Remembering Shocker golf legend, Judy Bell ’61
Judith “Judy” M. Bell ’61 made history in 1996 when she became the first woman to lead the century-old United States Golf Association. What made Bell the perfect choice for that historic presidency was her lifelong commitment to golf, a savvy business sense that oversaw clothing stores and restaurants, and an attitude that melded commonsense with the bravura of playing for the hole-in-one. As she once described herself: “I’m pretty right down to the basics, but I honestly believe nothing is impossible.”
That indomitable outlook was perhaps a natural outgrowth of growing up in Wichita and learning to stand toe-to-toe with her three brothers, enduring their older-sibling bossiness and working alongside them stacking cans, taking telephone orders and running the register in the family-owned grocery store at the corner of 13th Street and St. Francis. Encouraged to be competitive, Bell grew to love the challenge of both business and sports.
Her first sport was swimming, but her parents, whom she once called “golf nuts,” enticed her onto the Crestview Country Club golf course in Wichita and, from their summer home in Colorado, the Broadmoor Golf Club course in Colorado Springs. She played her first tournament at Wichita’s Rolling Hills golf course when she was 10 years old and went on to win the city tournament at age 14 and the state tournament at 15, 16 and 17. She twice represented the United States in Curtis Cup matches, with team wins in 1960 and 1962. Being named to the team for the first time in 1960 was among her most exciting golf accomplishments, she reported years later, saying simply, “Nothing can compare with playing for your country.”
After two years at the University of Arizona, Bell transferred to the University of Wichita, where she studied psychology, economics, business and sociology. She once noted, “Basically, I learned how to think at WU. I don’t know that I ever enjoyed a class more than a logic course taught by Hugo Wall.” Bell, who graduated in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in sociology, only attended fall semesters at WU, keeping the spring-semester months open to concentrate on amateur golf tournaments. Over the course of her playing days, she competed in 38 USGA championships. Highlights included her playing in the 1950 U.S. Woman’s Open at age 14 and the 1964 Women’s Open at San Diego Country Club, where she shot a record score of 67 in the third round. (Her record wasn’t broken until 1978 and is still the fourth-best round by an amateur.)
Her involvement with the USGA began in 1961, when she became a member of the Junior Championship Committee. She served on the Women’s Committee for 16 years and in 1987 became the first female member of the executive committee. Nine years later, she was at the helm of the organization that, along with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews, Scotland, sets the rules and regulations for golf worldwide. As the 54th president of the USGA, she set her sights on working to broaden the sport’s playing base by making golf more accessible to everyone. It was during her tenure, for example, that the USGA’s Grants and Fellowship program, based in Colorado Springs, came online with the aim of connecting promising young people with the game of golf. The program ran from 1997 to 2009 and awarded more than $60 million in grants to junior golf programs across the country.
Throughout the years of her presidency (1996-1999), Bell also attended to multiple business interests, including her retail consulting firm, Bell Retail Group. The owner of all or part of six successful businesses, she was a proven entrepreneur whose first venture was A Short Story, a women’s clothing boutique at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. In the early 1960s, Bell and her friend and business partner cut dashing figures wearing their golf shorts on the women’s amateur circuit. A men’s clothing store followed and, in 1976, Bell expanded her business scope with the opening of her first restaurant, Pappagallo. The Little Kitchen, a gourmet implements and food store, and Bell’s Market Grill later joined her stable of enterprises.
A member of 11 sports and golf halls of fame, including the World Golf Hall of Fame, Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, Bell received the 2016 Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor. In 2019, Bell was recognized by Wichita State’s Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as one of three inaugural alumni inductees into the college’s Hall of Fame. A decade earlier, she returned to campus to receive the 1998 WSU Alumni Achievement Award, an honor she described this way: “I’m a Kansan through and through, and a fourth-generation Wichitan. I’ve been recognized all over the country, but to receive an award of this importance from the folks at home, where it all began, where I have strong ties, is especially wonderful. I feel privileged.”
Judy Bell died Nov. 3, 2025, in Colorado Springs.
