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In 1939, the rewards for my application of the work ethic had been enormous: two national 72-hole records in stroke play, both of which produced previously unheld championships. I had also achieved the semi-final rounds of the Western and National Amateurs. If minimal application of practice tee discipline could be this marvelously productive, certainly an intensified regime should result in unprecedented championship-level performances. So I pulled one 3 x 5 index card from my stock, and I wrote:

So I had 500 practice shots daily, plus 18 holes from the white tee markers and one hour of chipping and putting and one hour of sand shots on Long Beach’s seven-mile strand. Only then could I go home and write down my scoring analysis in my record book: greens hit in regulation, total putts, division of putts into one, two, three, and horrors…four-putt greens.

One day while playing at Virginia CC, Long Beach’s only private golf club, I needed only to par the two finishing holes to shoot a personal best of 71. I four-putted the 17th hole. Angry at my evil accomplice, I placed my Tommy Armour putter behind my neck, each hand aligned over the respective shoulder, and pulled vigorously. “That’ll teach you,” I muttered, as the steel shaft snapped into two pieces. My neck was unscathed.

On Sundays I gave myself a reprieve. I lazed around 18 holes in the afternoon, when women were privileged to play the course. Sunday morning I listened to the New York Philharmonic on the radio, my mother’s addiction.

Ruth Hicks was, after all, a graduate of the Detroit Conservatory of Music, sister of music professor H. Glenn Henderson of Western Michigan University. She was also a piano teacher, who blistered my fingers when, at age 5, I balked at a piano lesson. Who wanted a piano lesson when the California sun was shining, and a football was inflated?

With my pro’s input, I had already decided that California was no place to stay for winter tournaments. There were only two, the Los Angeles Midwinter and the Pebble Beach Invitational, whereas Florida featured a true “tour” of weeks upon weeks of competition, against the finest players from the south, east, and midwest. Florida, as noxious as the word was to a native Californian, was the place for a women golfer to be during the winter months. But how would I get to Florida on my father’s school principal salary? The family lived comfortably in Long Beach, but “comfort” did not include wintering in Florida, 3,000 miles distant on the continent’s opposite shore.

My pro, Larry Gleason, being the top man in the golf shop at Virginia CC, Long Beach’s only private golf club, was on an influential basis with the city’s movers and shakers. They included officials of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, an aggressive group whose goal was to peddle the beach-resort glories of Long Beach to the rest of the nation. How better could this goal be achieved than by launching two female golf stars to Florida, streaming the name Long Beach behind them, like banner-towing flying machines.

I was the obvious first choice as a tower of banners. My compatriot was fellow club-member, newly arrived star from northern California, Clara Callender, a willowy teenager who had enjoyed successful outings in the state’s upper latitudes. Clara at one time had been California state champion. Off Clara and I went in my 1936 DeSoto coupe, which was stuffed with clubs, clothes, and accessories that included an optimistic one pair each of leather golf shoes. Florida was, after all, the “Sunshine State, was it not?” Our optimism was disastrously unfounded. Wide-eyed, we pulled into Punta Gorda and the Hotel Charlotte Harbor in response to an engraved invitation from Helen Hicks (no relation) to play in the Tournament of Champions. We had been unaware that being ogled by the beautifully tailored and coifed paying guests was the reason we were given our elegant board and room.

Watching the dining room guests bring their whispering heads into proximity when we entered the room was a great ego booster. I could guess what they were saying. “There are those girls from California. That little one is so tiny, but they say she is a long hitter. How does she do it?” Then they would return to their pompano en papillote as Clara and I were ushered to our table. Our family’s unadorned California dining rooms and midwestern farm basic food did nothing to immunize us from the culture shock of the ambiance and the gourmet menus of the Florida resort hotels. Gigantic chandeliers, their crystal stalactites sparkling, hovered over the hotel dining rooms. A cathedral-like hush cloaked the room, the murmur of guests’ conversations damped by the alabaster linens of the tables and the thick burgundy carpeting. Tuxedoed maitre d’s lurked over silver finger bowls, which floated a thin slice of California lemon. Astute detective sleuthing was not required for the conclusion. The lemon slice in my bowl was clearly stamped “Sunkist.” We savored our maturity which did not permit us to slurp the finger bowl water.

The guests watched us carefully, hoping to glean nutritional secrets which would add to their tee shot distance or their durability in long matches. Women golfers from Baltimore and Providence and Bar Harbour particularly took note of breakfast ingestion of calves liver, and later would be seen gagging on their own servings of calves liver. We both qualified to play. Then the torrential rains began, and soon thereafter our leather shoes were saturated. If it were possible, we would have wrung them out. Our shoes squished audibly when we walked. “We wish,” we both sighed, “we had brought another pair.” But neither of us owned another pair. If we had been home we would have put the shoes in a slow oven and let them dry at a leisurely pace which would not have put them in fatal shock. We were not; so we dried them on our room radiator, where they were not allowed to dry at their own pace. They dried at a speed which caused three-inch cracks to open which permitted each right small toe a greenside view as we played the second round.

Clara fought her way to the finals, losing to Kentuckian Marion Miley, while I lost in the second round to a skinny, unknown, dark-haired 17-year-old named Louise from a small town in Georgia. With my small right toe looking on impassively, the kid used only 10 putts on the front nine. My scrapbook reveals no details of the match; I was inclined to lose interest in applying rubber cement to newspaper clippings when I lost. The kid’s name was Louise Suggs; that item was memorable, (that and her 10 putts for nine holes.).

At the South Atlantic tournament my semi-final opponent was Patty Berg. Prankster Patty was at her zenith in Miami, celebrating her return to competition after her 1939 appendectomy. For starters, she put a near-empty sardine can (containing its oil only) atop the heat-blasting steam radiator in her room. The stench quickly circulated to the rooms of other hotel guests. Then, for literal and figurative quenchers, she lit a large candle and held it under the automatic fire extinguisher in her ceiling, drenching herself as well as a few other guests.

Early in my golf career I learned that I did not enjoy the physiological syndrome produced by competition. My heart threatened to pound its way out of my chest. My mouth manufactured cotton balls. My intestines rumbled ominously and my palms sweat. Nerves took their toll on me—I was four down at the end of nine holes. But then inexplicably, Patty began snap-hooking her shots at hole 14. She mumbled incoherently, barely moving her lips. She was not cursing, because Patricia Jean did not swear. Her redheaded rage was beyond articulation. At the end of 18 we were all even. We both missed the green on the extra hole, Patty coming up short and my adrenaline-boosted shot flying to the back edge. Patty chipped three feet short, giving me no cause for optimism. I chipped three feet by and knocked in my putt; Patty missed hers. I beat Betty Jameson in the final the next day for the South Atlantic championship 3 and 2.

Next, we headed up Route One to Palm Beach to The Breakers tournament, where Betty Jameson was low qualifier with a 75, I was second with a 79, and Clara, still sporting open-toed golf shoes, was third with an 83. The draw pitted Betty Jameson and me in the semi-final round. All even at the end of 18, we trudged into extra holes, both of us bogeying the first four holes. On the fifth extra hole, I hit a tee shot out of bounds, and the match appeared to be over. It was not. Betty bunkered and failed to escape on her first try. I won the hole and the match with a bogey.

When Clara and I finally returned to Long Beach, the mayor greeted us in a ceremony at City Hall. The Chamber of Commerce exulted in the number of times the name Long Beach appeared in the nation’s newspapers as a result of our trip. We were named queens of the local major track meet. Then life returned to normal. Our parents bought us each a new pair of golf shoes, and we made planters of our rainsoaked pair we’d worn in Florida, inserting a sweet pea seedling in the split over the right toe.

Betty Hicks is one of three LPGA T&CP Division founding members and served as its first chairperson in 1960. Betty was inducted into the LPGA T & CP Hall of Fame in October 2000 along with Patty Burg, Marilyn Smith, Shirley Spork, Peggy Kirk Bell, and Louise Suggs. She has taught golf for more than 50 years and has coached at seven colleges and universities around the country. Ms. Hicks is a member of the Women’s Sports Foundation International Hall of Fame and the California Golf Writers Hall of Fame. She won the 1999 Ellen Griffin Rolex Award in recognition of her contributions to golf instruction. Hicks has co-authored two books and has written over 400 articles in more than 10 publications on golf and golf instruction. In June of 2001 Betty was inducted into the International Forest of Friendship (an aviation hall of fame), in Atchison, Kansas (Amelia Earhart’s birthplace) to honor persons who have made major contributions to aviation. Betty is presently working on her LPGA tour memoirs.