The history of women in golf does not begin with the founding of the LPGA in 1950. It begins much earlier — in the same Scottish coastal towns where the game itself was born, among the same communities of players who first hit balls across links land in the 15th century.

Mary Queen of Scots, as we noted in Stage 1, is one of the earliest named women golfers in recorded history. She played at St. Andrews in the 1560s — not as an exception, not as a novelty, but as a participant in a game that was, at its origins, not exclusively male.

Understanding this starting point matters because it complicates a narrative that is sometimes told too simply: that women were always excluded from golf and had to fight their way in. The fuller story is more complex — and more interesting.

Early Women’s Golf in Britain

The first women’s golf club in the world was founded in 1867 at St. Andrews — the Ladies’ Golf Club of St. Andrews, established just seven years after the first Open Championship. This was not a radical act. It was a natural extension of golf’s existing culture in Scotland, where women had been playing recreationally for centuries.

The club’s founding was followed quickly by others. By the 1880s, women’s golf was sufficiently organized in Britain to support a national championship. The British Ladies’ Amateur Championship was first held in 1893 — making it one of the oldest national championships in the sport, predating many of the men’s tournaments that are now considered golf’s most prestigious events.

The women who competed in these early championships were, like their male counterparts, primarily from the upper and upper-middle classes. Golf was an expensive pursuit requiring access to private clubs and equipment, and the leisure time to practice and compete. The women who played it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were largely those who had both.

The social restrictions on women’s golf

If the origins of women’s golf were not as exclusionary as is sometimes assumed, the development of the game in the late 19th and early 20th centuries certainly imposed significant restrictions on women’s participation.

Many golf clubs admitted women only as associate or social members — allowing them to use the clubhouse and socialize, but restricting their access to the course during prime hours. Tee times for women were frequently limited to weekday mornings, ensuring that male members had priority during the most desirable playing windows.

The physical restrictions were compounded by social ones. Women golfers were expected to play in full Victorian dress — corsets, long skirts, and restrictive clothing that made athletic movement genuinely difficult. A full golf swing in Victorian women’s clothing was, by any modern standard, nearly impossible. Women golfers adapted by developing shorter, more constrained swings that worked within their clothing constraints — and were then criticized for not swinging with the freedom and power of male players.

This detail — the way that social restriction created physical limitation, which was then used to justify further social restriction — is a pattern that runs through the entire history of women in sport.

Cecilia Leitch and Joyce Wethered: the First Great Champions

The first era of truly distinguished women’s golf produced two players whose abilities were recognized even by the most skeptical observers as extraordinary.

Cecil Leitch — known as Cecilia, though she preferred Cecil — dominated women’s golf in Britain and Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, winning the British Ladies’ Amateur Championship four times. She played with a power and aggression that was unconventional for women’s golf of her era, and she was one of the first women golfers to attract significant press coverage.

Joyce Wethered is widely considered the greatest woman golfer of the pre-professional era. She won the British Ladies’ Amateur Championship five times and was essentially unbeatable during her peak years in the 1920s. Bobby Jones — the greatest male player of the same era — played a round with Wethered in 1930 and said afterward that he had never played golf with anyone, man or woman, who made him feel so outclassed.

Jones’s comment is worth dwelling on. He was not being gallant. He was a precise and honest observer of golf. His assessment of Wethered was a genuine evaluation of her technical ability, and it placed her in the company of the best players he had ever encountered regardless of gender.

Wethered retired from competitive golf at 26 — citing, among other reasons, the stress and public pressure of competitive life. The fact that one of the greatest golfers of either sex voluntarily withdrew from competition at the height of her ability is itself a historical data point worth examining.

Women’s Golf in America: The Amateur Era

In America, women’s golf developed somewhat later than in Britain but with similar social characteristics. The United States Golf Association began sponsoring a Women’s Amateur Championship in 1895 — the same year as the first US Open for men.

The dominant figure in American women’s amateur golf in the early 20th century was Glenna Collett Vare, who won the US Women’s Amateur Championship six times between 1922 and 1935. She was the first American woman golfer to achieve genuine national celebrity — her victories were covered by major newspapers, and she was recognized on the street in ways that professional athletes of the era were not.

The amateur status of these women was not incidental. There was no professional women’s golf circuit in America before 1950. Women who played golf professionally — giving lessons, working in golf shops — were considered to have compromised their amateur status and were excluded from the championships that were the only significant competitive outlet available.

This meant that the best women golfers in America before 1950 were playing for no money, competing in a handful of amateur championships, and dependent on personal wealth or family support to fund their competitive careers. The economic structure of women’s golf was, in other words, built entirely on the assumption that women players did not need — or deserve — to be paid.