Judy Bell, the USGA\u2019s first female president, died Monday at her home in Colorado. She was 89 years old.<\/p>\n
Bell was an accomplished amateur golfer and businesswoman who served as USGA president from 1996-99 as part of a 31-year career with the association.<\/p>\n
Bell was born Sept. 23, 1936, in Wichita, Kansas, the youngest of Carl and Mariam Bell\u2019s four children and their only daughter. Mariam Bell served as president of the Kansas Women\u2019s Golf Association while Carl owned a grocery store, which Judy began working at when she was 10 years old.<\/p>\n
When Judy Bell was 14 years old, she played in her first U.S. Women\u2019s Open, and two years later, she made it to the semifinals of the 1952 U.S. Girls\u2019 Junior Amateur, where she lost to Mickey Wright. She was twice a U.S. Women\u2019s Amateur quarterfinalist while advancing to the semifinals in 1959. She then played on two victorious U.S. Curtis Cup teams, in 1960 and 1962. And in 1964, she shot 67 in the third round of the 1964 U.S. Women\u2019s Open to set then records for 18 and nine holes (31).<\/p>\n
In total, Bell amassed 38 USGA championship appearances. She\u2019d later captain Curtis Cup squads in 1986 and 1998, though her American teams lost both times.<\/p>\n
The champion of that 1959 U.S. Women\u2019s Amateur was Barbara McIntire, who was also twice Bell\u2019s Curtis Cup teammate. The pair were longtime competitors, friends and business partners, launching a mail-order clothing store called A Short Story in the early 1960s; the company shut its doors after nearly four decades, in 1999. McIntire died back in May.<\/p>\n
Bell\u2019s first position with the USGA was in 1961, when she joined the U.S. Girls\u2019 Junior Championship Committee. In 1968, she started a 17-year stint on the USGA Women\u2019s Committee, which she chaired from 1981-94. Prior to trailblazing as USGA president, she became the first woman to be named to the USGA\u2019s Executive Committee, in 1987.<\/p>\n
Said Bell to a reporter on her first morning as the president elect: \u201cI don\u2019t know yet how it feels to be president because I\u2019ve only been one for a few hours, but I know how it feels to be a woman because I\u2019ve been one for 59 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 1999, she had consulted for the USGA Foundation Fellowship and Grant Programs, which evolved from Bell\u2019s first meeting at USGA president and has contributed over $65 million to golf programs for juniors, players with disabilities and other underrepresented groups, according to the USGA.<\/p>\n
In the USGA\u2019s obituary for Bell, Dr. Trey Holland, a former USGA president and close friend of Bell, was quoted as saying, \u201cIt is her passion that sets Judy Bell apart from most other people. It is the basis for everything that she does. No one has worked harder for and loved the challenges that they have undertaken more than Judy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Bell: \u201cI\u2019m passionate about the game of golf, which has given me so much sheer joy and pleasure that I have always wanted to give something back to it. Without question that\u2019s really what my volunteer efforts have been about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bell had dealt with numerous health issues over the past few decades, undergoing a heart bypass in 1993 and then being diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2001. She was admitted to hospice in August 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudy Bell was more than a leader, she was a force of nature whose vision and compassion shaped the very soul of the game,\u201d said USGA CEO Mike Whan. \u201cAs one of LPGA*USGA Girls Golf\u2019s biggest supporters, Judy helped open doors for countless young girls to find their place, their confidence and their joy in golf. She broke barriers not for the sake of recognition, but to make the game better and more welcoming for everyone. All of us at the USGA mourn her passing and celebrate the extraordinary life of a woman whose impact will continue to be felt for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judy Bell, the USGA\u2019s first female president, died Monday at her home in Colorado. She was 89 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-269992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}