Videos: Sandra Post, Golf

It was 1968 and we didn’t have a lot of, we didn’t have any really professional women athletes from this country at the time. Sure we’d had some figure skaters that you know who sort of skated in Ice Capades and things like that, but as far as organized sports and making a living out of playing a sport, I was the first one and of course it was the LPGA, the Ladies Professional Golf Association. I was 19  years old. I’d had a really good junior career in Canada winning three Canadian Juniors. So I went right from junior golf to the big leagues and it was it was scary because you really don’t know how you’re going to do. I mean you sure have dreams but I won in the first six months which was huge to win a major. And then I was off and running. But you know that first year I drove like 40,000 miles by myself from coast to coast to coast back and forth across the United States, and playing on foreign you know courses every week and in foreign cities. But I had, I knew a lot of the gals on the tour so it wasn’t that strange.

The 70’s in which I played most of my career, I call them the Golden Years of the LPGA tour. Television came on board. It was the time of women’s liberation, it was the time of Title 9, so women were making a move and we were getting somewhere when it came to sport and to recognition. The two sports that were making it of course were tennis and golf. And you know we had great sponsors that invested in us that put us in commercials again, therefore, we were recognized more on television, and yes, celebrity started to come into our lives.

Actually I won eight times officially on the LPGA tour and ’78-’79 were definitely my two really great years. Yes I won that major back in ’68 and I won a couple of unofficial events in Japan and Australia in the mid ‘70’s, but ’78 and ’79 were really terrific years, winning the back-to-back that’s now called the Kraft-Nabisco but when I won it, it was called the Dinah Shore. And yes they were great years also because my country really started to recognize me and that I of course was named Female Athlete of the Year twice. I was named Canadian Athlete of the Year once and I won the Lou Marsh and the Bobbie Rosenfeld because of those things. And I was not only happy for myself and my family, I was really happy for women’s professional golf, and perhaps, you know if it gets a little bit more attention, then Canada will develop more women golfers. So I was really happy that the media had finally recognized women’s professional golf.