Whitworth Didn’t Fit the Mold

Great champions come in all shapes and sizes. They don’t always look like the comic book images we have of our heroes. Ruth was fat, Tilden was skinny. Willie Pep looked emaciated. Larry Bird looked soft. Al Kaline always looked as if he was nursing a terminal case of mononucleosis. Till you threw him a hanging curve.

But the greatest champion I ever saw who looked least like it was a golfer who was winning tournaments all over the place in the decades before the ‘90s.

Listen! Who would you have to say is certifiably the greatest golf player of all time?

Tiger Woods? Hey! In due time. Woods is brilliant--but about 80 victories shy of what I’m talking about.

Bobby Jones? A case could be made. He remained an amateur his whole career, but he beat the pros in the U.S. Open four times. No pro has ever won more and only two have won as many. He beat the British pros three times in their Open.

Sam Snead? Possibly. Of course, Snead was four U.S. Open victories behind Jones, but he won 81 other tournaments, 11 more than anyone else on the PGA Tour.

Ben Hogan? He won as many U.S. Opens as Jones. And, 59 other victories, including each of the “majors” at least once.

Jack Nicklaus? Ah, yes. Second to Snead in lifetime wins with 70. He also won four U.S. Opens and every other “major.”

Arnold Palmer? You bet! Arnold had 60 victories, including a U.S. Open, two British Opens and four Masters.

But wait a minute! How about a golfer who won 88 tournaments--seven more than Snead, 18 more than Nicklaus? You think Tiger will ever catch up to that? He has 81 to go.

I’ll tell you something else: Sam Snead was a great, great player. But did he ever have to play in a skirt?

My candidate did. Also had to play on a day when the mascara might run, you might have a bad hair day, or the nail polish would get all cracked and scaly.

My candidate is Kathrynne Ann Whitworth. No one ever struck a golf ball with more pure authority and skill than Ms. Whitworth. And no one ever looked less like a world-class athlete.

Kathy Whitworth looked for all the world like a schoolmarm. You pictured her not on a tee with Babe Didrikson but in a Vermont classroom, teaching moppets the principal parts of the verb “to be,” or the arts and mysteries of the multiplication table.

I have never known anyone more spectacularly miscast for her role in life. It was like casting Marilyn Monroe as a nun. Any Hollywood casting director would reject Whitworth out of hand for the role of sports star. “I want Sharon Stone and you bring me Hepburn,” he would complain.

And then you put a golf ball in front of her and she was Jones-Hogan-Palmer-Nicklaus in a skirt. She won more tour events than any golfer who ever lived. If you go by the numbers, she is the best there ever was.

She was tall, stately, spinsterish, calm and authoritative. Every home-room teacher you ever had. You pictured her saying “All right, children, today we’re doing minor British poets.” Instead, she was saying, “You’re away, Sandra.”

She played golf with the same pedagogical patience as she did everything else. She didn’t so much attack a course as educate it. She didn’t blast her way to the hole, she simply found the shortcut. She played steady, regal, even elegant golf. She never threw a club, cursed a shot or raised her voice. She was a lady. You took your hat off when you were introduced.

Even when the women’s tour went to shorts, Whitworth didn’t. She played in slacks because she didn’t like her legs to be on public view.

“The skirts even had to be a certain length when I started to play,” she remembers.

Whitworth won 88 tournaments without getting her hair mussed. But it wasn’t connect-the-dots golf. She took the course by the ear and made it behave.

It wasn’t boring. She was a little like Palmer, the way she did it. She sometimes went by the way of Philadelphia, so to speak. Not always fairway. Whitworth, like Palmer, visited the countryside. She got so good at trouble shots, her fans, asked how she was doing, would answer “She’s right where she wants to be--behind a tree.”

“Golf comes down to who makes the fewest mistakes,” Whitworth explains. Or who corrects them the best.

This Sunday on more than 200 of its golf courses, American Golf will host the third annual Women in Golf Day. Whitworth has been chosen national spokesperson for the event, which hopes to attract more female players.

Whitworth has already done her part. When she joined the tour in 1958, the total purse for the LPGA that year was $158,600. Last year, it was $30,345,000. When she was leading money-winner in 1965, she got $28,658. Last year’s leading money- winner got $1,236,789.

“A lot of women want to get started in golf but don’t know where to begin,” Whitworth says. “Women in Golf Day provides exposure.”

Maybe there’s someone else out there who looks like your maiden aunt or your English teacher but who can play in a skirt if she has to and still get a ball on the green out of a lie even a squirrel would find unplayable.