Women’s golf has quite a history in Augusta, Ga. No, the world’s best female golfers have never teed it up in a professional event at Augusta National Golf Club, the famous host of the annual Masters Tournament, although the top female amateurs have been welcomed to the venue in recent years for the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

No, they never got to say a prayer to God and Bobby Jones walking around Amen Corner or breathe in the smell of the blooming azaleas as they lined up their tee shots coming down the stretch with a green jacket on the line.

But back in the day, several of the top pros and amateurs in the women’s game did have the opportunity to compete right next door to the hallowed grounds of Augusta National, doing so from 1937 to 1966 at Augusta Country Club in the Titleholders Championship.

The event was born from the mind of Dorothy Jean Manice, a New Yorker turned dedicated Augusta resident who created the Women’s Titleholders Golf Association. She came up with the idea for a tournament that featured the best of the best in women’s golf, both from the amateur and pro ranks, in 1936, and it was only a year later that the first edition of the Titleholders came to fruition.

An amateur Patty Berg, who would go on to be one of the LPGA 13 Founders and the Tour’s most prolific major champion, won the 1937 playing of the event at Augusta Country Club in its inaugural year and the two years that followed, with her fellow future Founder Helen Hicks claiming the 1940 edition of the tournament and amateur Dorothy Kirby winning in 1941 and 1942.

The Titleholders Championship wasn’t contested from 1943 to 1945 because of the Second World War, and when it returned to the club’s calendar in 1946, it was Louise Suggs who collected the title. Babe Zaharias followed suit in 1947, and Berg added a third Titleholders trophy to her cabinet in 1948 before Peggy Kirk – who would later be known as Peggy Kirk Bell after her marriage to Warren Bell – earned the last Titleholders Championship of the pre-LPGA era in 1949.

Louise Suggs

The Ladies Professional Golf Association was then founded in 1950 by 13 women who dreamed of giving the game’s best female talents a league in which they could live out their competitive aspirations, and it was a now-professional Zaharias who won the first Titleholders of the new age of women’s golf, signaling the start of what was to be a bright future for the female game.

Considering Augusta Country Club saw several of the LPGA Tour’s most famous names enter the history books well before the organization was even started, it seemed a given to watch that trend continue well into the years following 1950. Berg and Suggs each won three more Titleholders Championships, while some of golf’s strongest talents, like Kathy Whitworth and Mickey Wright, picked up a couple of their 80-plus career victories in the Peach State. Names like LPGA Founder Marilynn Smith and Uruguay’s Fay Crocker were also counted among the Titleholders champions, and it was that lasting legacy, as well as its delineation as a major tournament, that made the Titleholders one contest every woman playing on the LPGA Tour desperately wanted to win.

But time ran out for the Titleholders in 1966, and once Kathy Whitworth was crowned champion that year and took home a $1,500 winner’s check, the tournament disappeared from the Tour calendar and Augusta Country Club’s annual rota. Ironically, its originator Manice had passed away only a couple of months prior to that on Aug. 8., so maybe it was a bit pre-destined that the event’s swansong happened not long after.

However, the Titleholders Championship didn’t ultimately make its official exit until 1972, when the tournament was brought back for one last playing at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C. It was Sandra Palmer who finished atop the leaderboard in the event’s closing rendition, beating out Judy Rankin and Mickey Wright by a whopping 10 shots to earn the last Titleholders trophy and close the chapter on that sliver of the LPGA Tour’s major championship history.

A few other tournaments have elected to use the Titleholders moniker over the years, including what was last known as the Mercury Titleholders Championship and the now season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, an event that was referred to as the CME Group Titleholders in its first three editions.

But despite the organization’s rich legacy at the venue, there has never been another LPGA Tour event played at Augusta Country Club, and it seems that many have forgotten the link that both the women’s and men’s games have to this small southern town whose local contingency are as golf-crazed as they come. It’s understandable, particularly as there’s almost no one left who remembers the early days of the organization, the years when everyone pitched in and the dollars were scarce, when having a championship like the Titleholders wasn’t a given, but a highly cherished luxury by the women playing at the highest level.

So, the next time April in Augusta rolls around, and you kick back with an Azalea and pimento cheese sandwich, ready to watch the men vie for a pine-colored jacket coming down the stretch on a spring Sunday afternoon, just remember that this city in North Georgia doesn’t only tell a story about the best of the best in men’s golf.

The women have a history here, too, one that can be found just around the corner from Augusta National Golf Club, where some of the most iconic legends in the women’s game have donned their own jackets and hoisted their own trophies, etching their own legacies among the azaleas and magnolias and the loblolly pines, leaving their own stamp on this little corner of the world considered to be one of golf’s longest-lasting meccas.

LPGA Also Has a History in Augusta, Georgia

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