Former LPGA commissioner Mike Whan used to call his annual round of golf at the Founders Cup with Shirley Spork the highlight of his year. Spork, 94, is one of 13 women who started the tour in 1950. Five years ago, as Spork addressed her pro-am group on the ninth tee at Phoenix’s Wildfire Golf Club, she said: “I’d just like to thank you all for inviting me to play.”
To which three-time major winner Anna Nordqvist replied: “We wouldn’t be here without you.”
Spork was on hand in New Jersey last week for the revamped Cognizant Founders Cup, which now boasts the richest purse on tour outside the majors and the CME Group Tour Championship. During Sunday’s telecast, Golf Channel’s Grant Boone noted that only five of the tour’s 13 founders are in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
Spork is not among them.
How can some of the women who laid the foundation for generations to come not be in the LPGA Hall of Fame? It’s as head-scratching as the fact that Lorena Ochoa isn’t in there either. Or Laura Davies for that matter.
Professional golfer and co-founder of the LPGA Tour, Shirley Spork stands on the first tee box during competition rounds of the Solheim Cup golf tournament at Inverness Club. (Photo: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports)
The LPGA’s Hall of Fame is the toughest to get into in all of sports. To date, there are 25 entrants. Players must amass 27 points and play 10 years to gain entry. Ochoa amassed 37 points in seven years before retiring in 2010. She’s the epitome of greatness in every imaginable way, and yet remains locked out of the tour’s greatest honor because she didn’t put in the required time.
“It just, to me, defies logic,” said 26-time winner Judy Rankin, “that you don’t take every possible avenue to celebrate our sport and the people who have been important to it.”
Dinah Shore, a Hollywood celebrity who helped grow the tour and ensure its survival, is the only honorary member. Rankin became the first player inducted through the Veteran’s Category in 2000. Donna Caponi followed in 2001, and founder Marlene Hagge in 2002.
For a player to be considered for the Veteran’s category, she should, among other things, have been an active member for 10 years and retired or inactive for five consecutive years before nomination.
The Veteran’s Committee hadn’t met for several years when Ochoa passed the five-year mark. In 2016, the tour formed an LPGA Hall of Fame Committee to review the Hall’s qualifications. It has now been several years since that committee has met, and so far, no decisions or changes have been made.
Both Ochoa and Davies have since been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Davies, of course, remains active on the LPGA, competing in 11 events so far this season.
British Women’s Open champion Laura Davies of West Byfleet, England, cheers after winning the U.S. Women’s Open at the Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J., on July 28, 1987. Davies beat Ayako Okamoto of Japan and JoAnne Carner in a 18-hole playoff.
Beth Daniel, who went into the LPGA Hall of Fame in 1999, serves on the Hall committee and said a lot of important research was done several years ago, including talking to older players who put some of the regulations in place.
The 10-year rule was originally instituted, Daniel said, because players felt they needed their stars to survive. Some players today still believe that kind of commitment is important.
Daniel, however, looks at the fact that the LPGA lost Annika Sorenstam and Ochoa to retirement in the span of two years and, while the tour certainly took a hit, the LPGA marched on. She believes it’s time to retire the 10-year rule, but not everyone on that committee – and in the overall membership – agrees.
“Members are very proud of their hall,” Whan told Golfweek last spring. “There’s no judgement. These are the facts. You knew when you teed it up that this is what it takes to get in.”
To that end, Whan said he could make recommendations, but ultimately, he felt the players needed to make the call.
Chief Tour Operations Officer Heather Daly-Donofrio said the Hall of Fame Committee would reconvene sometime after the 2021 season to continue its review. This is the committee that would nominate a player. For a nominee from the committee to be accepted into the hall, 75 percent of LPGA membership must vote her in.
Earlier this year, the International Tennis Hall of Fame enshrined its first group with the “Original 9,” 50 years after nine women took a stand against inequality and signed $1 contracts that changed the face of tennis and paved the way for the WTA Tour.
Three of the women, including Billie Jean King, were already in the Hall and became the first to be inducted twice.
Left to right; Patty Berg, Betty Jameson, Jean Hopkins, and Louise Suggs, before the start of the Western Women’s Golf tournament, June 1946. (Copyright Unknown/USGA Museum)
The LPGA should consider something similar for its 13 founders next year. Spork and Hagge, the only two living founders, could accept on behalf of the group. Patty Berg, Betty Jameson, Louise Suggs, Babe Zaharias and Hagge are the five founders who are already in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
Perhaps the newly named Chevron Championship in Rancho Mirage, California, would be a good site to celebrate, given that the two founders reside nearby in the desert. The 2022 Chevron should be a who’s who gathering of all the greats next year as it wraps up 51 years at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course.
Put Ochoa in the Hall then, too, along with Davies, and make it a grand affair. Why should it matter that the legendary Englishwoman hasn’t retired?
As Boone says, the LPGA Hall of Fame tells the story of the 71-year-old tour. Can the story of the LPGA be told without the Founders? Without Ochoa? Without Davies?
Certainly not.
“We’re supposed to be about you can have it all,” said Rankin. “You can be every woman, every girl and still strive to be one of the best players in the world. A lot of people have done a lot of good for the LPGA tour and didn’t spend their life there.”
It’s time to do the right thing.
