1937 Betty Jameson – golf

 BETTY JAMESON 1937

Betty is the first woman to ever qualify for a men’s varsity high school golf team in Texas. Shooting a 39 on one course when she was 12 years old. In 1937 Betty Jameson enrolled at UT and learned golf under Harvey’s guidance, winning the intramural golf championship in 1938. In 1938, she won the intramural golf championship at Texas. In 1939 and 1940, Betty won the National Amateur championship.

In 1947, she won the U.S. Women’s Open with a 295. It was the first time a female golfer scored lower than 300 in a 72-hole tournament. In 1950 she was one of 13 co-founders of the LPGA and, along with Marlene Hagge, was one of the tour’s first “glamour girls.” The World Golf Hall of Fame calls Jameson “a tall, stylish woman” whose “long, graceful swing was much admired,” and the Hall says that Jameson was one of the “Big Four” of LPGA stars, along with Patty Berg, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Louise Suggs. In 1967, when the LPGA Tour Hall of Fame was created, Jameson was one of the six inaugural inductees. In 1951 The LPGA recognized her induction year into the Hall of Fame of Women’s Golf. She was inducted into the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1999, and was listed as “…as one of the (LPGA) association’s top 50 players and teachers.” Betty was also an inductee into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

World Golf Hall of Fame quotes Lawson Little as saying that Jameson had “the soundest swing, the best pivot, and the greatest follow-through of the hips of any woman player except Joyce Wethered.” In retirement, she taught gold and took up painting for her enjoyment.