{"id":244079,"date":"2025-11-04T21:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T21:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/244079\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T21:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T21:47:09","slug":"obituary-judy-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/244079\/","title":{"rendered":"Obituary &#8211; Judy Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Golfing exploits\u00a0<br \/>\nBell was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1936 and took up golf at the age of ten. Her mother was a dedicated community volunteer, who served as president of the Kansas Women\u2019s Golf Association, while her father was a successful businessman. While still in junior high, with two friends she founded Wichita\u2019s girls\u2019 basketball league of three teams, which eventually grew to 16 teams.\u00a0<br \/>\nGolf, however, became her focus. Aged 13, she played in the US Women\u2019s Open and at 15 reached the semi-finals of the US Girls\u2019 Junior. She won six times on the Florida women\u2019s amateur circuit, as well as winning the 1963 Women\u2019s Trans National and three Broadmoor Ladies Invitation titles. She was a three-time quarter-finalist in the US Women\u2019s Amateur. Such was her play, Bell secured her place on the USA team at the Curtis Cup in 1960 at Lindrick and 1962 at Broadmoor in Colorado.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cMy selection to two Curtis Cup teams remains one of the most satisfying and meaningful accomplishments in my life,\u201d she said.\u00a0<br \/>\nBell was also non-playing Captain of the USA team in 1986 and 1988, going up against her friend, Diane Bailey MBE, who led the Great Britain and Ireland side.\u00a0<br \/>\nBailey friendship\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cJudy was an exceptional lady,\u201d said Diane. \u201cSo many people will have great memories of her and the camaraderie we shared.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cI remember playing against her in the 1962 Curtis Cup match and winning comfortably in our singles tie. When we came up against each other as captains in 1986, I always remember Judy saying \u2018could you be a little more gentle this time?\u2019 That was typical of Judy.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cOur beliefs were that the players should mix socially together in the Curtis Cup. A lovely memory was when Judy took both teams to her farm in Kansas in 1986 for a party one evening during that week at Prairie Dunes. She had this game where we stood one on either side throwing eggs at each other that you had to catch before they dropped on the floor. That was a typical Judy thing! \u00a0<br \/>\n\u201cShe was such a sportswoman, whether supporting an American player or whoever, if she felt a girl needed support she would be there for her, German, British or whoever, she was that sort of a person. Our paths crossed a lot in the golf world and then over the years we became closer. She was a wonderful woman and she has definitely enriched my life.\u201d\u00a0<br \/>\nWoods honour\u00a0<br \/>\nBell became a USGA volunteer in 1961, when she was a member of the Junior Championship Committee. In the 1970s she became a rules official, then served on the Women&#8217;s Committee and later became the first woman on the executive committee. \u00a0<br \/>\nBell has been inducted into 11 Halls of Fame and held honorary memberships at other golf clubs in Scotland and the United States of America. \u00a0<br \/>\nNotably, in her first year as USGA president, she had the honour of handing the Havemeyer Trophy to Tiger Woods after his historic third consecutive US Amateur victory at Pumpkin Ridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golfing exploits\u00a0 Bell was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1936 and took up golf at the age of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-244079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}