Evening star., 1939-08-27
Virginia Stokes Building Golf Game That Smacks of Fa Winning Trait
Raps al Title Doors
After -Four Years
In Links Game
Competitive Spirit Like
Thot Of Husband, Once
Champion RifIemon
By WALTER McCALLUM.

Dy " AL IvASS[AAAoNAs
Winning gets to be habit, and
It runs in families.
Not so many years ago a slim,
keen-taced little man named Wal
ter r. Stokes, not long out of Cen
tral High School, won the national
small-bore rifle championship, and
went to England and Europe, where
he distinguished himself as another
Of those sharp-shooting Americans
Today he is DR.. Stokes. and while
he hasn't given up rifle shooting
altogether, he doesn't compete any
more.
He has turned the sharp-shoot-
ing for the Stokes family over to
his athletic wife, and Virginia
Stokes is carrying on all right where
her husband left off. Her speciality
is golf, sport her husband also
plays, but one in which he isn't
quite as good as he was with fire.
arms.
Demure, likable Mrs. Stokes has
yet to win sectional championship
around Washington. Since the time,
only three years back. that she
played in her first big tournament,
she has been rapping at the door
of winning big Journeys. Her only
major victory was scored in The
Evening Star Cup tourney of 1887.
But she has won a flock of smaller
affairs
Steadily Closing In on Par.
Last week she played Kenwood's
course in IS strokes, two over wom-
ems par, and only five strokes dyer
a tough mems par. That is a definite
sign that she is on the way. Such
top-notchers as Helen DettWeiler,
Marion Brown and Betty Meckley
started that way-by breaking
course records before they were
sharpened enough in the fierce fire
of championship golf to win.
1t isn't a flash in the pan with
Mrs. Stokes-that IS. Only few
days back she played Indian Spring
In 70, pretty good score for a
woman on that lengthy course.
But the main point is that in the
short space of four years she has
pulled her golf game up to the point
where today she definitely is rank
ing challenger for all the feminine
links titles in this territory Just as
her husband was in rifle shooting
two decades ago.
I'll not forget my first meeting
with Virginia Stokes. Out at Rock
Greek Park, browsing around, 1 asked
Harry Graham, the course manager,
what was going on. "Oh, nothing
much" said Harry. Except for that
girl over there. She just played the
first nine in 35." 1t sounded too
good to be true, for records failed
to show anything like that by any
woman.
Mrs. Stokes was modest about it.
Maybe she didn't know what she
had done, for she admitted she had
been playing golf only little while
about a year." she said. Her ath-
letic background, she admitted, in
cluded such things as playing on
boys baseball teams and a fling at
football.
Big Victory Seems Near.
''I was a pitcher" she added. You
have to be pretty good to be a
pitcher on boys ball team. They
all want to be that And for a girl
to pitch means that she not only
must overcome the handicap of her
sex, but she also must have a lot on
the ball.
That's just what she has as a
golfer-a lot on the ball. I'm not
predicting championships for Vir-
ginia Stokes. After all, Marion
Brown and Betty Meckley and Es-
telle Davy and Marie Walper and
Charlotte Stern, to use their given
names, are pretty good golfers. But
the way Virginia Stokes is getting
along in the game she likes and
plays so well, it won't be any sur
prise to see her win a big one any
day now.
A naturally athletic woman can
60 long way in golf. Something
like Winifred Faunce, for example,
gal who won the District cham
pionship a couple of times. Winnie
Is out of competition now.
But Virginia Stokes is very much
In it. She has just reached the
winning groove and it won't be long
before she crashes through. Winning
gets to be habit and it seems to
run in families such as the Stokes
family.