Alexa Stirling

A L E X A S T I R L I NG | V

It is unfortunate that the years have obscured the memory of perhaps the greatest female golfer to come from Georgia. The Georgia Golf Hall of Fame is filled with outstanding Georgian women who have accomplished incredible feats at the highest level. There’s no questioning the greatness of Louise Suggs or Hollis Stacy or Martha Kirouac or Vicki Goetze-Ackerman. But the forerunner to all was Stirling. She was runner-up in the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1915, but came back to win it the next year. The tournament was not contested for two years because of World War I, but Stirling came back to win it again in 1919 and 1920. “This was a time when the Women’s Amateur was the leading women’s golf tournament in the country,” Dr. Jones said. “I mean, if we hadn’t had World War I, there’s a very good chance Alexa would have won five Women’s Amateurs. If it hadn’t been for World War I, we would be talking about her in the same breath as my grandfather in terms of the dominant player of their day.” It’s hard to tell much about Stirling because there is very little video of her swing. She played in an era when women competed in long skirts and long-sleeved shirts that restricted their swing. The redhead wasn’t big — probably 5-foot-3, 125 pounds — but hit it about 200 yards off the tee, 220 when conditions were dry. Her strength, according to a story by the legendary O.B. Keeler, was her skill with the irons. There she was a magician. In an article published in The American Golfer magazine, Keeler said, “It is in her iron play that Miss Stirling stands out. She plays all her iron shots exactly like a first-class masculine player; knocking the ball away with a crispness that has been the wonder of all the critics. She smacks the ball with absolute confidence and beautiful precision and produces, when necessary, a powerful backspin that will make even a long iron shot sit down like a poached egg upon the green.” Stirling never failed to surprise. She was a concert violinist and performed regularly in venues from Atlanta

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