Glenna Collett comments on the Womans Golf Circuit in 1931
With us all, so far, the note of strong family protection has run through the story: Joyce, with her beloved Wethereds watching over her as if she were a child;
Maureen, with the eager backing of her husky brothers and sport-loving parents; Helen, with her chocolate cake made by devoted hands; Simone, with her French protective traditions; and Virginia, with the stanch background of a high-principled home life. Whatever these girls essay, a large amount of family fortune interweaves itself into the texture of the doing.
But now we come to one of us who, for the most part, has made her way alone, but made it beautifully, with a fine, sound psychology behind her way of living. This is Mary K. Browne, heralded first in California for her great tennis game, then later in the East for her golf, in which, as a beginner, she eliminated one or two of us who considered ourselves old hands at the game.
The most sensational battle of my life took place with her at the Rhode Island Country Club at Providence, when she as a comparative novice had advanced to the semifinal round of the National Woman's Championship to play against me. She did this by displaying the same courage and power under stress of competition that had made her several times winner of national tennis titles. Just two weeks before this match she had been runner-up to Helen Wills at Forest Hills.
Our game that day at Providence was nip and tuck all the way. Crowds increased as we advanced. Every one was amazed to see such stamina and nerve in this player. Mary K. Browne, a tennis star, but surely not a golf light! At the eighteenth green we had halved the match. We must play an extra hole. On the nineteenth, Mary's drive sailed two hundred yards straight down the fairway. With victory apparently snatched away from me, I made a last valiant stand. My drive equaled hers for distance and position.
The fight was on. It was anybody's match. Our second shots both pitched into traps. We played out, I going past the pin, she short. I putted first. My ball stopped three inches short of the cup. That meant I had had three strokes. Mary was still to play her third.
WITH her ball twenty feet from the hole, a breathless silence descended over the gallery. I stood by, trying to look becalmed, but feeling hot and cold all over. If Mary sunk that putt I was done for. Mary sunk that putt. And that is Mary K. Browne all over. She does what she has to do—at the right moment. She takes her courage by the hand and walks along with it to the last ditch. It never fails her.
But besides this courage in sports, she uses the same brand of living outside sports. As a young woman in California she practiced journalism and practiced it successfully. Later, feeling that business might be more profitable than journalism, she migrated to Cleveland, where she became part owner in a ladies' exclusive sports-wear shop. With the same theory that she holds in sports, "Anything that is worth doing at all is worth doing well," she has built up a distinctive shop, stocking it with the finest things she could procure both in this country and abroad.
One may drop in there any morning, and the same hands that have sent golf balls tearing down fairways and tennis balls cavorting over nets in national competition will fashion a felt hat to fit your head or adjust an Angora sport suit to your particular size. There seems to be nothing at which Mary balks, unless it is something unsportsmanlike. Then, in order to keep her hands in sports, she finds time to give instruction in tennis and win a club championship or two in golf.
As for myself, along with Joyce and Maureen, I, too, have a young brother whom I adore, and a mother, with whom I live in the country just out from New York. I had the misfortune to lose my father recently, but in the past he was always a tremendous incentive to me in sports: a great amateur cyclist of his day, a champion bowler, and an ardent golfer, my childhood ideal, whom I longed to emulate. Because of his own athletic proficiency he was extremely critical of any sport I took up, and insisted I have the proper instruction in it.
When I first commenced golf at fourteen and entered tournament play, he would fol-low me in my rounds, attempting to do so without my knowing he was there. Often as I walked down a fairway I have thought a certain tree was deformed, but on glancing at it more closely, I realized it was only father, trying to conceal his none too slender form behind it. Many a time his heart must have sunk to see his own flesh and blood make such a mess of her shots, but at least he never spoke of it afterwards. Instead, his way of criticism was a constructive one —more lessons for me, and more practice and playing with him.
After my father's death it seemed to me even more important to perfect my game, and I have thrown much time and energy indeed to the doing of it. But along with this golf passion all other sports interest me. In 1929, in California, I thought for a while tennis was to become my dominating sport. I thought so until later I visited Mary K. Browne in Cleveland. After watching me play tennis she thought golf should still be my guiding star. And golf it is.
But when golf, or swimming, or riding is not in order, what do I do ? For some unknown reason people have always attributed to me a sense of organization. When I was just out of school I was asked to start a new golfing magazine, with New York offices and New York contributors to draw from. I worked steadily a winter on this project, but when spring came I found running a magazine and touring the country in golf competitive play were not compatible undertakings. So I was forced to leave the magazine with a more sedentary person in order to allow me to go my own way with golf.
THE next winter, however, found me back in New York—this time one of the organizers of the Woman's Westchester Golf and Tennis Club. Because I knew the club would be a fine thing if we could finance it, I worked extremely hard to raise my quota, and felt very happy when we were able to put the undertaking over.
Invariably, however, after a winter of organizing and of devotion to business, my mind turns to Europe—and the Joyce Wethereds over there. Four times I have crossed the water to capture the British crown, and four times I have had to return without success. But, goaded on by the sense of the unattainable, I suppose I shall keep crossing until I am either too old to swing a club any longer or until I acquire the yet unattained.
People often ask me if I am not terrified before galleries at these big matches. I think my first experience with a gallery must have been a happy one, for I can frankly say I have never had gallery fears. It happened this way: When I was fourteen in a club match in Providence, it got out that a youngster was playing good golf. Since youth always attracts, during one of my rounds a small group commenced following me, first one person, then another joining the procession, until there were at least a hundred people. But it was all so gradual, and I was so engrossed in my game, that I remember, on the eighteenth green, looking up in amazement to see myself surrounded by people.
HOWEVER, to say I am never nervous over golf matches is a horse of a different color. Often there are not enough soda mints in the world to calm my seething feelings. My face may be composed, but in other respects I am far from that.
The same thing is true of meeting magazine editors. If I had to sell them a tangible thing like an automobile or a plot of land, that would be easy. But to have to sell them my thoughts—my written thoughts —terrifies me. In editorial reception rooms I commence rehearsing to myself my plans for articles with the same nervous haste a child keeps reciting to herself a poem which ten minutes later she must repeat at graduation exercises.
No, organizing and selling are better for me. With this feeling in mind, I went into a real-estate development in Pinehurst. For two winters I worked at this and liked it well enough to consider another venture in California. I have even been thinking of organizing a public golf course, but perhaps miniature golf has obliterated the need for any more legitimate courses. Though I have played the miniature variety several times, I seem to be no adept at it, and I believe my own grandmother could beat me.
THE golf I like is the kind that requires acres of land. The very sight of land intrigues me. In my subconscious mind I see beautiful stretches of fairways ahead, lovely smooth putting greens, and grassy tees from which one may send sweet tee shots. Whatever it is, open country and fresh, clean air call strongly to the golf girl.
But now you see we are not the hammering, hammering, swinging automatons we are supposed to be. Instead we are, like most other people, leaders of double lives—and extremely happy in the leading.