Marilynn Smith

• Born: April 13, 1929
• Birthplace: Topeka, Kansas
• Died: April 9, 2019
• Place of death: Goodyear, Arizona

Sport: Golf

Early Life

Marilynn Smith was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1929. She loved playing sandlot baseball with her friends, but in doing so, she picked up some bad habits, including a colorful vocabulary of words unacceptable in polite society. One day, when she came home from a disappointing baseball game, she spewed out a string of invectives that shocked her mother, who told her husband about it that evening.

Smith’s father suggested that Marilynn, then twelve, take up golf, which he considered a more genteel sport than baseball. Although Smith initially considered golf a noncompetitive sport, once she began to play at the Wichita Country Club, of which her father was a member, she was disabused of that notion. She showed a natural aptitude for golf and was encouraged by her parents to continue her participation.

The Road to Excellence

In 1946, Smith's amateur career received a considerable boost when, at seventeen, she earned her first of three victories in the Kansas Women’s Amateur competition. In 1949, while still an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, she won the National Collegiate Athletic Association Championship, which completed her amateur career. She finished her college education in 1951, majoring in physical education and journalism. As a professional golfer, she won twenty-one Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour titles, including championships in 1963 and 1964.

Women’s golf had been organized by the Women’s Professional Golf Association (WPGA), but by 1949, that organization was declining. The threatened collapse of the WPGA motivated a group of female golfers, persuaded that they could succeed as professionals, to find an alternative: They founded the LPGA at the Women’s US Open in Wichita, Kansas, in 1950.

Assuming a leadership role in the founding of the LPGA, Smith displayed tact and diplomacy, which won her the moniker of “Miss Personality.” Her colleagues shared a genuine respect and fondness for her. They appreciated her willingness to work hard behind the scenes, avoiding the spotlight herself, in order to establish the most successful women’s sports association in existence. Smith served as the LPGA’s secretary in 1957 and as its president from 1958 to 1960.

The Emerging Champion

In 1954, Smith won her first tournament in Indiana’s Fort Wayne Open. In 1963, after serving as secretary and president of the LPGA, she was named the most improved player in women’s golf. In 1971, playing in the Lady Carling Open, she became the first player in the history of the LPGA to score a double-eagle, 3 strokes under par.

In 1961, Smith won more than $10,000 for the first time; the following year, her winnings were up to $12,075. In 1964, she earned $21,691, a phenomenal amount at that time in women’s golf.

Smith’s winnings stayed in five figures every year between 1961 and 1973, but dropped to hundreds rather than thousands of dollars by 1978. Despite this decline in earnings, she earned respectable amounts of money for more than a decade. Her dedication to the game was complete and genuine, so her satisfaction came from advancing the cause of women’s professional golf.

Even as her competitive golfing career reached its end, Smith experienced a number of triumphs. In 1979, she received the first Patty Berg Award for her overall service to professional women’s golf. In 1981, during the Kemper Women’s Open, she scored the fifth hole in one in her LPGA career. In 1983, she was the recipient of the Golf Digest LPGA Founders Cup for her overall charitable service.

In 1987, Smith was recognized by the Vincent Lombardi Tournament of Champions for her leadership role in sports and her general charitable efforts. During the 1990s, she was an active participant in the Sprint Titleholders Senior Challenge, an unofficial event for seniors.

Continuing to teach golf and actively involved in managing the Marilynn Smith Golf Classic, in 2000, Smith was one of six inaugural inductees into the LPGA Teaching and Club Professionals Hall of Fame. On October 30, 2006, she received what was probably her greatest honor: induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, in recognition of her lifetime achievement in the sport.

Continuing the Story

Smith remained active as she entered her eightieth year. In 2007, she and fellow LPGA founder Louise Suggs raised the US flag at the opening of the Solheim Cup in Sweden. She was named one of the LPGA’s top fifty players during the organization’s fiftieth anniversary commemoration in 2000. Also, she established the Marilynn Smith Scholarship for the benefit of young women with the potential to be golf champions, and she oversaw the administration of this scholarship. In 2012, the LPGA Central Section Marilynn Smith Service Award was established to further honor her dedication and service to the LPGA and the game of golf in general.

Smith was active during the 1950s in promoting the LPGA by participating in radio and television shows and remained an active participant in various talk shows in the twenty-first century for the same purpose. She was extremely interested in politics in the United States, particularly as it pertained to women and gender equality. She continued to make appearances in the world of golf, including waiting close to the eighteenth green to greet players as they completed their game at the 2019 LPGA Bank of Hope Founders Cup.

After suffering a fall and developing an infection, Smith died at a hospital in Goodyear, Arizona, on April 9, 2019, at the age of eighty-nine.

Summary

The greatest significance that can be drawn from Marilynn Smith’s life is that people can be as productive working behind the scenes as they can by assuming center stage. Ever self-effacing, Smith was sincerely devoted to advancing her sport and to creating a place for women among golf professionals. She succeeded admirably through her intelligence and her true dedication to golf.

Bibliography

Crosset, Todd. Outsiders in the Clubhouse: The World of Women’s Golf. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

Goldstein, Richard. "Marilynn Smith, an L.P.G.A. Founder and Tour Champion, Is Dead at 89." The New York Times, 9 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/obituaries/marilynn-smith-dead.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2020.

Ireland, Mary Lloyd, and Aurelia Nattiv, eds. The Female Athlete. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 2002.

Norwood, Joe, Marilynn Smith, and Stanley Blicker. Joe Norwood’s Golf-o-Metrics. 2d ed. Las Vegas, Nev.: Norwood, 1992.