Jenny Lee Smith, the first winner of the Women's British Open, will this week attend the championship at Royal Lytham as a guest of the R&A, 50 years after her triumph at Fulford in 1976. At the conclusion of this year's Women's Open, Smith will present the prize to the leading amateur – the same status she held when she won the inaugural event, meaning she could not claim the £210 first prize.
Kevin Keegan friendship
Smith's golf commitments in the United States meant she was unable to accept the North East Sports Personality of the Year award for 1982 in person. The following year she attended to present the trophy to Kevin Keegan. His death last week at age 75 shocked Smith. 'It is very sad,' she says. 'We did a lot of work together because I was sponsored at the time by Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, who did the same for the football team. He became a good friend and was such a lovely chap.'
Smith recalled that when she was on tour, a taxi would be sent for her mother – an avid football supporter – and Keegan would always ask where she was playing. 'When he became the manager, the football was magical,' Smith adds. She left Newcastle long ago but says, 'It is still home. I am still a Geordie at heart, a Geordie in exile.'
The 1976 victory
Smith's triumph at Fulford came despite a serious chest infection before the tournament. 'It was touch and go,' she recalls. 'I had a really bad chest infection just before the tournament and really still felt pretty groggy. I was in Newcastle, Fulford isn't far away, so my mother said to me: "Don't withdraw. Just go and, if you feel ill, come home." Then I went and won the thing, which was fabulous. I really can't believe that it is 50 years. Where has that time gone?'
She remembers the last nine holes: 'In those days you had no scoreboards and you had to rely on whispers coming from the crowd to know what was happening on the rest of the course. After nine holes I was one behind Mary McKenna. I thought standing on the 18th tee, or rather I was told, that on the par five I needed a four to win. Actually that wasn't so but I took four anyway.' Her prize? 'Just a very strange wooden plinth with two candlesticks on it.' This year's champion will earn $1.5m from a purse of $10m.
Discovering a twin sister
Smith's story extends beyond golf. Her 2013 book, My Secret Sister, recounts how she met her twin sister at age 55. 'It was absolutely extraordinary,' Smith says. 'She lives in Newcastle and I am in Kent so we don't see each other as much as we would like but we are in touch all the time. Since we wrote the book, a lot more has come to light. It was such a shock to Helen, she had no idea of me existing.'
Smith was adopted, a fact she discovered at 14 when cousins told her during an argument: 'You're not part of this family and that woman downstairs is not your mother.' She later met her birth mother after knocking on a door while visiting the north-east for a wedding. Her twin sister Helen came next, whom their mother had asked Smith not to alert. 'It was a huge shock,' Smith admits. 'It was extremely cathartic writing the book but there were a lot of occasions when it was also very upsetting. What we have both been through has made us stronger.'
Pioneering the Ladies European Tour
By 1978, Smith was a founder member of the Ladies European Tour (initially the Women's Professional Golfers' Association). At a time when golf was male-dominated and often discriminatory, she helped change the sport. 'I feel very proud and honoured to have been part of that and to have been there at the very beginning,' Smith says. 'We would arrive for tournaments at clubs where we had no practice ground or no putting green. Often the members didn't even know they were having an event at their course. It was tough.'
She recalls a tournament in France where the prize money hadn't been sent to the bank, leaving players unsure if the event could take place. 'In those days we were playing for a pittance compared to now. My first winner's cheque was in 1978, £225. I bought myself a caravan and towed it to various events, staying in that overnight. Quite a few of the girls did the same thing to cut down the costs. You weren't winning fortunes, that's for sure.'
'I miss the camaraderie. When we turned pro, there was 30 of us going from place to place. We practised together, played together, ate together. They were a great bunch of girls and we all got on so well together. I miss that aspect of it and the excitement of playing.'
Retirement and legacy
Smith, now 77, has not been able to hit a ball for more than a dozen years after an operation to mend an arthritic joint in her right hand left her unable to grip a club properly. 'Rather than hack around, which would give me no pleasure at all, I packed it in,' she says. 'I have grandchildren, I have dogs, and other things take priority now. Golf has given me so much, I feel blessed for that.'
She regards her R&A invite as a 'great honour' and has watched the tournament grow. 'The standard of golf really is incredible, it is amazing. These girls are so powerful and score so well.' She is also excited to return to Royal Lytham 50 years after playing the Curtis Cup there, where the US defeated her GB&I team. The GB&I contingent from 1986, which surprisingly triumphed in Kansas, will reunite at Lytham on Friday. Smith, a sporting pioneer, is fully entitled to enjoy her own past.
