By Mary A. Jacobson
As a young girl of twelve in 1948, Louise DeVivo Munro often rode her bike to Innis Arden Golf Club and would watch the golf pro, Terry Conners, give a golf lesson. “When I watched him, I always kept a respectable distance.” One day, Terry motioned to her to come over and said, “You seem to be interested in what I am doing. Do you like to play golf?” As Louise recounts, “There must have been some interest there for me to continue. Either that or I was afraid to say no.” The rest is history. In 2002 Janet Klion of the Oral History Project interviewed this consummate golfer.
Terry Conners gave Louise Munro a golf club and told her to swing it. “I don’t know what he learned from that.” However, he soon remarked, “If you want to learn this game, I will teach you, but you have to be serious. No girlfriends or boyfriends hanging around.” For the next month, Louise, under Conners’ tutelage, did nothing but swing a club without hitting a golf ball “until I had it right and my poor hand blistered all the time.” Rather than being discouraged, Louise was motivated to continue. “Whatever he told me to do, I did, and I showed up on time.”
Louise took lessons with Terry Conners until his health failed. She held him in high esteem as her coach and mentor. “He was so talented. The man was a self-taught golfer, a speed ice skating champion, a boxer. And he molded my swing to look like the great Sammy Snead… He would do things like pretend my hand was a golf shaft, wrap his hand over mine and tighten his fingers to communicate the amount of pressure I should exert on the grip.” Often, at the end of the day, “Terry would ask me to gather the flagsticks from the farthest holes while he walked for the others. I would get on my bicycle and ride out lickety-split onto the green and pull the stick out of the cup and continue to the next cup. Not to worry, the greens were not as they are today.”
In later years, when Louise joined Innis Arden, “. . . we would go there late afternoon to practice on one of the golf holes…Once we got into our practice mode, we would become oblivious to the passing of time and more than once the sun would drop over the horizon…I would finally have to say, ‘Terry, I can’t see my target anymore.’ He would come right back with, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go up to the green and let you know when you are close to the target. Keep chipping’.…I think practicing with limited vision did contribute to my having ‘touch around the green’ for which I was noted, and there were not many golfers who could match me in that respect.”
Louise Munro continued to play and enjoy golf and excelled at it. Her association with the Innis Arden Golf Club continued throughout her life. In 1999, Louise attended a gala event at the Hyatt Regency Hotel to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Innis Arden Golf Club. There was much celebration for the club which originally started with sixty-four members in 1899. Jeff Harris, the president, rose and made the following statement, “Tonight we recognize an honorary person who is the preeminent athlete of Innis Arden’s first one hundred years…One golfer’s accomplishments stand head and shoulders above all others…This person has won fifty individual championships and was a runner-up in the 1998 championship at Innis Arden and has just won the Legends Tournament of Connecticut.”
As Louise listened, it dawned on her that Jeff Harris was referring to her. “All of a sudden, it hit me. ‘Oh my God, he’s talking about me.’ And I wanted to crawl under the table.” Maybe at that moment, Louise’s many championships flashed before her eyes. “My first championship, 1950. Then I won ’56, ’57, ’59, ’60 and then fifteen straight 1962 through 1976.” By 1995, she had won a total of twenty-seven club championships.
Louise DeVivo Munro was lauded with thunderous applause as she was cited as “Innis Arden’s Preeminent Athlete of the Century.” Ever modest, Louise commented, “I consider myself an ordinary gal. For the Board of Governors to award me this most highest honor of my life was, on their part, most generous and kind and thoughtful.”
Perhaps the lesson here is in finding and pursuing one’s passion. Somehow then, the effort in doing so doesn’t seem like hard work. In Louise’s words, “It seems unreal that I should be cited for playing a game I love, and the wins just happened to come along.”
Louise DeVivo Munro, Greenwich resident for more than sixty years, died on September 25, 2015. at the age of 89.
The interview entitled “Golf in Greenwich” may be read in its entirety at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the Oral History Project office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.
