This article originally appeared in the March issue of NCGA Golf Magazine
March is Women’s History Month, so we thought we’d revisit the greatness of the late Patty Berg.
Berg was all things to women’s golf, and for a long time. She’d win her first professional event in 1941, in the infancy of women’s pro golf, and her last in 1962. But even after cancer surgery in 1971, Berg was still competing at the age of 62 in 1980. Hip replacement surgery later that year finally ended her competitive career.
In all, Berg won 60 professional events, including the first U.S. Women’s Open in 1946 (the only time it was played at match play), the Western Open seven times and Titleholders four times. Amazingly, Berg won the events while still at the time carrying a full schedule of exhibitions and clinics. Several years before her passing in 2006 she estimated that she had given more than 10,000 all over the planet.
She still holds the record for most majors won by a woman with 15.
For Berg, golf was a high calling. One of her rules was: “Don’t think you really win until you live up to that high thing within you that makes you do your best, no matter what.”
Born Feb. 13, 1918, in Minneapolis, Minn. Her father was a prosperous grain merchant who belonged to the Interlachen C.C. As a schoolgirl, Berg was an all-around athlete, competing in speed skating and even playing on a neighborhood football team.
At 13, she picked up golf and never left. After a shaky introduction to amateur golf in the Minneapolis City Championship of 1933, Berg dedicated the next year to her game and won the event in 1934. “That was my proudest victory ever,” she said. “After that, I began to dream.”
In 1935, the Women’s Amateur came to Interlachen, and Berg made it to the final where she was beaten, 3 and 2, by Glenna Collett Vare. She lost the final again in 1937, but won the championship in 1938, a year in which she won 10 of the 13 amateur events she entered.
For her first professional victory, the 1941 Women’s Western Open, Berg received a $100 war bond. Shortly after, she was in a car accident that severely injured her left knee. The leg had to be reset twice, but during 18 months away from golf, Berg rehabilitated successfully by working out in the camp of a boxer.
Following a two-year stint in the Marines, in which she went to cadet school and graduated a second lieutenant, Berg won the first U.S. Women’s Open in 1946, defeating Betty Jameson in Spokane, 5 and 4. In 1948, the LPGA was established, and Berg, along with Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Betty Jameson and Louise Suggs, became the Big Four of the women’s game. Berg, who went on to become the association’s first president, won three titles that first year. She was the LPGA’s leading money winner in 1954, 1955 and 1957, won the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average in 1953, 1955 and 1956 and was three times voted outstanding woman athlete of the year by the Associated Press.
In 1963, the USGA honored her with the Bob Jones Award. The LPGA honored her by establishing the Patty Berg Award in 1978 which is given to the lady golfer who has made the greatest contribution to women’s golf during the year.