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<\/p>\n(b. 13 February 1918 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), one of the greatest women golfers of all time and a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).
\nBerg was the daughter of a semiprofessional baseball player. A natural athlete, Berg played sandlot football when she was eleven, quarterbacking for the Fiftieth Street Tigers. Berg plunged into golf at age fourteen with the same unbridled enthusiasm she showed for football. Her father was her first golf teacher, coaching her through her years. It was Lester Bolstad, however, her trainer at the University of Minnesota, who honed Berg\u2019s skills and remained her coach and mentor for the next forty years.<\/p>\n
At sixteen she won the 1934 Minneapolis City Championship, the Minnesota State Championship, and was the runner-up in the U.S. Amateur Championship. She repeated as state champion in 1936, and the following year again placed second in the U.S. Amateur. Berg\u2019s 1938 golf season was perhaps the most successful, in percentage terms, of any golfer in history, male or female. She won ten out of the thirteen tournaments that she entered. In all, she won twenty-eight amateur titles.<\/p>\n
Berg turned professional in 1940, she was among the first ten women to do so. This did little to improve her financial situation, however. Purses for women golfers at the time were so small that Berg earned most of her income giving exhibitions and clinics for the Wilson Sporting Goods Company, which sponsored her.
\nHer first major professional victory was in the Western Open, which she won in 1941 (and again in 1943, 1948, 1951, 1955, 1957, and 1958). She also won the All-American Open five times (1943, 1945, 1953, 1955, and 1957). During her career she amassed eighty-two tournament victories, fifty-one of them as a professional, giving her the record for the most career victories.<\/p>\n
Berg joined the U.S. Marines during World War II. Fortunately her time away from the professional circuit did not diminish. After returning in 1946 she won the first U.S. Women\u2019s Open.<\/p>\n
In 1948 Berg was one of the principal founders and charter members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), which grew out of the Women\u2019s Professional Golf Association. Berg served as its first presi-dent (from 1950 to 1952) and in 1951 was among the four original inductees into the LPGA Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Back on the links, Berg won the Eastern Open in 1950, four World Championships (1953, 1954, 1955, and 1957), the American Women\u2019s Open (1958 and 1960). In 1952 she shot a sixty-four at the Richmond California Open, an LPGA record that she held for twelve years. She won the first Vare Trophy in 1953, with subsequent wins in 1955 and 1956, and was the LPGA\u2019s highest-grossing player in 1954, 1955, and 1957. In 1962, at age forty-four, Berg won her last professional victory in the Muskogee (Oklahoma) Civitan Open but continued to play until 1980, when a hip replacement and other health concerns brought her professional playing career to an end.<\/p>\n
Berg has been inducted into at least ten halls of fame, including the LPGA and the Professional Golf Association (PGA)\/World Golf Hall of Fame. She received several awards : the 1963 Bob Jones Award, Ben Hogan Award, Serbin Trophy, Babe Zaharias Trophy, Golf Digest Per-formance Average Award (1955, 1956, and 1957), William Richardson Award, and the Women\u2019s Golf Personality of the Year Award (1959). She was also the first woman admitted to the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame (1958).
\nBerg was not only a superb golfer but a tireless advocate of the game, traveling around the world and giving more clinics and exhibitions than any man or woman in the history of golf. Her engaging personality, enthusiasm for golf, and diplomatic style made her one of the sport\u2019s most successfull ambassadors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(b. 13 February 1918 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), one of the greatest women golfers of all time and a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). Berg was the daughter of a semiprofessional baseball player. A natural athlete, Berg played sandlot football when she was eleven, quarterbacking for the Fiftieth Street Tigers. Berg plunged<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[]},"categories":[894],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t