Founders Cup A Fitting Tribute to LPGA Origins

Louise Suggs during the 1949 All American Women's Golf Tournament Courtesy USGA

WEST CALDWELL, NEW JERSEY | Sometimes getting old makes you classic. Other times, it just makes you old. Led Zeppelin released “Stairway to Heaven” in 1974. Same with “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Living for the City” by Stevie Wonder, “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin and “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and Wings. But that’s also the year Paul Anka released “She’s Having My Baby” and Terry Jacks hit the charts with the painfully ear-splitting “Seasons in the Sun.”

You get the point. Age, in and of itself, doesn’t make something good.

Golf is much the same. In the infancy of the LPGA, the women we now look upon as legends of women’s sports – players like Babe Zaharias, Patty Berg, Louise Suggs and Betsy Rawls – played classic courses because those were the only clubs that existed. At the time they weren’t considered “classic” because the inaugural year of the LPGA, America’s oldest 18-hole course was 57, the same age the Beatles’ “I Want to H...