Mary Mills - Part 2 (The 1964 LPGA Championship)

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle.

Mary Mills 0:13

Then it started to I want to just go back to um the tournaments for the women's open, you know, for the USGA were always in July. And right after I won, um my course that I represented, Guff Hills, um, put together a tournament uh and they called it the Mary Mills Invitational. Now, this is was a time, this is the end of 63, and the course and the and Chuck Wynne, I don't know if he was part of the Hotel Wynne family, but he was the manager. He took me into his office one day and he said, you know, we're getting ready to put on the event, but we've made it an invitational uh because we didn't really want Althea to come. It's not that living in Chicago, I didn't want her to come, but I was afraid that the people would maybe have a riot, just like they're having up at Ole Miss. And he said that would really uh be uh very difficult to have the tournament right now. Well, as it turned out, Althea was not really eligible to play in that event. But um very next year she was, so she joined, and the LPGA really stood behind her and said, you know, we're not playing if you don't let Althea play. So that was, you know, my little story of the Mary Mills invitational, which at the time had the biggest purse, I think total of 15,000 for everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Yeah.

Mary Mills 1:59

Those were the real pioneer days, you know, and I'm sure Woods went through some some of that too. Uh it was, you know, we we were building uh what golf is today, isn't that right, Bruce?

Bruce Devlin 2:16

Absolutely. And uh for those of you who would wonder how much Mary won for winning the open back in those days, it was a big, heavy$2,000.

Mike Gonzalez 2:30

You know, part of what we're doing, Mary, as we interview some of the golf greats, women greats uh from back in the day is uh along the way, we're I think helping folks learn a little bit about the early history of the LPGA as well. And and uh, of course, you lived it. And just to remind some of our listeners, the LPGA was founded in 1950. Of course, that was sort of a successor tour to its predecessor, which was called the Women's Professional Golf Association. There were 13 founders, of which we've mentioned uh two or three of them already, but uh a great group of uh fairly gutsy, brave women that got this thing off the ground. And as you said, back in the early days, uh you guys were all chief cook and bottle washer. You were marking courses, you were doing the advertising, you were handing out tickets, you were doing all kinds of things, weren't you?

Mary Mills 3:23

Well, we didn't have any money in the you know association. Um, and I uh looked through some of the record books not too long ago and and found out that I was secretary of the LPGA in 1971. Now that that's you know um huge in the fact that we still weren't organized enough legally to have a commissioner or to have any money. So the corporate sponsor finally started getting on board in the 70s, early 70s, uh, because television was exploding into every home. And the corporate world was seeing, you know, we can uh really reach women who were the main buyers of most things that are advertised on TV. So that's when our money finally started, and we could afford to have more than 33 people, which the LPGA in the 60s begged us to have a field where they could have the tournament. So they put an awful lot of pressure on people like Mickey Wright and Kathy Whitworth. Um, and the whole field. In other words, you tried to play until you just got so tired you had to go home or take a rest.

Mike Gonzalez 4:49

Yeah.

Mary Mills 4:49

So it was uh early, early days, but great fun.

Mike Gonzalez 4:53

Yeah, just to give our listeners an idea, back in 1950, when the LPJ was established, they started the tour with 14 events. Total purses for those across those 14 events,$50,000. Uh, they ended the decade in 1960 with uh a tournament uh schedule of 26 events and a total purse of 200,000. Of course, uh the top players of that day included uh some of the people we talked to that uh talked about the founders and uh Peggy Kirkbell and Betsy Rawls and Beverly Hanson, Faye Crocker. There were some others. And then in the 60s, I think you finally start getting a little TV coverage as Whitworth and Wright uh came on the scene and sort of dominated that decade. Carol Mann, you mentioned Sandra Haney. Uh and it was then in the 70s when Colgate Palm Otto Palm Olive sort of came on the scene as maybe one of the first major corporate sponsors with their CEO David Foster. Of course, they were behind the Dinosaur back early on, and that really got it started, didn't it?

Mary Mills 5:57

It really did. And um Colgate uh in the 70s um uh had us really go mostly to the Far East. We went to Japan eight or nine times, we went all over Southeast Asia, and what we would do was promote golf uh at the tournament, but take uh Colgate's main uh, I would say, VIPs and buyers, and we would play the pro-am with them. So that allowed Colgate to spend a lot of money sending us uh around the world. I mean, it was, you know, I get uh looking back, um people say, well, why don't you know, you have a time off now that you're retired, why don't you travel? I said, like that's mom, I've been everywhere, man. I just want to be home before. Those were great days and you know, so interesting. And um actually I spent my 30th birthday uh over in the Vietnam Theater uh with the USO giving exhibitions with Jimmy Nichols from Massachusetts, uh, and uh Candy Phillips, who who was a marginal player at the time, a young player. Um, and we would go into the hospitals and um visit the kids, and most of them were from the states. The bad cases had already gone home, but there were kids who had malaria into drugs, and I had just played the morning with the brass, mostly generals, and you know, and so I would be nervous going into the hospitals, but after a while, all those kids wanted to do was talk about home. And I'd been everywhere, like I said, so it was easy.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Yeah, yeah.

Mary Mills 7:52

Yeah, those were the days where we were introducing golf to uh like South Africa. Uh, we went with Sally Little, maybe 10 or 12 of us, into every major city to introduce women's golf. And so we were over there about six weeks. That was a great trip, too. But we were carrying uh women's golf all around the world in those two decades, or mainly the 70s, that I played golf.

Mike Gonzalez 8:22

So you must have known most, if not all, of the original 13 founders. I think you had the occasion early on when you were young, uh a youngster, to run into the into the babe and and um and maybe her husband, George.

Mary Mills 8:37

Well, at 14, and and this is 54 because I was born in 40. It's easy for me to keep up with. Um, I I played as an amateur at the women's uh LPGA New Orleans Open. And Babe uh already had cancer. Um, she had colon cancer, and she was still trying to play. And um she was she was at the top, and I I I was out practicing out of one of my rounds, and George Zaharius walks over to me. He was a big 300-pound man by then, and uh he started saying, Mary, you know, I want to show you how to take a divot. You know, you need to hit down on that ball and compress it. And I I think I told him, well, Johnny Rivolto told me to take thin divots and to be really in nice balance and to swing. He said, No, you need to put some spin on that ball like babe. So he had me hit some, and boy, it hurt my my uh wrist. But he couldn't walk, see, because he was starting to get uh neuropathy in his feet. I didn't learn that, of course, until way later, but on the lesson tee, and uh he would uh come out and occasionally give a lesson to some of the women who were left there, whether they wanted it or not. I never really got to meet Babe. Uh I met her great friend Betty Dodd, though, and actually somewhere along the road playing as an amateur in the professional events, I got to play the drums. And Betty uh was playing, I think, the guitar. And in New Orleans, I believe they put together um a little show where Babe would play the harmonica and Betty Dodd would, you know, play the guitar, and they would entertain, you know, everybody in the clubhouse. And those were great days.

Mike Gonzalez 10:48

Uh, I understand you might have toured a little bit with Patty Berg uh uh when you were younger as well.

Mary Mills 10:54

Yeah, and this is an interesting kind of uh story because I was still an amateur, and uh I had by then, maybe I was 16 by then and already won my state amateur tour two or three times, maybe more. And Patty asked my mother uh if I could go with her and give exhibitions in most of the several of the major cities in Mississippi, like Laurel and maybe Hattersburg or whatever. And she said yes, because she knew it would be a great experience. And of course, I couldn't make any money. I I would have, you know, turned pro. And uh it was funny. Patty had this big, huge purse. It was two times bigger than a shag bag, and it was full of money, full of cash. And so sometimes we would sit in like a limousine type of thing that she had, and she would make me hold the purse when she was doing other things. Uh, but those exhibitions that she gave would have me, even as a kid, in stitches. She was so funny, and this was passing on the idea in those early days that hey, this is show business as well as golf. And so George the Harriet knew that. Um, Fred Cochran knew that. And uh, you know, we we have the had those exhibitions, and uh uh usually every pro-am starting in the early 60s, where we all got up and Patty would lead and we'd hit balls, you know, and entertain uh the crowd out for the pro-am. So um, but those were you know great days. Yeah, they really were.

Mike Gonzalez 12:47

Yeah, well, if the press clippings are correct, uh she's purported to have done for Wilson over 16,000 of these clinics. So she was clearing away the clinic master.

Mary Mills 13:00

Right, she was, and I knew uh that I really didn't want to do that. It wasn't my personality as a as a kid getting started in golf. I was very shy and introverted, and uh, they weren't gonna pay me enough to play the Wilson clubs anyway. And you know, yeah. So I just um decided to start on the tour with um, I actually had a Wilson type of club, the Walter Hagens, which I loved. But uh, you know, um there was no money uh outside of prize money except for a couple of people and not very much of that. So a typical thing in the 60s was, and remember, this is just after the 50s, a dollar was worth a lot. We would room together um for the tournaments with the LPGA. Our hotel splitting the cost was about$50 a piece. The caddies for for the tournament for us were about$50, unless we really did well and had to give them another percent of something. And um, you know, the entry fees were very little. So it was hard times, and and the like van cost of my caddy can tell you, um, those caddies uh had to love the game because you know they would pile into a car six six uh uh deep and into the hotel rooms, like four at least. Uh yeah. And so they loved the game, and we did too, because there was no money, so we were applying it because you know it was just something that we fell in love with.

Mike Gonzalez 14:47

All right, we're talking to three-time major winner Mary Mills, and uh uh just on her career, nine professional wins, as Bruce had said on the top, uh, all on the LPGA tour. She was the LPGA rookie of the year in 1962. Of course, we've talked about her coming right out of the box, her first year full year on tour winning the U.S. Open. Let's go on to win number two, which uh came uh a year later at the Eugene Ladies Open and Eugene Country Club by three over again. Uh you've kind of got her number, I guess, Sandra Haney.

Mary Mills 15:19

Well, I I didn't really um pay attention to one person. You know, being the metal player I was, I was concerned uh with the field as a as a group. So I never really uh gravitated towards match play in my mind with any certain people. So you're telling me things that I didn't even remember, you know. But so I've got a great story about that second uh, you know, win. It was in Vegas at the Stardust, which was a big casino, of course. And the people, the family that got me started in golf, um, you know, the man, um he he was um kind of the manager of a a bar and a gaming uh bar that was next to the Edgewater Hotel. And so um he had moved his family uh to Vegas, and he was maybe with the castaways, a big place. And I stayed with him, and so I was one of the few girls that weren't down gambling all night. So I was in good shape physically for that event, and uh it kind of paid off, you know. So it and it was great to win that uh LPGA in Vegas to, you know, kind of show the people who really got me into this uh kind of what they had done. You know, it was very gratifying.

Bruce Devlin 16:59

Of course, you beat Mickey Wright there uh in that uh PGA championship, your third victory actually on the tour, and boy, six under pass, 68, 69, 72, 68, and you came from two behind Mickey Wright after 54 holes. So nice finishing round to catch up and win.

Mary Mills 17:22

Yeah, and you know, like I said, uh right now I I I don't remember much about that LPGA, um, just meeting people like Joe Lewis and some of the big stars and all the glitz and commotion in Vegas as a kid. Uh it was uh a real eye-opener, but uh like I said, I I I was so young and you know, just barely, you know, dry behind the ears, so to speak. I I been at Millsaps, never drank liquor, uh, was in great shape. And of course, I wasn't gonna go down and spend the whole night, you know, staying up. I was very serious about winning my second major.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 18:12

That score of 278, Mary, that uh that was a record that held up actually until 1978. Uh, did this second major win uh what did it feel like? Did it was there a bit of validation in the way you felt about this one? Or what did you take away from it?

Mary Mills 18:30

I think anybody would kind of feel that validation because you know, if you're a a pretty good golfer, um, it's sometimes a game of luck. You could uh win tournament, but if you win several, you see to yourself and also you you uh have an image to the public that you're not just a flash in the pan.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Yeah.

Mary Mills 18:56

So and I go back to thinking, you know, Bobby Jones had already said I was gonna become a national champion, and uh, once I broke through that door, uh it became a little easier, you know. So yeah, and for some reason, um I guess like Kepka, uh I could get up for the big ones, but I have to acquire people like Mickey Wright and Kathy Whitworth, uh, and people who won so many tournaments and could play day after day in that tremendous grind of pressure. I just couldn't do it. Um so I would really get, you know, um very concentrated and and very excited for the big ones because I wanted my name to go down in history.

Bruce Devlin 19:51

You know, it did. It wasn't really history.

Mary Mills 19:56

So yeah, that's kind of how I was put together.

Mike Gonzalez 20:00

I would suppose uh many of our listeners may not be aware, but uh this event, this LPGA championship, was uh really professionals only until 2005, and they decided to open it up to allow a little 15-year-old by the name of Michelle Wee to play that year. She only finished second to Annika Sorenston in her first major championship.

Mary Mills 20:24

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 20:25

Yeah.

Mary Mills 20:26

It you know, um it's amazing how um sometimes we can play really good golf uh with very little experience and and not many years of golf, but I try to tell, you know, um juniors, and I taught juniors for for a while in in the 90s, there if you want to be good enough to play competitive golf where you could win the national amateur or turn pro, you've got to do four things. One, you have to get a really good instructor. Number two, you've got to go play the golf course. Number three, you basically have to practice a lot, and number four, you have to play in all the competition, top competition that your family can afford. And without those four things, and about six years or to eight years of competition and playing golf itself, you don't have much of a chance to get to the top. So, you know, that's what I want to tell juniors and their families.

unknown 21:42

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 21:42

So as we talk to Mary Mills this week, there is a senior tour event that will take place at the scene of her next victory. So tell us a little bit about the 1965 St. Louis Open at Norwood Hills Country Club.

Mary Mills 22:00

Um, you know, uh Norwood was on the north side of the Belt Line, and um it was um uh a very famous private club. I think it had two different golf courses, and they put the LPGA on the best course, which maybe was the West Coast course, I can't remember. Uh but it it it my putting was there, you know, my ball striking pretty much was always there. But for some reason I like those fast bent greens, just like I grew up on Bermuda, but I played better golf on fast bent simply because I like to dye the ball in the hole. You know, you you can either be an aggressive putter and and have to be very straight with your putting as it's moving fast, or um just like Paul Runyon said, you if you dye the ball in the hole, you've got three times as many ways for it to fall in. Part of that is probably just personality makeup, but those fast bent greens uh really suited my my kind of lazy stroke. You know, I was a swinger of the golf club and and totally different than say a hitter of the golf ball like Arnold Palmer. I I was you know swinging the the putter and and uh that um St. Louis tournament uh just fell right into you know uh place because uh I could combine half the strokes which were the putting.

Bruce Devlin 23:45

That's right. Well you your uh swing probably reminds a lot of people of a gentleman that swung the club similar to you, and that was Gene Littler.

Mary Mills 23:56

Gene was one of my big uh I I was an admirer of him um and Mickey, who were, you know, and and uh Al Geyberger, they all came, you know, from kind of that California-San Diego area. And uh I followed um, you know, all of them because um I thought that for the time I was playing, they were the best out there. And so Gene, um, I never really got to meet Gene. I may have said hello to him one time, but not I didn't have a chance to get to know him. And uh uh so that was, you know, um just growing up, uh I played 18 years of competitive golf on the tour and ate as an amateur, and you know, after a while, um that was gonna take a toll on my putting nerves.

Bruce Devlin 24:55

I think it takes a toll for sure.

Mike Gonzalez 24:58

We'll probably come back to that. You went back to back uh uh winning the Eugene Open uh in in successive years, 1964-1965. Your second win in Eugene was by one over Joanne Prentiss. Anything come to mind on that one?

Mary Mills 25:14

I like the course uh, you know, in Eugene. Um, it was lying before a one big windstorm, um, at least on one one of the two events I won up there, um, I was, you know, a straight hitter of the golf ball. So with all those trees and fast-bent greens, it suited my game really well. And uh I remember those were the days when uh people like Pre-fontaine, the runner, the long distance or middle distance runner, was out there running in in the streets of Eugene. And you know, nobody else in the country, uh, normal people weren't out there running. So those were were really early days on in uh that also. But no, I I I liked uh the Oregon courses with beautiful, beautiful trees, and uh you know, usually back then it it was great weather in the summer, also.

Mike Gonzalez 26:21

Yeah, yeah. You you you mentioned about being such a straight striker of the ball. I think Van Costa might have shared with me a nickname the caddies had for you because of your straightness. Do you remember what that might have been?

Mary Mills 26:35

I think it was pipeline because the reason for that was by the 70s, um, I think the golf courses were having, you know, um sprinkling systems and uh pipes that ran through the middle uh of each fairway. And so I wasn't usually but a few yards away from that middle pipe.

Mike Gonzalez 27:03

That's great. Uh so four years hence, you win the quality checked classic at Lake Waco Country Club by one over one of the greats of the 60s, Carol Mann.

Mary Mills 27:14

Yeah, and you see, Waco had uh, you know, Bermuda greens. I I don't know what happened, but it's not like I couldn't read Bermuda. It had a lot of grain. I grew up on it. Uh, but for some reason my game just came together, you know, and the putting was there that week too. But to tell you the truth, though I I can go back through all the many, many tournaments uh that I played, and I don't remember much in the details. I really don't. It's I remember unusual things like what was the city like and things like that, you know. Uh it isn't that something that you, you know, you just you'd have to play a golf course a lot, like reading a piece of music to really remember. Because we met so many people. We played so many different golf courses, we went to so many different countries that uh it was I these filing cabinets are real full. I'm sure that uh Bruce can tell you the same thing. We got a lot of memories in those cabinets.

Bruce Devlin 28:27

Yeah, that's true. Well, there's one memory that I'm gonna check you on, and that is in uh June 28, 1970. You and I were both in Ohio. Do you remember what happened to both of us on the 28th, 1970?

Mary Mills 28:46

We both won a tournament, didn't we?

Bruce Devlin 28:49

We did. Yeah, you won at the uh Buick Open, the Len, uh the Len Lempke Buick Open, and I was fortunate enough to win the Cleveland Open. So we celebrated uh I'm sure you said you never had a libation in your life of alcohol, but I certainly guarantee I did that night.

Mary Mills 29:11

Well, by then I was uh uh drinking a little beer or maybe a glass of wine.

Bruce Devlin 29:17

Uh oh, okay.

Mary Mills 29:19

But you know, in the in those early 60s, uh I you know I was just out of college and uh hadn't really uh felt the need at that point. But uh yeah, that was uh you know a great thing, just like Champagne Tony Lima, you know, you go through all that pressure, you you want to celebrate a little.

Bruce Devlin 29:42

And Mary, you know, that that particular day uh you won in a playoff with uh Althea Gibson and the nemesis again, Sandra Haney, you beat her again.

Mary Mills 29:53

Yeah, well, you know, Althea, that was the closest that she ever came to winning. And I didn't I felt sorry that you know she had to lose to me, but I was not going to just roll over and play dead, you know.

Mike Gonzalez 30:13

Well, Bruce, did you did you have an easier time of it? I don't remember what your margin of victory was that day at the Cleveland Open.

Bruce Devlin 30:19

Oh, yeah, well, uh like those days we were still playing uh 36 holes on Saturday, right? And I believe that I shot one 30 at the Cleveland Open. I think I ended up winning by four, but uh that was I think the lowest lowest 36 holes I ever shot on uh closing out a tournament. So that was a pretty special day.

Mike Gonzalez 30:48

Thank you for listening to another episode of 4 The Good of the Game. 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 tee it up again for the good of the game. So long, everybody.

Intro Music 31:12

It went smack down the fairway. And it's time to slice, just smack line. My head is as long as you're still in the stage, okay. It went straight down the middle file.