＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
The 2020 Japan Women’s Professional Golf Tournament was scheduled to begin on March 5th, but unfortunately, due to the spread of COVID-19, the first two opening matches (the Daikin Orchid Ladies and the Meiji Yasuda Life Ladies) have been canceled. The third and fourth matches may also be canceled or played without spectators.
Speaking of “beautiful golfers” in the women’s professional golf world in recent years, we’ve seen a surge in Korean female pros like Lee Bo-mi, as well as young Japanese female pros like Fujita Hikari, Kozuma Kotono, Hori Kotone, and Matsuda Rei, as well as a “golden generation” of young female pros like Hara Erika. There are more photogenic and cute players than there were a few decades ago, which makes me excited.
However, about 45 years ago, when I was a budding office worker and first became interested in golf, the epitome of “beautiful golfers” was American golfer Laura Baugh. She truly is a dazzling, “classic (old-time) beautiful professional golfer.”
1. Who is Laura Baugh?
Laura Baugh (1955- ) is a female professional golfer born in Florida. At the age of two, she and her two older brothers were taught golf by their father, a lawyer and accomplished amateur golfer.
As a young girl, she won the U.S. Pee Wee Championship five times in a row.
When she was 13, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to Long Beach, California. However, they were struggling financially and could not even pay the green fees, so she would sneak off to golf courses with friends to play.
2. Brilliant amateur achievements
At the age of 14, she won the Long Beach Junior Championship, earning her a free pass to all public courses in Long Beach. She then won the Los Angeles Women’s Golf Championship twice.
In 1971, at the age of 16, she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, becoming the youngest winner at the time.
3. After turning pro on the LPGA, she was abandoned from winning, with her best result being second place.
She turned professional in 1972 at the age of 17. That same year, she was named Golf Digest’s “Most Beautiful Golfer.” She was also nicknamed the “Green Fairy” and the “Fairway Fairy.”
Her beauty made her immensely popular in the United States and Japan alike. However, despite her golfing prowess and finishing in the top 10 66 times and coming in second 10 times, she never won a tournament. She appeared in numerous commercials, but for many years struggled with the fact that her appearance was getting more attention than her golf game.
Her arch rival, a woman of the same generation, was Hollis Stacy (1954-), who won 18 LPGA Tour titles (including four majors). She finished second in the 1979 Mayflower Classic, losing in a sudden-death playoff to Hollis Stacy. Considering the “importance of one win,” I believe that if she had won at that time, her subsequent golf career would have been different.
4. After marriage, he became an alcoholic due to domestic violence and mental fragility.
She began to develop an alcohol addiction around the time of her first marriage in 1979. Tormented by her husband’s domestic violence, they divorced within a year, but she suffered from the aftereffects of the domestic violence for the next 10 years.
She had seven children with her second husband, professional golfer Bobby Cole (they married in 1980 and divorced in 1985, then remarried in 1988 and divorced again in 1998). Since her husband was unable to earn prize money and became dependent on her income, she reluctantly continued to play on the tour as the family breadwinner. Her worries about the future caused stress, and she apparently began drinking more. However, during her pregnancy, the presence of her unborn child was her support, and she was able to avoid consuming a drop of alcohol, so she continued to mistakenly believe she was not an alcoholic. This led to the strange and ironic result that her golf performance was good only during pregnancy (because she abstained from alcohol).
However, she later overcame her alcoholism and published her autobiography, “I Was a Masked Fairy,” in 1999. I was shocked to learn for the first time from this book that she had struggled with alcoholism.
In 2004, she married for the fourth time, to her third husband, a lawyer.
There is a saying that “God does not give two gifts.” Although she was blessed with beauty and golf talent, it seems she was not blessed with luck in men or in competitions (professional glory).
5. Continuing to play golf on the “Legends Tour” (a senior tour for women over 45).
She seemed to have completely disappeared from the golf world after 1994 (her highest finish was 9th). However, in 2010, at the age of 54, she made headlines by competing in the U.S. Women’s Open Qualifiers. She apparently trained hard on the Legends Tour, aiming to become the oldest player to compete in the U.S. Women’s Open.
She lived a life filled with unimaginable hardship from her late 20s to her 30s, but now that she’s recovered, her passion for golf seems to have been rekindled. “Now that my children are grown, I can look back on my career as a wonderful person. From now on, I want to aim for the pinnacle that I was unable to reach as a professional golfer,” she said. Unfortunately, however, she was unable to qualify.
In 2018, at the age of 62, she entered the U.S. Women’s Open Qualifiers as the oldest player ever. While it may seem painful to see her as the “uncrowned emperor (queen?)” (silver collector), she seems to have found a new goal in life, so we offer our warmest support.