On Par: For Rhonda Glenn, a Career of Giving a Voice to Women’s Golf

Giving Voice to Women’s Game

SUMMERFIELD, Fla. â€" When Rhonda Glenn was 18 in 1965, she helped with publicity for the L.P.G.A.’s Louise Suggs Invitational in Delray Beach, Fla. She was an amateur at that event and was paired in the first round with Mickey Wright and Betsy Rawls, who went on to become Hall of Famers.

Rhonda Glenn, right, at a U.S.G.A. meeting in 2010. Glenn, who wrote “The Illustrated History of Women’s Golf,” published in 1991, retired last week.

“At these tournaments, I’d see these women chasing their dreams, and there was a certain nobility to that,” Glenn said. “That’s when I decided to become a journalist, because I didn’t want their stories to be lost.”

Glenn, 67, retired last week after nearly 50 years as a journalist and an employee of the United States Golf Association. Her desire to document the strokes, triumphs and challenges of players often far from public view shaped her career as a writer-historian.

Glenn literally wrote the book on women’s golf, the landmark work “The Illustrated History of Women’s Golf,” published in 1991.

“It’s hard to get a feeling about the players without writers or to know the game without writers,” said Judy Bell, the first woman to be president of the U.S.G.A. “Rhonda has given women’s golf a written perspective we didn’t have and a consistent voice because she made it a priority.”

Glenn also wrote Bell’s biography, “Breaking the Mold,” in 2002. It documented Bell’s life as a leader in women’s amateur golf, in business and as head of golf’s most powerful body in America.

Glenn was also a top amateur golfer who began playing at 6. She practiced at a Palm Beach par-3 course, where she watched Wright and Hank Aaron hit golf balls. She won the Florida high school state championship twice.

By the time she was paired with Wright at an L.P.G.A. event, Glenn had a single-digit handicap. She also had a growing collection of index cards featuring statistics of top players.

She was still a freckle-faced teenager when she landed her first job in Florida as a radio announcer and sports director. Carrying a big tape recorder, she snagged interviews with the future Hall of Famers Louise Suggs, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

“I wasn’t afraid,” said Glenn, who went to Palm Beach Junior College as she explored journalism. “What was important was the interview.”

Glenn worked as a newspaper reporter in Texas and as a television broadcaster in the 1970s at WAVY in coastal Virginia. In 1978, she started working as a golf commentator for ABC.

In 1981, she became the first female sportscaster at ESPN. Her shift was 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., with live “SportsCenter” shows at midnight and at 3 a.m.

“I remember Chris Berman saying, ‘Rhonda, it’s midnight in San Francisco and they’re glued to this stuff,’ ” she said.

By then, she had started working on “The Illustrated History of Women’s Golf.” It took her 10 years and much of her own money to finish. The project began on a typewriter and concluded on a word processor.

On a visit to the U.S.G.A.’s museum and library in Far Hills, N.J., Janet Seagle, then curator and librarian, pulled Glenn aside and gave her the idea to begin her research.

“Janet said, ‘We need a book on the history of women’s golf, and you should write it,’ ” Glenn said.

Seagle also encouraged Glenn to produce an illustrated history of women’s golf and offered to locate and secure the photographs for the book. In addition, Seagle helped set up interviews for Glenn with many of the game’s historic figures, including Glenna Collett Vare, a winner of six United States Women’s Amateur championship titles.

“For so many years, the history of the women’s game was treated as a sideshow, as a curiosity, by even the most celebrated historians of the game,” said Rand Jerris, the U.S.G.A. senior managing director for public services. “Without her passion, focus and drive, many of these stories might well have gone untold and a great segment of the game’s history might have been lost.”