As exciting as women's professional golf has become today with all the sponsors and television coverage, I still savor my days as an amateur and the early days of the LPGA Tour. I played the amateur circuit from 1943 to 1950, and those seven years were among the best in my life. We played because we loved golf, we loved the competition and we loved the camaraderie. The only prizes we ever won were silver cups and our pictures in the paper.
Until the age of 17, when my father purchased his friend's membership to the local country club, I knew nothing about golf. Yet when I tried it, I found it more of a challenge than any sport I'd played. You simply couldn't haul off and slam the ball like you would a softball. It took dexterity, but you had to apply it properly. Power was nothing without timing in golf. I've always said, "It doesn't take a great athlete to be able to play golf. Conversely, great athletes aren't always good golfers."
I always felt like I was a good player, but it would be a stretch to say I was a great one. Most amateur tournaments were match play, with two rounds of qualifying at the beginning. I won a bunch of -medalist honors, but I'd often slip during match play. For some reason, I just didn't have the confidence to stand above the masses.
During the 1940s, there was a loosely organized tour of women's amateur events that included at least nine tournaments in Florida: Miami, Hollywood, Palm Beach, Everglades, Daytona, St. Augustine, Ormond Beach, Orlando and St. Petersburg. I won two events in which I partnered with other players-the Florida Mixed Two-Ball and the Women's International Four-Ball-but the Ohio State Championship in 1947 was my first big individual win. I qualified with a 69; it was the first time I had ever broken 70. That was an important win. As my friend Babe Didrikson Zaharias said, "Peg, once ya win one, it gets easy." I never had any interest in becoming a professional golfer. But as Babe, Patty Berg and the other pros started to get things rolling on the new Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour in 1950, I began to have second thoughts. Spalding offered me $8,000 a year-decent money in those days-to play their clubs, plus expenses for exhibitions and clinics. The company also started making Peggy Kirk Clubs for Women, with two woods selling for $19 and five irons selling for $36. (After I married my husband, Warren "Bullet" Bell, in 1953, I insisted that they change the name on the clubs to Peggy Kirk Bell.) I turned pro in 1950, and I immediately loved it. The only part I didn't like was all the driving. Our year started in Georgia, then went on to Florida, Cuba (pre-Castro), Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California. You'd put as many as 40,000 miles on your car every year.
Eventually, I found an alternative to driving. The world of airplanes and flying had fascinated me since childhood. During World War II, I wanted to join the Women Air Force Service Pilots, but I was rejected because I'm color blind. In 1952 the tour was in New Orleans, and I was moaning to Gloria Armstrong, an amateur from California, about how much I loathed the cross-country drive. Gloria had a pilot's license and owned a Stinson airplane. "If I were a pro, I'd fly from tournament to tournament," she said, then added, "Say, Peggy, why don't you buy a plane and I'll teach you to fly?"
Gloria gave me lessons as we headed West, and when we got to Dallas, I bought a Cessna 170 for $8,000. For the next eight years I flew around the tour from coast to coast. Even after my eldest daughter, Bonnie, was born in 1945, I still flew. I sometimes took Bonnie and her nursemaid with me. Babe was a frequent travel partner as well.
My friendship with Babe Didrikson Zaharias began in 1945 at the Women's Western Open. Of course I knew who Babe was: an extraordinary athlete who had won two gold medals and one silver at the 1932 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The sportswriter Grantland Rice suggested she try golf; two years later, she shot 77 in a tournament.
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