Women’s Golf is one of the most popular professional sports today. It requires a great deal of skill and practice, but because it is a low-energy sport, preteens and senior citizens can enjoy this sport. There have been many women to help shine some light on this previously ignored sport, and many had to go against to the grain to make it happen. Here are a few of the female golf legends that truly paved the way for all current and future golfers to come.

1. Patty Berg (Patricia Jane Berg) is one of the forerunners for women’s golf in the United States, and the entire world. She is most widely known for her all-time record of 15 major title wins, as well as being a founder and long time professional player of the LPGA, the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

She began her golf career at a ripe age of thirteen and entered her first amateur tournament at sixteen. She won a respectable twenty-nine amateur titles and then began playing professionally in 1940. When the war broke out, she and many others joined the forced, but did not forget about golf when they returned. In 1946 she won the U.S. World Open, and two years later, she helped establish the LPGA, and was their first president. She was voted the Woman Athlete of the Year three different times by the Associated Press, and retired in the mid-sixties.

2. Babe Zaharias (Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias) was named one of the most versatile female athletes by the Guinness Book of World Records, alongside famed athlete Lottie Dod from the previous century. A star in basketball and track & field, she won three medals in field events in the 1932 Olympics, but is most widely known for her success in Women’s golf.

She joined the game a little late, but began to shine almost immediately. In 1938 she was the first woman to compete in the Los Angeles Open, which is a men’s PGA tournament. This determination to play despite being declined amateur status sparked an unprecedented break from the femininity norms of her time.

In 1949, she became the first and only woman to ever make the cut for in the men’s regular PGA tour event. Additionally, most women who make it in to many of the various open qualifiers do so by way of sponsorship exemptions. Always against the grain, Zaharias qualified through her success in 36-hole openers.

In 1950, Zaharias’s career peaked when she completed the Grand Slam: the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship and the Western Open. Shortly thereafter she was diagnosed with colon cancer, which proved fatal. She passed at age 45, still at the forefront of women’s golf, whose legend never died.

3. Betty Jameson (Elizabeth May Jameson) was another of the thirteen founders of the LPGA. She began her career at a viable age, and won two major amateur titles before turning professional in the early 1940’s. Her first big win, at the Texas Public Links Championship at age thirteen showed a lot of promise for her future in golf. In 1945, Spalding hired Jameson to teach golf clinics across the country, hence the start of her professional career. While she did not have quite as many wins as some of the other important female golf figures, she raised the bar for all of her peers with one big win. In the 1947 U.S. Women’s Open, she became the first woman golfer to score lower than a 300 in a 72-hole tournament.

Betty Jameson retired quite contentedly in 1970, after admitting her interest in the game had begun to fade for the past decade or so. She just recently passed away in 2009 at age 89.

4. Mae Louise Suggs, another of the LPGA’s founders, was one of the top contenders in every amateur tournament in which she entered. She won three top tournaments and turned professional in 1948. Not only did she have a successful amateur career, but also during the 1950’s she was at the top of every event. Only once during this decade was she not included in the top three women on the season-ending money list.

During her professional career, Suggs won 55 tournaments, including 11 majors. The Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award is named in her honor, and is awarded annually to the best first-year player of the LPGA Tour.

5. Kathy Whitworth, the most modern of these top five ladies, currently holds the record for the most LPGA Tour wins with 88 total victories. No one else has ever won that many events the PGA either.  She was also the first woman to reach one million earnings on an LPGA Tour in 1981, a small step for man, yet a large leap for womankind.