.

This is where I first saw recent Manual High School graduate Mary Lou Daniel in 1962.  She was a young golfing machine who would go on to become the first ever woman to receive a golf scholarship on the mens team at the University of Kentucky and the SEC. Daniel was the National US Girls Juniors that same year. She lettered at UK in 1964, won the Kentucky State Am in 1965, and joined the LPGA the next year. There she registered one tour win in 1973.

I do recall Mary Lou Daniel was the first golfer, at least in E’town, that I saw a gallery following from hole to hole.

Louise Wilson, from Louisville, who always seemed to be written up as Mrs. Gaines Wilson, Jr., was another I covered. Six time winner of the Kentucky State Am, her golfing longevity spanned wins in 1958 to 1985.

Then came Glasgow’s Brenda High. It was 1965, and she had just graduated from high school. With size and power she could drive it as far as most men. When she played in E’town I was there and that’s where I met photographer Bill Luster who was covering Brenda for the Glasgow newspaper. Though short in stature, Bill was a giant when it came to personality. Brenda had just come off winning the Women’s State Am, and it would be another eight years before she won another one, but as good as she was at playing golf, it was Luster who be-came more famous.

In 1966, he left Glasgow and became an award winning photographer for the Courier-Journal. If it was anything to see, Bill took a picture of it.  Eight presidents, and two trips on Air Force One were just a few of his shots. In 2011, after 42 years he retired.

Another small Kentucky town turned out another good ball striker. Kaye Beard who later added Potter to her last name, was one I also saw play in E’town. She was  from Campbellsville. In 1965, she became the first high school state champion when the KHSAA introduced girl’s golf as a recognized team sport. Over her career she also won three Kentucky State Ams.

Emma Talley, from Princeton, Kentucky is another golfer I wrote about a few years ago for Kentucky Monthly Magazine. Riding in a golf cart driven by Emma on her home course behind her home was a great way to hear her story. Three state golf titles (it would have been four except for an incorrectly signed score card) propelled her to the University of Alabama where she won an NCAA title. Today Emma plays on the LPGA Tour.

I can’t leave this story without disclosing that my golf game did improve a bit. Moving to Bowling Green in the early 70s I took up golf again and in 1975, my handicap went from a 19 to a six. I did it by playing… no lessons. But then, almost overnight, I couldn’t break 90. If only a lesson, or two, or three.  Norman Head, the local golf pro submitted my handicap drop, and believe it or not, Golf Digest sent me a certificate recognizing me as one of the most improved golfers in America. Norman later was instrumental in the professional development of pro golfer Kenny Perry.

I still have the paper it was written on, but still not sure it wasn’t a joke.

My clubs, with a 40-year-old Ping putter, rests in the corner of the garage, just in case someone wants a game.

There’s no excuse, get up, get out and get going! Gary P. West can be reached at westgarypdeb@gmail.com