By Design – Issue 55, Fall 2021

20 MARION HOLLINS T iger Woods will be joined as an inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame for 2021 (to be held in 2022, due to the pandemic) by former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, LPGA Tour great Susie Maxwell Berning and one of U.S. golf ’s pioneering women: Marion Hollins. Hollins was an outstanding golfer. She won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1921, the Pebble Beach Championship seven times and captained the USA team in the inaugural Curtis Cup at Wentworth in 1932. But she was also a trailblazer in golf development. Greg McLaughlin, CEO of the World Golf Foundation, says: “Marion was a principal force of the game and the visionary of some of today’s greatest courses.” Her first foray in golf course development came after the decision by Creek Club in Locust Valley, New York, to disallow women golfers. Hollins and a group of women banded together to create the Women’s National Golf & Tennis Club in Glen Head, New York. Hollins was instrumental in the project, helping to secure the land, assemble the finances, recruit members, hiring Devereux Emmet to design the course, and oversee the course construction. In 1924, a year after the Women’s National Golf & Tennis Club opened, Hollins approached developer Samuel Morse with a concept for an elite private club in Pebble Beach, California. Impressed, Morse reserved 150 acres and put Hollins in charge. That project would become the famed Cypress Point Club. Morse initially selected C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor as the architects, but when Raynor died, Hollins hired Dr. Alister MacKenzie to take over. But it was Hollins’ eye for design that led to the creation of one of the most famous golf holes in the world. Of the par-three sixteenth hole, which plays 230 yards over the Pacific to a green surrounded by bunkers and fronted by the rocky coastline, MacKenzie would later write, “I was in no way responsible for the hole. It By Design looks at the legacy of golfing pioneer Marion Hollins and the impact she had on the sport’s most famous courses. A trailblazer for women in golf ASGCA and ASGCA Foundation are supporting a fundraising initiative to honor Marion Hollins’ contributions to the game of golf. The Marion Hollins Memorial Project is planning a landscaped memorial area overlooking her grave at Cemeterio El Encinal in Monterey, California, to mark the final resting place of this remarkable woman. To find out more about the memorial project and to make a donation, visit www.marionhollins.org.