Judy Dickinson played on the LPGA Tour for 23 seasons and recorded four career victories, plus one unofficial win at the 1992 Lady Seoul Open. She won the 1985 Boston Five Classic, and in 1986, won the Rochester International and the SAFECO Classic. She added her final career win at the 1992 Inamori Classic. Playing as Judy Clark from 1978 to 1985, she also finished as runner-up at the 1985 U.S. Women's Open Championship. At the former major championship, the du Maurier Classic, Dickinson finished second in 1992. She served as president of the LPGA Tour for three years and has been involved in numerous behind-the-scenes efforts affecting the tour throughout the years. Currently, she plays on the Legends Tour and serves as the director of community relations for the LPGA's ADT Championship. Dickinson, 56, resides in West Palm Beach, Fla., and is the mother of 17-year-old twin sons, Barron and Spencer. Her late husband, PGA professional Gardner Dickinson, a student of Ben Hogan and a seven-time PGA Tour winner, was her only teacher. Here is what Judy Dickinson had to say to Lisa D. Mickey on LPGA.com in the third installment of the site's "Whatever Happened To…?" series.

LPGA Founder and Hall of Fame member Marilynn Smith and Judy Dickinson (right)

Q: When did you play your last season on the LPGA Tour and why did you stop?
JD: I played four tournaments in 2000. It's funny how some players make an announcement that it's their last year, but I just phased out. That decision came about the same time that Ty Votaw was named as the LPGA's commissioner. Ty hired me as a consultant to the tour for special projects. I sat in on board meetings and was there for historical perspective as the tour shaped its five-year strategic plan. I also was on the advisory board for the LPGA Hall of Fame and was a member of the LPGA's Veteran's Committee. When Gardner passed away in 1998, the boys were eight years old. To be competitive is a full-time job. It was frustrating to me to be out there on tour just trying to make the cut. My family was in Jacksonville (Fla.) and I didn't want to leave Florida, so a lot of things fell into place.

Q: You were a little older when you turned pro weren't you?
JD: Yes, I was 27 years old. I had actually quit playing golf and didn't play in junior high or high school. Back then, there was no Title IX and no girls' golf team. I was planning to go to seminary, but then I married a guy from New Jersey while I was at Maryville College. He got a job on a golf course in New Jersey and I waitressed in the snack bar at the course. After a while, I asked to learn how to run the outdoor equipment and I became a part of the grounds crew. That's when I started playing golf again because you could play for free if you worked there.

Q: So when did you get competitive?
JD: I started competing in my mid-20s. I was a mid-80s shooter with a wicked slice. At the time, I worked at Owens-Illinois in New Jersey and packed bottles in boxes. My brother lived in Jacksonville (Fla.) and Gardner Dickinson, who was a well-respected teaching professional, was redesigning the TPC at Sawgrass. So I went down there and met him and asked him if he'd give me lessons. He brushed me off, but I talked him into giving me lessons. Then I went home and worked really hard and won the [1977] New Jersey Amateur Championship. I went back to Gardner and told him I wanted my card and he said, "What card?" When I said I wanted to earn my LPGA Tour card, he just laughed. But I ended up qualifying on my first attempt in fall 1977 in Sarasota (Fla.).

Q: That's a pretty quick transition into professional golf.
JD: What I did then, you could never do today. I basically learned how to play golf on tour. It took me seven years to win and I never could have done it without Gardner. And when I went out on tour, I was staying in private housing and learning how to travel for the first time.

Q: You were in pretty good company during your rookie year in 1978.
JD: Oh yeah. [Nancy] Lopez had qualified in the spring of 1978, so I was part of all the attention paid to the LPGA that year. It was an exciting time and in the late 1970s and early '80s, I was playing with players like Pat Bradley, Amy Alcott, Beth Daniel, JoAnne Carner, Patty Berg, Mickey Wright, Jane Blalock, Hollis Stacy, Jan Stephenson, Kathy Whitworth, Ayako Okamoto, Patty Sheehan and Betsy King. We had a great group then and we're going through another period of that now with Morgan Pressel, Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis and Michelle Wie. It's cyclical. In the early 1950s, there were great players like Louise Suggs, Betsy Rawls, Babe Zaharias and Patty Berg. I don't think you can compare scores, but you can compare talent. Competitors know how to win, no matter what decade you're in. I think you could put Mickey Wright in any decade and she would win.

Q: It must be hard for those great players in past decades to look at today's prize purses on the LPGA Tour and realize they came along too soon.
JD: Do you mean like the first-place check of $1 million in a field of 32 players in the ADT Championship this year? But there are a lot of different kinds of riches. I think I was really fortunate to have played when I played, and to have played with those players. We all felt a responsibility to lead and we felt a real ownership of the tour. We were just as rich, though maybe not monetarily.

Q. Gardner Dickinson started out as your teacher and later became your husband and the father of your twin sons, Barron and Spencer. What kind of influence did he have on your career?
JD: He definitely didn't baby me. Sometimes, he was pretty gruff. But Gardner had designed Frenchman's Creek in Palm Beach Gardens [Fla.], and if you liked golf, it was the greatest place in the world to learn the game because everybody was there -- like [Jack] Nicklaus, [Jim] Flick and Tony Pena. Gardner would teach in the morning and we'd play in the afternoon. Even Jim McLean was there taking lessons from Gardner. Since 1977, Gardner was my only teacher, but he took me to other teachers to work on things -- teachers like Paul Runyan and Bob Toski.

Q: When did the student-teacher relationship turn personal?
JD: We got married in 1985 and he was still teaching me. He helped found the PGA's Senior Tour [now the Champions Tour] and I caddied for him some when he played. I met all of his friends -- who had won just about everything -- and it was a great learning experience for me. And in 1989, when I was 39 years old, the twins were born.

Judy Dickinson with the 2007 Jameson Classic Honorary Chairs.

Q: That must have been a very busy time in your life.
JD: I was vice president of the LPGA Tour and then I served as president for three years. We were lucky that we could hire a nanny to go with me. And because of my experiences playing golf at that time and traveling with two boys, it helped evolve into the LPGA's Day Care program. Before the program, if you were a player and wanted to have children, you had to go home. You had to make a choice between having a family and playing on tour. We tried to make the tour's day care affordable, even for rookies.

Q: Gardner's health took a bad turn in the early 1990s. How did that affect your career decisions with the tour?
JD: He had a triple heart by-pass in 1990, the year after the boys were born. We were on the way to Korea when he told me he had been having chest pains. We came back and he had surgery and he never did well after that. He had strokes and respiratory failure and died in 1998.

Q: How would you describe your career?
JD: I spent 23 years on the LPGA Tour and I think I had a good career. I was still in the top-20 on the money list [in 1999] when I really finished playing. I won some tournaments. And I had my best chance to win the U.S. Women's Open in 1985, when I finished second to Kathy Baker [Guadagnino] at Baltusrol Golf Club.

Q: What is your greatest memory?
JD: I suppose I'll always remember my biggest collapse, and then how I finally came back and won. In St. Petersburg, Fla., at the 1985 S&H Golf Classic, I set an LPGA record for the low 36-hole score [15-under par, a record that stood for 14 years] and had a seven-shot lead going into Saturday. But then I didn't even finish in the top three. Driving back home in the car, I was crying and Gardner said, "You can either quit or go tee it up next week." I ended up finishing as runner-up at the Open 11 events later, then winning the Boston Five Classic a week later. Good thing I kept going. You have to gather yourself together and figure out how to be better.

Q: What was the greatest challenge of your career?
JD: Being president during those years that were pretty hectic times. But Gardner encouraged me to do it. He felt if you were ever a player on the tour, you had a responsibility to help guide the tour. [Former LPGA Tour members] Dot Germain, Debbie Massey and I all took lessons from Gardner and we all served as president of the LPGA. Mike Donald also took lessons and he ended up serving on the PGA's policy board. It's hard to do so many things, but then you realize that it's part of the whole big picture of understanding the tour, the sponsors and the volunteers. That's the lifeblood of the tour.

Q: What kind of things do you learn by serving as the tour's president?
JD: You learn to be a better speaker and how to really manage your time. When you're playing and you practice, you have to focus and practice with a purpose. For me, my time between the ropes playing tournament golf was peaceful.

Q: How many commissioners did you work with during your LPGA Tour tenure?
JD: I served either on the player council or on the board under Ray Volpe, John Laupheimer, Bill Blue, Charlie Mechem, Jim Ritts, Ty Votaw and now, with Carolyn Bivens. All of them had their own style and each one of them took -- and is taking -- the tour a step forward.

Q: How have you remained involved with the LPGA now that you have retired from playing?
JD: I serve as director of community relations with the ADT Championship. I moved to West Palm Beach in 2001, and the tournament is held there. It was good for me because I was able to do something that was close to home. I work with sales, media, the VIP host committee and I help organize and run the tournament. Players would be amazed if they knew what it takes to run a golf tournament or if they could see all the work that goes into one week each year. And I still handle "special projects" for the LPGA.

Q: You sort of serve as the LPGA's resident historian. How did that happen?
JD: Well first, I majored in history in college [at Glassboro State College], so I love history. During the LPGA's 50th anniversary, I discovered that the tour's records were pretty incomplete. I went up to Golf World's library and went through all the old magazines to piece together records and the tour's history. I was trying to help fill in the blanks as much as possible. I also went to see Betsy Rawls and looked at her scrapbook and talked to a lot of the older players. It gave me quite a feeling for where we had come from and I got a great sense of their love of the game and their love of the LPGA. They all felt a responsibility for the sport to help it move forward.

Q: Was there one player whom you admired the most?
JD: Probably [Kathy] Whitworth. I served under her as president. Here's somebody who had won 80-some tournaments, had served as LPGA president already [1967-1968], then felt she had to serve again [1971]. I learned a sense of responsibility from her and she had a unique perspective of what she felt was right and wrong. She always tried to do the right thing for the welfare of the tour.

Q: What do you think is the LPGA's proudest moment, so far?
JD: Founding itself in 1950. They had a couple of starts and stops. They had to get it going to sustain it.

Q: Your twin sons are now 17. Are they following in the footsteps of you or Gardner?
JD: They both are juniors in high school and they both play golf. Barron has played on the school golf team. He has his moments. He has beaten me once, so far. He recently took up soccer and is searching to find what he wants to be. Spencer is a really good baseball player and has verbally committed to play baseball at Florida State University.

Q: Do your teenage sons ever ask you questions about the LPGA Tour?
JD: They're interested in Tiger Woods. OK, and also maybe in the younger LPGA players -- like Morgan Pressel, Natalie Gulbis and Paula Creamer. I don't think they have a sense of what I do except once, when Barron caddied for me. It was at the 35th anniversary of the Wegmans Rochester tournament. The tournament invited past champions back for an 18-hole stroke play event and there were 25,000 fans there. There was a crowd of people on every single hole for 18 holes. I think that impressed him.

Q: How much do you play these days?
JD: I play on the Legends Tour. It's been great fun. It's more like the old days, just with no cut -- which I really appreciate now. I don't want to play 30 tournaments a year anymore, but 10 of those [Legends Tour] events would be great.

Story by Lisa D. Mickey. Mickey is a former senior editor at the Golf Digest Company, where she covered the LPGA Tour for Golf World and Golf For Women magazines. She is a co-author of “Champions of Women's Golf: Celebrating 50 Years of LPGA Golf” (2000) and was a contributing writer of The Solheim Cup coffee-table edition book (2005). She currently writes the web stories for and serves as director of communications for the Duramed FUTURES Tour.