Female champion at The Country Club wrote the book on golf – The Washington Post

Placeholder while article actions loadBROOKLINE, Mass. — The winner of the first major held at the history-steeped golf course hosting this week’s U.S. Open served up plenty of solid lessons that still hold true today.Her name: Genevieve Hecker.Hecker’s victory in the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1902 made her a perfect fit to write “Golf For Women,” the first instruction book written specifically for women. It’s a manual that, in some ways, remains every bit as relevant in 2022 as it was when it came out.Hecker’s second straight title in the country’s most prestigious women’s event came 11 years before Francis Ouimet put golf on the map in America by winning the U.S. Open at The Country Club. Her victory came seven decades before Title IX changed the landscape for women in sports forever in the U.S.It is Hecker, not Ouimet, who goes down as the first national champion of any kind to be crowned at The Country Club. At the time, golf was a diversion from the main pursuits at the club — among them, horse racing, polo and ice skating.“When you have someone like Genevieve, who comes along as an 18-year-old and becomes a pretty accomplished player, she automatically…
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