Louise Suggs: LPGA founder dies in Florida aged 91

Louise Suggs, a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, died Friday at 91, the LPGA announced.

Suggs, an Atlanta native who helped start the LPGA in 1950, lost a battle with melanoma. Suggs noted at the 2007 LPGA awards banquet, when presenting the award to Angela Park (who had won $983,922), “I wish like hell I could have played for this kind of money … but if not for me, they wouldn’t be playing for it, either”. An inaugural member of the LPGA Hall of Fame in 1967, Suggs was also the first woman inducted into the Georgia Athletic Hall of Fame in 1966.

“I feel like the LPGA has lost a parent”, Commissioner Mike Whan told lpga.com. “I feel like the LPGA lost a parent, but I’m extremely confident that her vision, her competitiveness, and most importantly, her spirit will be with this organization forever”.

The annual LPGA Rookie of the Year is awarded the Louise Suggs trophy.

But Suggs’ forthrightness was underpinned with generosity, and LPGA administrators realized how valuable she could be in linking modern players to their roots – often with a Scotch and a amusing story. She is one of seven women to win the LPGA’s Career Grand Slam – winning every major championship – and was the first to accomplish the feat in 1957.

After Babe Zaharis, Suggs was likely the most well known golfers in the middle part of the 20th century. “But if not for me, they wouldn’t be playing for it, either“.

Her efficient, powerful swing marked her for greatness as a teenager in Georgia.

Ben Hogan once said after watching Suggs swing that her swing “combines all the desirable elements of efficiency, timing and coordination”.

Bob Hope once nicknamed her “Miss Sluggs” for how far she could hit the ball.

She used to watch the practice rounds of Atlanta golf legend Bobby Jones.

That baker’s dozen of ladies didn’t know where the enterprise was going, beyond long drives on two-lane roads to cheap motor courts and to golf courses where the clover wasn’t only for luck, but the fairways.

She proved her theory during a three-day tournament in 1961 at a par-3 course in Palm Beach, Fla., where she competed against 12 top male golfers, including Sam Snead, Lew Worsham and Gardner Dickinson.

Ms. Suggs recalled in 2003 that Snead was irritated that he had finished behind a woman and was needling her.

She didn’t smile. She said only, “What do you say we play golf, girls?”

She said Snead stormed off to the parking lot and peeled out in his vehicle.

(See the October issue of Golf Digest for more on the Suggs/Zaharias rivalry and other anecdotes shared with me by Louise.). “He burned a quarter-inch of rubber”, Ms. Suggs said.

Miss Suggs retired from active competition in 1962, but she continued to teach golf well into her 70s. And last year she published her autobiography with the flawless title: “And That’s That!”

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