Reluctant Legend Glenna Collett-Vare Remains Vivid in LPGA Memory | LPGA

After Collett-Vare’s career on the course had ended, she continued to Advocate for the sport. She readily criticized broadcasts of the LPGA in interviews she gave throughout the 1970s and 80s. She wasn’t afraid to say the women deserved better.

“I watch all the golf matches on TV and don’t think TV gives the girls enough credit,” Collett-Vare said in 1979. “The announcers patronize them. They should go into more detail and tell how far they drive and what clubs they use for their other shots. I think the reporting, on the whole, is a little casual. I think some of the men look down their noses at the women. I don’t like that at all.”

Collett-Vare was 85 when she passed away on February 2, 1989, after a bout with lymphoma. Inducted into the Inaugural class of the World Golf Hall of Fame over a decade earlier in 1975, Collett-Vare was immortalized for her undeniable impact on the advancement of Women’s golf and her uncanny ability to win. Although she was praised for being a good winner, Collett-Vare would perhaps prefer to be remembered as a gracious loser.

In the twilight of her life, Colett-Vare became particularly unwilling to speak about her impact and her own game. She waved off questions from reporters and told them to go look it up because it had all been written before. Only in one instance was the intractable icon forthcoming: when asked about her match with Joyce Wethered in the Finals of the 1929 British Amateur Championship. Collett-Vare lost that match, but always said it was the best and most exciting golf she had ever played.

Just a few months before she faced Wethered she wrote the following: “There is an ideal towards which I have always struggled – something beyond physical prowess, beyond coordinated nerves and muscles, beyond the dominant will to win. Rather it is a mental quality that is part Grace of spirit, part Philosophy and part good manners reduced to the Essence of sportsmanship – trying to be a good loser.”

Although Collett-Vare undoubtedly wanted to win every match she played, she also understood that life was much more than just golf and preferred to be well-respected and loved by those she met. On that windy day at St. Andrews in 1929, although Collett-Vare played the best golf of her life, she still couldn’t overcome Joyce Wethered. But she wasn’t bitter, sad, or angry. She was thrilled to have played the match and remembered it as the greatest of her career. In short, she was a good loser.

Whether she likes it or not, Collett-Vare will always be a legend. But hopefully she’d be happy to hear she was remembered for more than just her swing or her scores, but her sportsmanship, her advocacy and her kindness.