Mary, Queen of Scots

Sensing that his brain was going soft, the author read the encyclopedia from A to Z ... which is why he now knows more about sports than anyone should

.... 16, 1491

I do not have the figures in front of me, but I expect that golfers buy more instruction books, chuckle at more golf whimsy, read more fiction about their sport and sympathize more fully with accounts of the agonies...

The first woman for golf, so far as its dim early records reveal, was Mary Queen of Scots. "She played golf openly, gave it her blessing and the sport advanced thereafter," says The Encyclopedia of Sports.

The fair sex has come so far on the fairway that today there are dozens of women pros and, of necessity, an annual National Women's Open championship