Alexa Stirling

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

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Alexa learned at the early age of 10 that championships are sometimes won by something more than a player who enters the contest, makes the lowest score and doesn’t cheat. In a neighborhood contest that Little Bob Jones himself later conceded was less than on a level playing field, Alexa lost to the cutest player who didn’t shoot the lowest score. Mrs. Frank Meador decided that the East Lake neighborhood kids ought to conduct a small 5-hole tournament to get them out of the house yet keep them off the streets. Mrs. Meador may have privately wished that her son Frank might come home with that small sterling cup she put up as the trophy for the winner, even though she knew Little Bob Jones was stiff competition. Frank

and Little Bob had struck up quite a friendship when Colonel Jones first brought his family to her boarding house during the summer of 1908. And during the next year, these two joined Perry Adair and the only girl courageous enough to play the boys at their own game. This foursome probably didn’t turn many heads back when they trudged down the fairways of old East Lake that fine summer day in 1908. But before they were finished with the record books, the final tally looked something like this. Bob Jones won 13 of 32 majors and 23 of 52 total championships overall; Alexa Stirling won three majors and eight championships overall and Perry Adair won two Southern Amateur championships. Not bad for the rag tag East Lake neighborhood kids. Little Frank Meador was in charge of the card and pencil, which was important given the fact that Alexa returned the lowest score for the stipulated round of 6 holes. “We couldn’t have a girl beat us,” Frank said as he struggled with his male chauvinism. “Oh well, Bob, you win,” Frank continued as he handed the cup to young Jones. Since Frank’s mama sponsored the tournament and commissioned the silver cup, Little Bob Jones perhaps figured it would be rude to make a scene and so he graciously accepted the presentation. Alexa knew in her heart what Jones confessed years later, “I’ll always believe that Alexa won that cup. ... I took it to bed with me that night. ... I’ve a 120 cups and vases now, and 30 medals, but there is one little cup that never fails of being kept well polished. And I never slept with another one.” For some, that experience alone would have jaded their view of championships and golf, but not the resilient Alexa. If anything, she learned that perseverance must be taken to the next level to win. And she did just that. By 1915 Alexa was champion of more than the East Lake neighborhood. At age 18, Alexa won the 1915 Southern Amateur championship. She was no longer a young, frail, freckle-faced, red-haired girl who listened to teacher Stewart Maiden admonish, “If she would just leave that dashed fiddle alone, she would be a fine player.” Now Alexa had blossomed into a willowy petite powerhouse capable of delivering a sharp smack to the ball that would send it 220 yards straight down the fairway. She was the “glass of fashion and mold of form” in her elegant attire of the day. Tastefully tapered skirts reached down to her polished tackety boots that served as the platform for her precise compact Carnoustie swing. Her finely tailored billowy blouses were topped by a variety of wide brimmed hats du jour. Alexa not only had the Fifth Avenue wardrobe, she also had the game to match it. Her opponents soon sensed “the click of her club on the ball had the same deadly finality as the release of the hammer on a Smith and Wesson revolver” with her opponents staring directly into the barrel. Her poise in the crucible of fierce competition was as unshakable and tranquil as a tall ship slipping into the three-foot chop of a safe harbor. Alexa’s movements through the ball were so lithe and so smooth as to suggest a naturalness that belied hundreds of hours in Kiltie’s tutelage. The results were somewhat remarkable.

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