aking
a Difference
Glenna Collett Vare
(1903-1989)
A 'career unequaled in annals of golf'
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By PAT KENNY
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
Glenna Collett Vare was known as the "Queen of American Golf," and was a pioneer in U.S. women's golf before the professional era dawned.
She won the U.S. Amateur title six times before ending her competitive golf career at the age of 56 by winning the Rhode Island Women's Golf Association crown in 1959.
Vare was born in New Haven, Conn., the daughter of George A. and Jane Collett, and grew up in Providence. By the time she was 9, she had already gained fame as a swimmer and diver, but "the family thought she should do something more ladylike, like tennis or golf," said her daughter, Glenna Kalen of Caracas, Venezuela.
Vare learned to play golf at the Metacomet Country Club, accompanying her father and some friends to the golf course. She watched and then asked if she could try hitting the ball.
She "banged a beauty straight down the fairway," said Herbert Warren Wind in his book The Story of American Golf.
Vare quit high school, won the U.S. Girls' Championship, the first of 49 championships, and in 1922 captured her first U.S. Women's Amateur title.
She went on to win the women's national title five more times between 1922 and 1935, including three years in a row, 1928 through 1930.
She was part of the so-called Big Four of women's golf in the 1920s and 1930s, along with Virginia Van Wie, Maureen Orcutt and Helen Hicks, and was dubbed the "female Bobby Jones" by golf writers because of her consistency, skills, attitude and humor.
"Her career was unequaled in the annals of golf," said Phyllis Hollander in the book 100 Greatest Women in Sports. The book listed Vare ahead of Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Patty Berg.
Vare won the Canadian and French Women's Opens. She reached the finals of the British Women's Amateur in 1929 and 1930, but each time lost to Joyce Wethered of England. Vare was also instrumental in reinstituting the Curtis Cup competition between the United States and Britain.
In 1950, Vare was one of six women selected as charter members of the Women's Golf Hall of Fame.
Vare never played professionally. The fame and money that she might have received 40 or 50 years later didn't exist during her prime golfing days. The handful of tournaments for women in the 1920s and 1930s were all amateur.
"Professional golf just wasn't the trend when I was going along," Vare said. "Pro golf was nothing. . . . In those days, the pro wasn't allowed in the clubhouse, just the way you wouldn't ask the cook to come to dinner."
Vare never regretted her amateur career.
"I think pro golf is a great thing," she said. "But I don't think I could ever do it. It's too tedious, too tiresome. I can't imagine having to play every week. I have no regrets. I got to travel all over the world. I don't think I would have if I hadn't played golf. I think I would only have been a merry housewife."
The Ladies Professional Golfers Association remembers her annually with the Vare Trophy, awarded to the player with the lowest average of strokes on the tour.
In July 1984, at 81, she played in her 61st consecutive Point Judith Invitational, maintaining a 15 handicap.
In 1988, a year before her death, the Point Judith Women's Golf Committee honored Vare at the Point Judith Country Club Invitational Golf Tournament, the longest running women's tournament in the state.
Source: Files of the Providence Journal.