Kathy Cornelius - Part 1 (The Early Years)

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Welcome to another edition of FORE the Good of the Game of Bruce Devlin. We've got some living history with us today.

Bruce Devlin 0:21

Oh boy, don't we? We uh uh uh I'm not gonna tell you this young lady's age, but she's one of the eldest statespersons for the LPGA, a victor of the uh Australi the uh US Women's Open Championship in 1956, uh winner six times on the tour, and it is indeed a great pleasure to have Kathy Cornelius with us this morning. Kathy, welcome. We've looked forward to uh chatting with you about your career and uh Mike and I both thank you for coming. Thank you.

Kathy Cornelius 0:56

It's my pleasure to uh try to drum up some of the uh incidents that happened along the way and uh some of the fun that we had. Good. Uh getting the uh tour rolling.

Mike Gonzalez 1:11

Well, we're looking forward to this, Kathy. And uh as we uh like to say, we'll try to take you down a trip down memory lane, uh uh thinking about uh things that perhaps you haven't thought about for a long time as we talk about your uh uh childhood, your early career, your your life on tour, and so forth. And so what we always like to do is just start at the very beginning. Uh, we understand you were born in Boston, Massachusetts. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what some of your fonder recollections were of uh growing up as a young girl in Massachusetts?

Kathy Cornelius 1:44

Well, uh I was a part-timer in Massachusetts because uh as soon as I was uh able to walk, I guess, uh we split our time between uh uh situate, a town 30 miles south of Boston, and a very small town in southeastern Kentucky where my grandfather lived, where my mother was uh uh uh a person who grew up there. And uh so the my uh aunt's favorite uh question to ask me when I uh was getting out of the car uh after the journey from uh Massachusetts to Kentucky, she would ask me, are you a Yankee, Yankee or a rebel? I had absolutely no knowledge of the implications of either one. So uh uh at that particular time I was uh uh having more fun in Massachusetts than I did in Kentucky, so uh I was always a Yankee to her.

Mike Gonzalez 3:01

That is indeed two different worlds, isn't it?

Kathy Cornelius 3:04

It is indeed, for sure. But I loved water, and uh in Sichuan we had a uh harbor where uh the fisherman uh unloaded the uh fishing boats. And that that was the center of activity.

Bruce Devlin 3:26

Uh yeah, I bet it was.

Mike Gonzalez 3:29

Well, come back to your reference about liking water. You know, we kind of joked with you when we did our little test call about uh there must have been something about water because most of your winds came next to a body of water. So we're we're gonna talk a little bit about that. Uh so uh what was life like back? Because uh, you know, we just uh reminding our listeners, you're growing up at a time just post-depression, uh including childhood years that uh came into the World War II years. So what was that like in uh in the the areas where you grew up?

Kathy Cornelius 4:02

Well, um Massachusetts uh and uh the eastern part of Massachusetts in particular, um uh veterans w were usually uh in the 26th division of the uh infantry. And uh they were um uh seemed like very frequently having uh get-togethers after they uh got got out of the service, and my dad was one of those veterans he uh served in World War I and we had uh moved to Florida by the time World War II came along, and uh I guess he was so insistent with the recruiting agent in that small town where we live near West Palm Beach, uh that he enlisted for service in World War II, so he was uh veteran b of both world wars.

Bruce Devlin 5:17

Hmm, interesting.

Kathy Cornelius 5:19

And he had uh pretty strict uh discipline within the family. I was an only child, so I was uh subject of uh uh uh the uh uh it was uh friendly discipline because you'd take me out in the uh boat that we had uh frequently. That was the high point of my day whenever that happened.

Mike Gonzalez 5:48

Uh did you water ski, swim? What what did you do on the water? Fish?

Kathy Cornelius 5:52

We fished.

Mike Gonzalez 5:53

Yeah.

Kathy Cornelius 5:54

And uh we uh had uh a couple of what we call lobster pods that we'd set as traps and uh pick those up uh during the day.

Mike Gonzalez 6:10

Understand uh you might have been riding horses at some point in your young days as well.

Kathy Cornelius 6:16

Well, my dad was uh an accomplished horseman and uh loved horses uh and loved to teach people uh to ride. So uh when I was seven years old, I think, uh he decided I was old enough to uh ride properly as with an English saddle.

Mike Gonzalez 6:47

Ah, interesting. And how long did you do that?

Kathy Cornelius 6:53

Oh, we did it on Saturdays, uh usually because he uh and uh friend of his from uh the uh military owned a small uh Ford agency in the uh town of Sichuan. And uh he was free on weekends and uh that was our activity. My mother also loved to bride.

Bruce Devlin 7:29

So aside from the riding, Kathy, uh I also understand that you uh you played a musical instrument. Tell us a little bit about that in your young days.

Kathy Cornelius 7:39

Oh uh when I uh was about oh seven years old, I guess I uh was uh able to uh uh select an instrument to uh learn on the basis of the uh sound of uh the tone and the uh whether it was uh high active uh shrill type of sound or uh or a bass sound.

Bruce Devlin 8:22

Right.

Kathy Cornelius 8:23

Kind of hit it in the middle with a clarinet, so I was a clarinet player all through my uh junior high and high school years in Florida.

Mike Gonzalez 8:33

Yeah, I understand uh your marching band was invited to participate in the Orange Bowl parade as well, is that right?

Kathy Cornelius 8:39

Oh, we marched whenever there was a parade that would invite us. That covered the Orange Bowl, and there was a big celebration on Fort Myers, where uh Thomas Edison uh lived for quite uh a long period uh in the Edison Day Parade.

Bruce Devlin 9:00

So with with riding horses and playing the clarinet and and marching in the the Orange Bowl, how did we get started playing golf? Who who was the person that did that?

Kathy Cornelius 9:14

Well, um it was accidental that I happened to uh uh see a note in the Palm Beach Post that the uh golf pro in Lake Worth was uh having summer golf classes. And uh I signed up for that or just dropped in, I'm not sure which.

Bruce Devlin 9:40

So right out of the blue, this happened, huh?

Kathy Cornelius 9:43

At age 13, which today would be considered uh late. Late.

Mike Gonzalez 9:51

Did your mom and dad play golf?

Kathy Cornelius 9:53

They had played uh slightly in uh southeastern Kentucky on uh uh the name of the town was Middlesbrough. And uh at one time Babe Zaharius did uh an exhibition there, and she said she could uh tell it that was uh reputed to be the uh um second oldest golf course in uh the United States. And uh I couldn't verify or uh uh find out any more about it than that, but uh she said she could tell by the uh uh difficulty in uh getting the tea in the ground that that was true, that it was absolutely the oldest golf course.

Mike Gonzalez 10:52

Uh did you see her uh play in that era?

Kathy Cornelius 10:58

Uh in Florida, I saw her play several exhibit exhibitions with uh Tommy Armour um and local golf pros. Uh Clyde Usina would be one of them who was pretty w well known in that area. And uh Babe was uh eventually uh was a very good friend of mine uh after I grew up and uh started to uh play tournaments.

Mike Gonzalez 11:35

Yeah, so tell our listeners a little bit more about uh from your perspective as a friend of the babe, a little bit about Babe's Arius.

Kathy Cornelius 11:44

Um she could do it all. And she did it in such an entertaining uh manner that uh she'd always attract a crowd of people. Uh they uh just loved watching her uh uh rear back and hit it like uh the longest men of the day.

Mike Gonzalez 12:09

Not necessarily the straightest, but pretty long, huh?

Kathy Cornelius 12:13

Um I don't think accuracy was much of a factor there.

Mike Gonzalez 12:22

Uh so uh she wasn't uh uh equally accepted by everyone that she played with, necessarily, was there? I mean, there were probably people in her camp that were fans and others that maybe didn't appreciate that flamboyant style that she had.

Kathy Cornelius 12:39

I don't know. She was uh so much fun that I don't see how anybody could uh be too resistant.

Bruce Devlin 12:47

Yeah, interesting.

Mike Gonzalez 12:49

Uh uh one name comes to mind just from the the various interviews I've seen, and that seemed to be some friction between her and Louise Suggs.

Kathy Cornelius 12:59

I knew Louise, and uh I knew Patty Berg, and I knew Babe, and uh I don't know I wasn't uh uh observant enough, I guess, to uh detect any friction.

Mike Gonzalez 13:18

Yeah, yeah. You you mentioned Patty Berg. We've obviously heard a lot about her over the course of our interviews with these lady uh greats, and and uh the thing that always amazed me was uh uh how much she gave back to the game through her travels and her clinics with Wilson. Uh she was purported to have done thousands and thousands of these clinics. And and uh I understand at one point your daughter Karen pretty well had her old routine memorized word for word.

Kathy Cornelius 13:51

Well, it was kind of a contest between uh Karen and uh Bonnie Bell, who was the daughter of Peggy Kirkbell, and uh they uh played together uh at uh times on the tour, and uh in one instance uh we were playing the uh open, I think, at uh Baldus role one year, and uh Joe Dye, who was the uh director of the USGA at the time, uh found them uh digging up uh flowers, maybe tulips, I'm not sure what they were, but uh anyway, he put a stop to that, but in a very kindly manner.

Mike Gonzalez 14:45

Yeah, I know I know we're jumping a little ahead with the stories about the girls. We still want to make sure we finish off with your childhood and how you came to golf, but we'll get to some of those others that but in the meantime, uh as you go back to learning golf, did you play other sports as well as a as a youngster?

Kathy Cornelius 15:01

Well, in uh Florida at the time there were two sports for uh girls. One was swimming, and uh I don't know that golf was uh very uh popular as a sport for uh girls at the time, but uh I definitely wasn't fast enough in the pool to uh compete with anyone. And uh I had no idea of playing competitive golf when I uh first started. I was just uh having fun doing it. And uh the golf course was uh an easy bike ride for me.

Bruce Devlin 15:48

So let's go b let's go back to that uh signing up for those uh lessons. What did give us an insight to who the gentleman was and what you learned from him at that point in your life?

Kathy Cornelius 16:05

Well, I didn't learn a great deal of uh that first summer, uh, and the gentleman who did uh did the teaching was Vic Bass, who was um member of a family of uh brothers that I knew who were all in the golf uh business. One was uh superintendent, uh one was uh Vic's assistant in the golf shop in Lake Worth, and uh uh Vic was the most accomplished uh player of the three brothers, and uh he did the teaching.

Mike Gonzalez 16:57

So tell us a little bit about how your game developed as a youngster. Who were some of the other people instrumental in helping you uh learn the finer points of the game? What did you use as reference? Because there wasn't a lot of women's television back then of golf, so if you had to learn it reading, it would have been through books or magazines, I suppose, as well, huh?

Kathy Cornelius 17:18

Um there was a um bookshop in West Palm Beach, which was uh only five miles from my hometown, Lake Worth. And uh they had uh books on every subject imaginable. Um I don't remember the name of the bookshop, uh but uh it was one of my favorite places to shop. And I uh had uh a book by Alex Morrison, who was one of the pioneers of uh kind of dissecting the Goths witten and uh putting it on paper in the form of a brook of a book.

Mike Gonzalez 18:15

So you studied that one a little bit?

Kathy Cornelius 18:17

Studied it a little bit and uh watched uh the uh golf roads who would sometimes come to visit um the home pro there at Lake Worth, and one of them was Tony Penna. And uh as time went on uh he influenced my choice of golf clubs. Uh in the beginning I always uh leaned toward McGregor because Tony was uh uh instrumental in uh the uh reputation that that had as a very good equipment company.

Mike Gonzalez 19:04

They certainly made a beautiful driver, didn't they?

Kathy Cornelius 19:06

Oh yes indeed.

Bruce Devlin 19:09

Yeah, I was gonna say that they were they were something that uh oft times we'd play in a golf tournament, and there'd be somebody outside the front gate that had a bunch of golf clubs that they were trying to sell. And if we saw a Tony Penner, that was that was coming out of that bag real quick because we we we liked them too. They were great.

Mike Gonzalez 19:34

So when uh were you getting to the point in your game where you thought, okay, I I want to start uh competing in some of these uh perhaps junior championships and so forth. When did that get started?

Kathy Cornelius 19:48

Oh uh let's see, I was still in high school at age uh fifteen and sixteen, and uh I guess I played in the uh state junior when I was sixteen, I think. I didn't uh play well, but it was uh a fun experience because uh I was standing around watching the players who were uh playing on a daily basis and very uh uh good athletes and golfers.

Mike Gonzalez 20:37

Was there an opportunity for you back then to play in high school? Uh most ghouls wouldn't have had girls' teams to play on, but some of them did play on boys' teams.

Kathy Cornelius 20:48

Uh neither one. Uh I was uh uh uh probably uh uh obligated to uh the uh band more during those days. So uh I learned to march and and step with yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 21:14

Maybe that helped you later walk off yardage, huh?

Kathy Cornelius 21:18

No, we didn't uh step in yardage uh numbers at all.

Mike Gonzalez 21:29

Well, uh I know in 1949 they played the first USGA girls junior event up in Philadelphia. Would you have happened to play in that event?

Kathy Cornelius 21:42

No, I didn't play in any um uh tournaments outside uh uh Florida. Gosh, I can't even remember. Uh I was in college by then though I started college uh started college at uh age uh sixteen.

Mike Gonzalez 22:10

Oh okay okay yeah kay Kay thought you might have traveled at one point to one of the earlier US girls junior championships uh maybe driving there with your mother. Oh I did uh come to think of it it was in uh a town in uh upstate New York uh not far from Niagara Falls uh called Hamburg Hamburg New York was where I first met uh Becky Wright um Barbara McIntyre um Pat Lesser who eventually won that term I think well that's right uh so that would have been 1950 that was the second time they they had that event and you're right Pat uh Pat Lesser beat Nikki Mickey Wright four and two in the finals and the and the medalist uh in that event uh uh at uh wanaka country club in hamburg new y the medalist was at was shooting a 79 was Barbara Romack um so did you drive up there with your mom in that one uh and we uh stayed in the area and uh played um various Gothro courses in the uh upper New York area yeah so how did you find out about that tournament and get interested in uh in entering I must have seen a bolton uh on the uh wall of Lake Worth can't be right and uh I it's been so long since I've thought of uh that that I had trouble uh with remember recollection exactly well it's only it's only 73 years ago but yeah that's right well something I think I think you'll remember a little more clearly and that's the you've got a daughter Kay that won that event in 1981 yes I uh I remember that uh pretty clearly I remember uh Bill my husband and I uh drove out to uh Oregon and it was in uh the state capital of Salem Oregon I think where the golf course was located yeah and uh that was uh a very fun experience because by that time uh Kay was a much more accomplished player than I was at that same age and uh she uh won the uh tournament rather easily it looked anyway and we had our uh traditional ice cream every night during the week and it turned out to be uh a celebratory time what was that a superstition the ice cream uh it may have developed into a superstition by the time we did it a few times I'm not sure I can pronounce the name of that golf course I L L A H E Hills Country Club in Salem I think we call it Ilahay Hills and uh that was the best we could do with that uh unusual name it was probably uh I would guess uh of Native American uh yeah background you're probably right and Kay prevailed over Kim Simmons in the finals two and one and uh had uh an outstanding youngster catting for her uh during that week who was I believe the uh son of a professor there at uh the university your game progresses uh you have some luck in competition uh you uh matriculate to Florida Southern College and evidently played on the men's golf team not exactly yeah okay well you set the record straight uh in one instance they happened to be uh a player short and uh I happened just happened to be at the golf course that day and I was recruited uh to uh fill in that space and uh invited to play uh the following week uh at Stetson in one of their matches so you were on the team you were on the team then just by uh invitation yeah okay I'll uh uh on a technicality but I'll consider you part of the team you played in a few big tournaments uh as we get into the early 50s uh um uh tell us you remember what uh much about the 1952 Southern amateur oh I do remember it was uh very hot in the summertime I don't remember the month but it was uh very very warm and uh the uh ladies of the uh women's Southern Golf Association were uh very nice in uh putting us up in in a uh hotel that was c uh close by uh and I think the name of the golf course at that time was uh uh probably connected to uh the historical uh Oglethorpe name which was very big in Georgia.

Bruce Devlin 28:34

So Kathy when you won that 52 amateur championship was was that the uh tournament that sort of made you think maybe maybe I could play this game for a living I wasn't really thinking uh I guess that I it was in the back of my mind that I was thinking a little bit along those lines, but uh I didn't think my game was uh quite ready to do that.

Mike Gonzalez 29:06

Um the uh person I won the uh final match with was uh a very nice player named B McGwain from Alabama and uh she and Polly Riley who was also a friend of mine were uh two of the top women amateurs of that day yeah so by this time you must have uh known your husband Bill as we get into the 1952 kind of we're getting close uh we're getting close I mean you better know him soon because you're getting married the following year uh he was uh I think uh uh in one summer must have been the summer of uh 52 uh working uh for a golf professional named Jamie Jackson who was the uh club pro uh at that time in uh Lakeland Florida where Florida Southern College was located and uh he uh helped a great deal uh to uh just uh tell me what the uh Golf swing was all about and uh uh was always available to uh answer any questions that came up. Yeah well your husband Bill was a life member of the PGA of America uh uh we'll talk a little bit later about how uh you and he both had some golf-related uh businesses uh but I would suspect by this time as you're thinking about turning professional in 1953 and and that's about the time I think you and he got married he must have been somewhat instrumental in uh deciding with you uh what path you want to take professionally uh very encouraging along along those lines uh um I don't know exactly how to explain this but um Bill was kind of a workaholic w when uh he had a job he just uh w was uh wanting to be at the golf course uh just doing whatever had to be done in the full form of uh lessons or uh uh memberships whatever uh and uh he was uh very encouraging as far as uh practice and I did that anyway I uh you like that when I was in college I was a journalism major would you believe and uh that was something that you signed up for freshman year.

Kathy Cornelius 32:32

Well I uh wasn't uh I'd been typing since I was uh in grade school but uh I never was uh uh fast at typing so uh I was sitting up in the uh second floor office of the journalism uh class there at Florida Southern looking out the window and trying to get up to 60 words a minute which was the uh standard uh of the day uh wondering if I'd ever get there in the middle of the thank you for listening to another episode of for the good of the game that's when McKenna and please wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify if you like what you hear please subscribe spread the word and tell your friends until we teat up again for the good of the game so long everybody put it on top now and