Alexa Stirling

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

Mrs. Fraser, the former Alexa Stirling, began the spectacular performances with her medal score of 77 over the eighteen-hole course of the St. Louis Country Club. Women had been playing tournament golf just a little over thirty years in this country. ...In 1907 for instance Miss Curtis won the title with a score of 95....only five players were under a hundred. In 1925 Mrs. Fraser and I had scores under eighty.... Alexa had a nine-hole card of 37.... These circumstances may help explain the heights she scaled. When she gave her full attention to golf, she was almost invincible and when her powers were at their crest, she went undefeated at match play for more than two years. “ STEWART MAIDEN Advice to Alexa Stirling via OB Keeler in his interview with Maiden: “Every Golfer should give some consideration to his limitations. Not all of us can be champions, just simply because we are not geared that way.... And as far as golf is concerned, it is my belief that the player ought to try to work toward good form as far as he can, but that he ought to realize that he may never entirely reach it and that in many details he will be better off to work out with such guidance as he can get the best thing for himself.…That said, I see by the papers that the experts are advising everybody against trying for too much on a shot… A golfer should “shoot the works” and give it all he’s got even when he is up in a match.…When he is down there is nothing else to do. It doesn’t take any brains then to try for everything. To that extent the man who is down has the advantage of the man who is up. He is on a one-way street. “Shoot the works.” That’s all there is to do.…The idea in match golf is to get a man down, and then to get him farther down. When you are one up, try to be two up on the next hole. When you have him nine down, try to get him 10 down. Play to win every hole, right up to the stage when you may be compelled to play for a half, and then try to stick one up there for a single cut. Play for your best shot, not your safest.… Same thing on medal play… I’ve seen many a man with a good lead go to the last round and try to hold that lead with a safe play and lost stroke after stroke and the lead and the tournament simply by not keeping the pressure on.… I think that when a regular golfer plays safe deliberately, down in his system somewhere there is a sense of guilt whether he knows it or not. And I think that guilty feeling smears a lot of shots and breaks up a lot of matches and tournaments where a man on top is playing what he thinks is a safe game. Let him play all he has and try for his best shots. That’s the way to get them.” BOB JONES “I was a sort of bad boy at golf, I suppose, and required an occasional spanking such as appeared in a Boston paper in 1918 when Alexa Stirling and I were playing a Red Cross Benefit Match at Brae Burn. I kept those spankings in my scrapbook.... this one was as follows: ‘Some interesting golf was shown during the match, interspersed with some pranks by Jones, which will have to be corrected if this player expects to rank with the best in the country. Although Jones is only a boy, his display of temper when things went wrong did not appeal to the gallery.’… “It’s sort of hard to explain, unless you play golf yourself and have a temper.… And when you feel so extremely a fool, and a bad golfer to boot, what the deuce can you do except throw the club away? I stopped club throwing in public.... I read the pity in Alexa’s soft brown eyes and I finally settled down but not before I had made a complete fool of myself. That experience had its proper effect. I resolved then that this sort of thing had to stop. It didn’t overnight, but I managed it in the end, at least in tournaments.” The record evidence shows that Alexandra “Alexa” Williamson Stirling lived her exemplary life in a way that does serve as a model for those who come after. If anyone belongs on the roster of the World Golf Hall of Fame, she is “Alexa.” Very truly yours,

Sidney L Mathew Tallahassee

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