Alexa Stirling

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

S I D N E Y L M A T T H E W DECEMBER 29, 2021

Dear Members of the WGHOF Board of Directors: As a student of golf history spanning over five decades, please accept this letter in support of the nomination by the Atlanta Athletic Club of Alexandra “Alexa” Williamson Stirling to Membership in the World Golf Hall of Fame. I have been privileged to research and publish various articles, books and films about the “Golden Age of Golf ” which arose after the turn of the 20th century and included Those Famous Members of the Atlanta Athletic Club who contributed 17 major championships arising from their home course experiences at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta Georgia. The life and legacy of Alexa Stirling has been favorably featured in “Life and Times of Bobby Jones” (1995), “Champions of East Lake: Bobby Jones and Friends” (1999), “Kiltie the Kingmaker” (2004), numerous articles published in Golf, Golf Digest, Links, British Golf World, among other periodicals. Her golf credentials are outstanding. It is especially noteworthy that Alexa Stirling did contribute the first three of these 17 aggregate major championships comprising The United States Women’s Amateur Championship victories in 1916 (Belmont Springs CC Waverly MA), 1919 (Shawnee CC PA) and 1920 (Mayfield CC Cleveland Ohio). That was fully three years before the “Immortal” Bob Jones was able to win his first major title in the US Open at Inwood, NY in 1923. Her national golfing resume was supplemented along the way with qualifying for the National Amateur in 1914 (at age 17), 1915 (reaching semifinals) and her winning in 1916. In 1915 Alexa won the Women’s Southern Amateur and the Druid Hills Invitational in Atlanta. In 1916 Alexa annexed the prestigious Berthellyn Cup established in 1911 and which Alexa won at the Huntington Valley CC near Philadelphia. She won international acclaim for her two Canadian Women’s Amateur Championships in 1920 and 1934. She reached the finals of the US Women’s Amateur in 1925 and the finals of the Canadian Women’s Amateur in 1922 and 1925. Adding to that accumulation of riches, Alexa won her home club championship nine times at the Royal Ottawa GC. Not unlike her childhood companion Bob Jones, Alexa had varied interests other than golf that drew her ambitions away from playing professionally. She played concert violin from age 9 well enough to later play with the Atlanta Symphony. That earned her the quip by golf teacher and mentor Stewart Maiden: “If she would only leave that dashed fiddle alone, she would make a great golfer.” Alexa also was mechanically minded. She took her kids to the train yards and discoursed with engineers about their inner workings. And Alexa developed into a “shade tree mechanic” while fixing cars and trucks which led to her assisting the Red Cross in World War I to keep their fleet of ambulances mobile. She played in the Red Cross golf charity matches around the country which helped raise $150,000 for the War effort. She served as a lieutenant in the Women’s Motor Corps during the War. She was a keen fisherwoman and huntswoman and her sardine sandwiches on fishing trips were the subject of much comment. Alexa was proficient not only with golf clubs but also woodworking tools with which she made chairs, tables and furniture with dovetail joints. In 1922 Alexa moved to New York and took up the profession of bond trading for the S.W. Strauss & Co. securities company. She remembered to take her golf clubs with her which turned out to be valuable when she won consecutive New York Metropolitan tournaments in 1922 and 1923. Later in 1923, Alexa met her future husband Dr. Wilbert Grieve Fraser while playing in the Canadian Women’s Open Championship and was later married in 1925 at her ancestral home across from East Lake Country Club. She returned to Atlanta for the “Golden” 50th Women’s Amateur Championship in 1950 and again in 1976 for the first U.S. Open at the Atlanta Athletic Club played south of the Mason Dixon Line.

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