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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16 27 THE BIT Leslie Martin, dean of students at the University of Kentucky and also the men's golf coach, ofered Daniel a scholarship (another frst for her gender). "I'd heard stories of male athletes who wouldn't play with a girl teammate, but my teammates were great, particularly once they saw that I was winning some matches for the team," she said. "I don't know how some of the boys on the other teams felt, playing against — and maybe losing to — a girl." Scherer didn't refuse the challenge. He had developed his game playing with his father at the old River Road Country Club. At Waggener High School, Scherer had become a scratch golfer, earning a scholarship to Alabama. When his coach announced the assignments for the March 17 match, Scherer recalls, "Some of the guys may have snickered." His teammates weren't the only ones. Writers giggled in print about having to re-examine terms like "backfeld in motion" and "illegal use of hands." Articles commonly referred to female athletes as "petite," "pretty," "lissome," "pert," "shapely" and "crossing the petticoat line." "People in Louisville began whispering in my ear that maybe this was a little more than Mary Lou playing golf," Daniel said. "But I'd always played against some guys at Iroquois, so this was not a big deal for me. I wasn't intimidated." Scherer noticed the gallery was large the morning of the match. "We usually had maybe 10 people strolling along with us, but that day there were 40 or 50, or more. Which was pretty nice," he said — until he realized the crowd was mostly women, and they weren't cheering for him. Daniel struggled early — a bogey, double- bogey and a bogey on the frst three holes — and fnished with an 81 to Scherer's 75. Tree days later, she won at Tennessee, the frst victory for a female athlete over a man in direct conference competition. In 1973, Daniel won the MARC Equity Classic in Grand Island, New York, her lone professional win. She played on the tour until 1980, then married (she took the last name Crocker) and settled in the Dallas area, where she devoted the next decade-plus to coaching a new generation of female golfers. When I asked Daniel about her legacy, her immediate reaction was characteristic: "I was just a player; I teed it up and played." But then she paused. Maybe she hadn't stepped back and considered her larger role for women in sports. "You know," she said, "looking back, I'd like to think that I helped." nanzkraf.com eyecareinstitue.com