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26 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16 A BIT OF HISTORY Skies were fair that spring morning at the Tuscaloosa Country Club, home course for the University of Alabama. Te temperature climbed through the 60s, an imperceptible breeze at the golfers' backs. Mary Lou Daniel, who wore Bermuda shorts and a white short-sleeved cotton shirt with a University of Kentucky insignia, teed up frst. She took a couple of practice swings, stared down the par-four's 395-yard fairway. Tough the 19-year-old was only 5-foot-2 and weighed 110 pounds, she regularly hit her tee shots 225 yards. Te Alabama coach's assessment: "Long of the tee. She plays real good for a woman." Te UK sophomore drove her ball, with a slight hook, to the left side of the fairway. Ten opponent Phil Scherer slid his driver out of his bag. He wore a white short-sleeved golf shirt with a University of Alabama inscription on the breast pocket, dark slacks and a Crimson Tide golf hat. Te college junior was not a long hitter, but he tended to hit it straight. And his consistent short game and putting made him Alabama's top-seeded player. His drive was slightly longer than Daniel's, right up the center of the fairway. A New Par for the Course By Steve Kaufman Louisville-born golfer Mary Lou Daniel made history in 1964 — whether she realized it or not. Ten the two golfers, who were both born in Louisville, shouldered their bags and headed out for their round of golf. Te date was March 17, 1964. You won't fnd it on most timelines of great sports moments. But that day Daniel became the frst female athlete ever to compete directly against a man in the Southeastern Conference. Before her death in late January, at 71, she refected on the match. Mostly, she seemed surprised anyone would bring it up more than 50 years later. "Historic?" she scofed, initially. "Goodness, it was just golf." Scherer, now 72 and president of the real estate brokerage frm Commercial Kentucky, chuckled at the notion of making history. He remembers that the only media was a writer with the Tuscaloosa News. Te women-in-sports movement grew in the early 1960s, perhaps stirred by Wilma Rudolph's three track-and-feld gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics, or Olympic fgure-skating champion Carol Heiss, or — who knows? — maybe professional bowler Marion Ladewig. But they all competed against other women. Female college athletes had played against, and in some instances defeated, men before Daniel's March 17 match. But the SEC, one of the country's major athletic conferences, had sanctioned Daniel's participation. It was a big deal. And it was no mere publicity stunt on UK's part. Daniel had been playing since she was a girl and would join her father at Iroquois Golf Course. "We lived just two blocks from the park," Daniel recalled. "Dad had a friend from work who played with his son, so we became a regular foursome. It was a great way to spend time with my dad when I was nine years old." By the time she was 12, Daniel was at the course every day. She read articles about professional golfers Patty Berg and Betsy Rawls. "Tat's what I wanted to do," she said. Soon she was competing successfully in junior tournaments throughout the country — though, interestingly, not at her own high school. When she enrolled at duPont Manual in 1958, the athletic director — presented with probably the fnest young golfer in town of any gender — chose to do away with the school's golf team altogether rather than let a girl compete. "Tey didn't have to do that to the boys," Daniel said. "If they had told me they didn't want me to play on the boys' team, I'd have probably said OK. I wasn't very confrontational." In 1962, the SEC had issued its ruling permitting women to participate in men's varsity sports. (Tere were no women's varsity sports.) louisvillepuretap.com