1948
Minneapolis’ Patty Berg lights up the links of women’s golf in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, winning more than 80 amateur and professional championships. A founder of the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association in 1948, she is one of 13 charter members of the World Golf Hall of Fame.*

To the author’s recollection, Patty Berg’s name has always been synonymous with competition locally. As a child, she loved football and her neighborhood team, the 50th Street Tigers, fought hard to be the best in South Minneapolis. Bud Wilkinson, one of her teammates, would go on as a stellar coach for Oklahoma during their hot streak in the fifties.**

In her young teens, allegedly, her mother tired of her daughter’s cuts, bruises, and torn skirts. More accurately, she could see Patty’s natural determination, but didn’t like the extra mending work. Her parents found a way out of her football pursuits when…