THORPENESS, ENGLAND | On Friday evening at Thorpeness Golf Club, 10 founder members of the Ladies European Tour, originally the Women's Professional Golf Association, celebrated the organisation's 45th anniversary with a dinner organised by Chris Langford, one of the founders, and paid for by themselves.
Though LET personnel were here to make a documentary, the occasion, which was organised by Langford, the head professional at Thorpeness, was not an add-on to the only two official events of commemoration to have taken place across the previous 45 years. A picture was taken for the record books on the 30th anniversary, and the women were invited to lunch at the LET’s Buckinghamshire Golf Club headquarters 10 or so years ago.
To say they felt a tad neglected was an understatement.
On Friday, however, these LET founder members, who were there with their guests, conceded to having found their voice, not least because of a couple of happenings at the end of ’23.
The first was the death of Scotland’s Dale Reid following on from the 2019 demise of Beverly Lewis, who in 2005 became the PGA of Great Britain and Ireland’s first female captain.
“We didn’t want just to meet up at funerals,” said Langford, who won three tournaments in the LET’s inaugural season of 1979.
As for the second shock, that came when the women were asked to vote by proxy ahead of a November meeting at which the next step in the LET’s so-called strategic alliance with the LPGA was to be decided.
“They wanted our votes,” Langford said, “but we’d never been properly informed as to what was happening. We weren’t in the loop.”
They were aware the LPGA had come to the LET’s rescue during the pandemic with financial assistance and offers of easier access to the LPGA Tour, but that was the extent of their knowledge.
Yet, when considering that there have been numerous commissioners in the past four decades in addition to everything else, it is perhaps not surprising that they tended to be overlooked.
“If you were to ask some of today’s players to name a couple of founder members, I doubt they’d have a clue about any of us,” Yorkshire’s Vanessa Marvin said.
When Langford made contact a year or so ago with Alexandra Armas, the LET’s chief executive, she could not have been more understanding about the need to bring founder members back in the fold. “It was agreed we could help each other,” Langford said.
Along much the same lines, when South Africa’s Alison Sheard, who is among those who were given an honorary "founder member" tag a while after having joined the tour, rang LET headquarters to ask for tickets for herself and a promising young pupil to visit the 2019 Women’s British Open at Woburn, the person who answered her call wanted to know why.
“Because I’m a founder member,” Sheard said.
If that meant nothing then, it will from now onwards.
When Langford made contact a year or so ago with Alexandra Armas, the LET’s chief executive, she could not have been more understanding about the need to bring founder members back in the fold.
“It was agreed we could help each other,” Langford said.
Armas would no doubt have heard the video tribute paid to the LET founders by Trevor McClintock, the Northern Irish entrepreneur who delivered LET Smirnoff-sponsored tournaments at a stage when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still simmering. “They were the first sportspeople who were prepared to come to Northern Ireland, and we could not have been more grateful to them,” he said.
Would you believe that one of the regular caddies, a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, always kept a gun in his player’s bag? Just in case.
As one might expect, Friday evening was as much about the good old days as the bad.
It was before the LET finally was announced on 30 October 1978 that a gentleman by the name of Johnny Jones – it was said he managed the pop group New Seekers at some point – decided female golfers might be his next money-making source. He summoned assorted press people to a conference in his London home where a tabloid journalist dared to ask whether any of the golfers whom Jones was signing on could play the game.
Jones, as I remember it, took the question in his stride.
“It doesn’t matter either way,” he said. “I’ve got pop stars on my books who can’t sing.”
His next move was to send Langford, Jenny Lucas (née Lee Smith) and Lynne Harrold – fine players all – over to the States to try for their LPGA players’ cards. Not only that, but he also set up a bank account for each of them so they could be spared any financial concerns.
Lucas, who won the 1976 Women’s British Open, won her card and proudly wrote out a cheque for her entrance fee for a first tournament in New York. Alas, the cheque bounced and there was no getting hold of Johnny Jones. (Lucas’ mother managed to forward the appropriate money at the 11th hour.)
Yet as Langford told GGP last week, there was good reason to be grateful to Johnny Jones.
“Without him, there might never have been an LET tour,” she said.
“The latest generation will be making more than you ever did,” she told the founders, “but I guarantee they didn’t have the same amount of fun.”
Laura Davies
LET personnel had a series of video clips at the ready to show after the dinner and, apart from McClintock’s contribution, there was one from Laura Davies, who could not have captured the “then-and-now” better.
“The latest generation will be making more than you ever did,” she told the founders, “but I guarantee they don't have the same amount of fun.”
What she said tallied perfectly with what Beth Allen, the American who won the LET Order of Merit in 2016, had to say when she was prepared to vote against the amalgamation in November. Allen said the players needed to be careful what they wished for.
“They should be looking at rather more than the bigger purses in America when they’re considering their golfing futures," she said. “When I was starting out, the LPGA Tour was a very friendly place. Now, the atmosphere – or, rather the social aspects of the tour – are not what they used to be.
“It’s so much easier for parents and their offspring to stay in touch if the offspring are closer to home. It’s one thing for parents to travel from London to Paris to catch up with their daughter at a tournament; quite another to expect those parents to make regular trips to the States.”
Such warnings may fall on deaf ears. The young ones are bound to be thinking money first.
And they could be right, suggested a couple of the more senior citizens at the weekend.
“If, say, the Saudis were to give up on their Aramco Series and not enough other sponsors step in,” one of them said, “the LET could be back in trouble. But what do we know?”
They also were of the opinion that the present players to whom they had spoken could do with being better briefed by officialdom.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Christine Langford, a force behind the LET reunion, gives a lesson at Thorpeness Golf Club.
PHOTOS: Courtesy Christine Langford