BERG, PATRICIA "PATTY" 1918-

Golfer

Young Athlete

One of the leading woman golfers from the 1940s through the 1960s, Patty Berg developed professional women's golfín the United States. Berg grew up in Minneapolis and was athletic as a young girl, playing sandlot baseball and quarterback for a boys' football team. She placed third in a national "midget" ice skating race while in high school and was a track star at her high school. Berg began playing golf in 1932 and excelled under her father's teaching. Within a year she qualified to compete in the state championship tournament. In 1935 she won the first of three Minnesota state championships and reached the finals in the U.S. Women's National Amateur Tournament. At age seventeen Berg attracted national attention when she lost 3 and 2 that same year to the well-known Glenna Collet Vare. In 1937 Berg made it to the finals again, but lost 6 and 5 to Estelle Lawson Page.

Golf Success

Patty Berg rose in the amateur golf world by playing tournaments as a student at the University of Minnesota. In 1938 she won the U.S. Women's Amateur Tournament, the Women's Western, the Trans-Mississippi, and the Women's Western Derby events. Berg won a total of forty amateur tournaments and played on two Curtis Cup teams before she signed as a professional with Wilson Sporting Goods Company of Chicago in 1940. Women had little status as professional golfers at the time, and no professional tour. Berg and Babe Zaharias were among the first women professional golfers. She went on to win the Western Women's Open title in 1941, 1943, and 1948. She also won the first U.S. Women's National Open in 1946.

Pro Tour

When the first women's pro tour was established in 1948, Patty Berg was one of the first three players. Berg served as the first president of the Ladies' Professional Golf Association from 1948 until 1952 and helped develop the LPGA, winning thirty-nine tournaments by 1958. Berg averaged 75.5 strokes per round in those years, and though she lost some power after cancer surgery in 1971, her average went up only three strokes. By 1981, when she stopped competing, Berg had won eighty-three pro tournaments.

Patty Berg (Patricia Jane Berg), 1918–2006, American golfer, b. Minneapolis, Minn. She was a leading amateur during the 1930s, winning 29 titles before turning professional in 1940. After serving in the Marines during World War II, she returned to golf and won the first U.S. Women's Open in 1946. In 1948 she was one of the founders of the Ladies' Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and served (1949–52) as its first president. Berg won more than 80 amateur and professional tournaments, including 15 major titles, the most of any woman golfer. The LPGA's top money winner in 1954, 1955, and 1957, she recorded the tour's lowest scoring average in 1953, 1955, and 1956. Berg was a charter inductee (1951) of the LPGA Hall of Fame and is also a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.