Page 12 - Alabama Golf Association

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Mrs. David (Sadie) Roberts Jr. was the driving force behind the formation of the Women’s Alabama Golf Association. The initial WAGA meeting was held at 3:00 pm on Tuesday, October 22, 1929, after completion of the first round of the Women’s State Invitation Golf Tournament, the precursor of the Women’s State Amateur.
Roberts was a busy wife and mother of three teenagers and was very involved in the game of golf. She was women’s chairman at Roebuck Springs Automobile and Golf Club and conducted the state’s first women’s invitational. She was a director with the Western Golf Association and president of the Women’s Southern Golf Association. These experiences taught her how to run tournaments. After much discussion, she was bound and determined to have an Alabama state organization for women and an annual championship similar to the men’s Alabama Golf Association.
Roberts toured Alabama towns promoting a state golf association. She talked with clubs in Gadsden, Anniston, Huntsville, Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile and all agreed to join. “The Country Club of Birmingham was most generous and cooperative. In 1929 the club held and financed a tournament for the purpose of founding a State Organization. The tournament was successful, the women enthusiastic, and the State Association was founded. I was elected president,” Roberts said in an oral history regarding the early days.
Roberts would serve as president of the WAGA until 1951 for a remarkable total of twenty-two years! She lived a full and rewarding life, continuing to take a keen interest in the WAGA, passing away in April 1988, just two months short of her one- hundredth birthday. The WAGA would be run independently until it came under the auspices of the AGA in March 2010.
1929
In the inaugural Women’s State Amateur Championship, held at Birmingham Country Club, Mrs. Henry S. Geismer beat favorite Mrs. Carl Hess by a score of 5 and 3 in the scheduled thirty- six-hole final. Both ladies hailed from Birmingham, with Mrs. Geismer a former city women’s champion while Mrs. Hess was the reigning Hillcrest Country Club champion. Hillcrest was the forerunner of today’s Pine Tree Country Club.
A newspaper account of the day said: “Mrs. Geismer has swept past her foes by long margins through her campaign drive and her steady game against Mrs. Hess earned her a victory in the finals.” She held a three-up lead through the morning eighteen and was never bested.
“Both finalists have carried the
dope through true and took each of their [semifinal] matches by a decisive margin,”
Sadie Roberts Begins the
Women’s Alabama Golf Association