SOUTHERN PINES, NORTH CAROLINA | The check is framed and hangs in the bar at Pine Needles along with various and sundry memorabilia and artifacts saluting the ownership of the resort and golf course by the family of Peggy and Warren “Bullet” Bell dating to 1953. The amount is for one dollar, and the service rendered was a golf exhibition in the 1950s.
“Mom is looking down this week and going, ‘Holy, Toledo,’ ” said Peggy Ann Miller, one of Peggy’s three children.
Sadly, Peggy Kirk Bell died in 2016 at age 95 and was not around to enjoy the proceedings of Pine Needles’ fourth U.S. Women’s Open, which was held last week on the 1928 Donald Ross-designed golf course.
The $10 million purse included a first prize of $1.8 million, the largest payout in women’s golf history. There is a title sponsor with ProMedica and numerous other corporate underwriters, including First Citizens Bank having dibs on parts of the main clubhouse for entertaining clients. The USGA has literally built a dining area and player locker room on land to the side of the practice range.
And to think: The Bells could have had the Women’s Open in 1969, but they would have had to foot the purse of $20,000 themselves. Joe Dey, executive director of the USGA, wrote in 1967 asking the Bells whether they would like to have the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles in two years.
“We wanted to do it, but we didn’t think we could afford it,” Peggy Kirk Bell said. “At the time, we were in debt, so we didn’t pursue it.”
One championship they did pursue, however, was an early 1970s reincarnation of the Titleholders Championship, a tournament held at Augusta Country Club from 1937 to 1966 as the women’s equivalent of the Masters. Bell won the tournament in 1949 when she was still Peggy Kirk and playing as an amateur from Findlay, Ohio, and was disappointed when the event was discontinued following the death of tournament founder Dorothy Manice.
“We hated to see the tournament die,” Peggy Kirk Bell remembered years later. “So, we approached the board in 1971 and said we’d do anything we could to resurrect it.
“They in essence gave us the tournament, saying we had the rights and privileges of running it how and where and when we wanted.”
So, the Titleholders enjoyed a one-off resurrection exactly 50 years ago. Sandra Palmer dominated a field of 66 players by 10 shots in late May 1972. Peggy competed but was distracted entertaining her friends from the LPGA Tour and didn’t break 80 on three of the rounds. Palmer won a green jacket and $3,000 – .001667 percent of Sunday’s winner’s loot.
“The golf course was so long. That’s what I mostly remember. We swore on the 18th tee (Bullet) had the markers back so far that your right foot was on a downslope. That became part of the lore.”
Judy Rankin
“We knew it was something big happening,” says Peggy Ann, a teenager at the time. “It was like a reunion for us. We saw all of our mom’s friends in one place.”
The course was set up at 6,500 yards – ultra long for women in the early 1970s when steel shafts, persimmon drivers and wound golf balls were the standard. Palmer was 1-under for the week and her closest rival was 9-over.
“I think Bullet had it in for us because they made us play from so far back,” Judy Rankin recalled to golf writer Ron Green Jr. years later. “The golf course was so long. That’s what I mostly remember. We swore on the 18th tee he had the markers back so far that your right foot was on a downslope. That became part of the lore.”
Peggy Ann smiles at that. “That sounds like Dad,” she said of her father, who died in 1984. “He wouldn’t have wanted the women shooting low scores on his golf course.”
The Bells were the consummate entrepreneurs, promoters and welcoming hosts and poured every ounce of sweat and heart they had into the facility. Exhibit A of Bullet’s creativity is a bronze crown erected before that 1972 Titleholders that still is mounted over a circular brick wishing well in front of the Pine Needles clubhouse, tucked this week just behind the main entry gate. The Titleholders’ identifying symbol was a crown, and Bell had a 40-inch, 266-pound crown made of bronze as a permanent salute to the tournament. He searched the nation for a foundry which could make the crown and eventually located one in Charlotte, North Carolina. J.L Griffin, head of A&A Brass and Aluminum Foundry, told Bell, “I’ve got the guts to try and make it if you’ve got the money.”
It cost Bell $3,600 to manufacture the crown – more than Palmer won for her golf.
“I don’t even think the Masters has anything that symbolic of their tournament,” Bell said. “This is a unique trophy.”
Unfortunately, the Bells lost money on the event, and the Titleholders never returned to Pine Needles. The sports world wasn’t quite ready for corporate sponsorship, though Peggy Ann does remember Blue Bell Jeans having some tangential involvement.
No doubt Peggy and Bullet Bell would have appreciated competitors in the U.S. Women’s Open walking past the Titleholders crown during the past week and offering a modest wink and a nod.
Top: A bronze crown erected before the LPGA’s 1972 Titleholders Championship stands over a circular wishing well as a monument to a one-year experiment at Pine Needles.