We’re celebrating some extraordinary girls throughout March, Nationwide Girls’s Historical past Month, people who’ve made their mark from the sports activities discipline to politics and authorities, from the courtroom to the board room.
We’ll be introducing our readers to some people they could not know, and others they do. What all of them have in widespread is that their lives, their tales, encourage us – not solely girls however all of us. They’re centered, tenacious, sensible, and brave.
Meet Glenna Collett-Vare, thought-about amongst America’s best feminine golfers. Born in New Haven, CT, and raised in Windfall, Collett-Vare was “a pioneer in American girls’s golf earlier than the skilled period and a constitution member of the Girls’s Golf Corridor of Fame,” based on her obituary within the New York Occasions on Feb. 3, 1989. She was 85.
Gene Sarazen known as her “the best lady golfer of all time,” and in Phyllis Hollander’s 1977 e book, Hollander listed her among the many One Hundred Best Girls in Sports activities.
Her dad and mom had been characterised as “athletic-minded,” and a younger Glenna Collett was concerned in swimming and diving earlier than turning to golf when she was 14, after accompanying her father to his golf membership, Metacomet in East Windfall. She entered her first U.S. Girls’s Newbie two years later, successful her opening match.
Collett-Vare nonetheless holds the file for many wins within the U.S. Girls’s Newbie with six, completed between 1922 and 1935, together with three in a row from 1928-1930.
In accordance with quite a few accounts, it might have been another had it not been for her opponent’s unbelievable luck and Glenna’s unhealthy luck.
It was the semi-final of the 1924 Girls’s Newbie. Her opponent was Mary Browne, a tennis champion who had turned to golf. Glenna was one up on the 18th, certainly anticipating victory. Browne’s fairway wooden headed towards the bushes, solely to hit a tree and land on the inexperienced. She sank the putt forcing a playoff – a nineteenth gap. Right here once more, luck was on Browne’s facet. With Glenna’s ball a lot nearer to the opening, Browne’s putt hit Glenna’s ball and ended up within the gap for this inconceivable victory. In these days, golfers didn’t mark their balls on the inexperienced. It turned out to be Glenna’s solely lack of the yr, successful 59 of 60 matches.
Throughout her profession, she gained 49 championships, the final of which, based on accounts, the 1959 Rhode Island Girls’s Golf Affiliation event, when she was 56.
Apart from her U.S. Girls’s Newbie wins, Collett-Vare counts amongst her victories six North and South Girls’s Amateurs, six Girls’s Jap Amateurs, the French Girls’s Newbie, and twice was runner-up within the British Girls Newbie.
She helped discovered the Curtis Cup Matches between groups from America and England, taking part in on six Curtis Cup groups, together with two wherein she additionally captained. She was a non-playing captain in 4 different Curtis Cup Matches.
Her power was off the tee, and several other accounts mentioned on the age of 18 she hit a drive that measured 307 yards.
Collett-Vare was the creator of two books: Golf for Younger Gamers (1926) and Girls within the Tough (1928).
Apart from her induction within the Girls’s Golf Corridor of Fame, she acquired the Bob Jones Award from america Golf Affiliation, an award given in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship. The Girls Skilled Golf Affiliation, of which she was by no means a member, started awarding the Vare Trophy in 1953 to the golfer with the bottom common strokes per spherical in skilled tour occasions.
She performed beneath the title Collett earlier than her marriage in 1931 to Edwin H. Vare, after which she glided by the title Glenna Collett-Vare. She and Edwin had two kids.
This story was initially printed on March 5, 2021.
