It’s fitting that the upcoming California Women’s Amateur Championship (July 22-27) is being held at Peninsula Golf and Country Club.
Peninsula G&CC, after all, was the home course of CWAC founder Helen Lengfeld.
Born in 1898, Lengfeld’s legacy began as a player, winning her first Club Championship in 1918 at Beresford CC (Peninsula Golf & CC.) She sponsored a Ladies Invitational at Beresford CC in 1925, one of the first big events following Donald Ross’s complete redesign of the course. Naturally she won, and in 1926, the Bay Area native won the San Francisco Women’s Championship. That same year, she helped found the Women’s Golf Association of Northern California and in 1927 won their first Championship, held at Olympic Club.
Fourteen years later, Lengfeld started the California Women’s Golf Circuit, which featured stars such as Babe Zaharias and Patty Berg.
The growth of the Circuit tournaments led to the formation of the Pacific Women’s Golf Association, with Lengfeld becoming the first president in 1947.
Renowned as a philanthropist and humanitarian, Lengfeld was also active in sponsoring tournaments like The WeatherVane at Pebble Beach, which would eventually lead to the creation of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. In 1949, she’d publish The Golfer Magazine, which later became The National Golfer for 20 years. All proceeds went to the AWVS/UVS.
Lengfeld went on to found the California Women’s Amateur Championships, which consist of the California Junior Girls’ State Championship (the first of its kind on the West Coast), the California Women’s Amateur Championship and the California Senior Women’s Amateur Championship. Former champions of the events include women’s golf greats Juli Inkster, Patty Sheehan and Amy Alcott.
Combining her love of golf and dedication to volunteerism, Helen began a lifelong devotion of service to the VA Hospital system just a month after the start of WWII. She visited every VA Hospital by car in the United States during WWII, setting up 200 local chapters of the AWVS. After the war she helped put golf in over 60 VA Hospitals with her innovative Golf Swing Clubs, which provided veterans therapy and rehabilitation through golf. She became President of the UVS, a successor organization to the AWVS, in the 1950’s, until her death in 1986.
As a result of her endeavors, Lengfeld became a member of the California Golf Hall of Fame in 1982. She’d later be recognized by Golf Digest as one of the five most influential women in golf. She was initiated into the San Mateo Sports Hall of Fame and in 2016, she was inducted into the NCGA Hall of Fame.
Lengfeld died at the age of 88 in 1986, having dedicated the majority of her life to golf and spending much of her personal wealth in supporting the game and to veterans.
In 2022, Peninsula G&CC installed a display honoring the legacy of Lengfeld. Club Historian Michael Jamieson notes the exhibit features over 40 photographs, trophies and memorabilia items of her life, including Lengfeld’s 2016 NCGA Hall of Fame induction award and a golf sweater she wore in competition knitted by her mother-in-law almost 100 years ago.