Lessons from the Father

Father’s Day is bearing down on me as I prepare this column. I have been mulling over how the fathers in my life will be recognized. Should it be a gift of dinner, a DVD, a book,or the proverbial tie or dress shirt?   

No matter what it is never is enough for the role our fathers play in our lives. Their leadership, their wisdom, their ability to kick you in the tail when you need it while also being there for you when you are at your lowest, and of course, their cheers and support when you are at your best and striving to reach your goals.

The importance of fathers and father figures cannot be denied.

Golf is also on my mind a lot these days. Perhaps it’s because Dear Husband and Dear Son are spending so much time together on the links. I’m not complaining. I enjoy the quiet time at home, and they enjoy the time together, but golf abounds on my television, in conversations swirling around me, and then there is that subtle reminder when I get into Dear Husband’s truck and see his bag of clubs filling their assigned position in the back seat. Let’s just say I’m glad our children are grown, and we don’t require the child safety seat anymore because I’m not sure which would win the battle for the coveted spot at this point.

Mix golf andFather’s Day and you might think of the much publicized relationship between Tiger Woods and his father. Depending on your point of view, Earl Woods was either a fantastic mentor for his son or a typical stage parent pushing, pushing, and pushing a bit more to get his child where he thought he needed to be. However, it can’t be denied that Tiger was a prodigy since he exhibited talent at such an early age. Golf was his destiny, and Earl Woods made sure Tiger had every opportunity.

There’s another father-child relationship this Father’s Day I’d like to share with you
that is also golf-related, and, of course, it involves Douglas County. 

Ever hear of Lithia Springs Golf Club? It was located on the property at the corner of Bankhead Highway and Thornton Road close to the Lithia Springs Mineral Water Co.–the same property where a shopping center, gas station and fast-food establishment are today.

The first tee was actually behind the water company, and my research indicates the course was laid out in a circle with one of the holes on the other side of
Bankhead Highway.

The course was built in 1932 by concessionaire Rell Jackson Spiller, the same man who spent $250,000 to build a concrete-and-steel baseball park to replace the wooden one that had burnt down where the Atlanta Crackers played along Ponce de Leon Avenue.

According to Tim Darnell, who wrote The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball, Spiller’s innovative ball park was the first of its kind in the South.  Darnell also quotes the Atlanta paper City Builder calling the new park “the most magnificent park in the minor leagues.” It was the only park constructed of steel and concrete for some time in the South.

Every resource I checked advises that Spiller or his son-in-law, Johnny Suggs, built the Lithia Springs Golf Club. There are other inconsistencies in the story that can drive a historian like me to distraction because accuracy is key, but when analyzed it would appear to be a family type of undertaking. Fannie Mae Davis advises in her history of Douglas County that R.J. Spiller owned the land where the Lithia Springs Golf Club was located.

In the book We Danced Until Dawn, a fictional account of life in the Lithia Springs area from the turn of the century forward, Steven D. Ayers writes of the golf course, giving a little insight into the layout of the course, stating, “Around the old Lithia Springs themselves you could now play golf, and if you wanted to play a full game, you went around twice (since the course only had nine holes).”

Local resident Clara Belcher remembers in an article published in the HIPP
Magazine (Historic Image Preservationand Presentation), “Mr. Spiller … built a motel on the property and that lasted for several years. His son-in-law Johnny Suggs, a member of the Crackers, moved here to take over the motel, but eventually it was demolished. He then built a golf course in a circle that crossed over Bankhead Highway. That was a big thing for us!”

Ayers book goes further to advise, “Aside from the occasional flooding the course was pretty good, not elaborate but passing … (and just like Johnny Suggs) told me
one time, that he built that course himself with a mule team and draw pad and
that he had harvested more than one million board feet of lumber from the fairways and greens!”

Ayers’ book confirms that the nine-hole course was set out in a circle with the ninth hole situated on the other side of Bankhead Highway. Then, according to Ayers’ book, “you played your ball up a big high hill, where the Suggs lived on top, around their house and down the other side of the hill to the ninth green. Then back across the highway over to the first hole tee off. I think golf course building will advance in the future!”

Indeed the technology of building golf courses has advanced, but when I shared this
information with Dear Husband, he said that having the ninth hole across the street made perfect sense to him. Suggs built the course so when he played it he was headed home for the night. When the ninth hole was played, he was already home.  

Man logic–but it does make perfect sense, right?

An article written by Helen Ross for a magazine published by the Memorial Golf Tournament found here (click through to see all the great pictures) says, "Johnny Suggs was a left-handed pitcher in the New York Yankees farm system. He was told in 1923 that they planned to bring him up to the majors the following year. Johnny turned his back on that and came home to Georgia and built the 9-hole course in Lithia Springs."

An article found in a 1947 issue of Time magazine gives a little more detail, stating that "back in the 1920s, Johnny Suggs was a better-than-average southpaw pitcher for the Atlanta Crackers. One day he met the boss’s daughter, married her and quit pitching to run the concessions at the ball park. The night the ball park burned down, Johnny Suggs became a father. He and his new family moved 15 miles to Lithia Springs, Georgia; there Johnny took over a combined golf course and picnic grounds. At three, his roly-poly daughter, Louise, was traipsing around the course after him, swinging at golf balls with a baseball grip."

Louise Suggs, the “roly-poly daughter,” went on to learn the game of golf from her father and become one of the greatest female golfers of all time. Over the years Miss Suggs has repeatedly told the story regarding the one home run her father hit during his baseball career and how that led to her interest in golf. In fact, looking at that home run on a broader scale, it would seem that it also led to the Lithia Springs Golf Club. 

When Johnny Suggs was a baseball player, the A.G. Spalding Co. would award any player a set of golf clubs when he hit a home run. Once the family moved to Lithia Springs and built the course, the story goes that the wooden clubs were cut down so that Louise could use them as she followed her father around on the course. The Time article advises, “From the age of 10 … Miss Louise has played
golf, learning and playing the game with her father. Many days playing in the late afternoons when the course was ready to close, Louise and her father would take one club each and play until dark," following the numbered holes across Bankhead Highway and up the hill to their home.

Louise Suggs won her first major tournament at 17. In 1947, she won the U.S. Amateur Golf Association Championship, and she turned professional in 1948. She is one of the founding members of the LPGA, and she was the first woman inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1966. She is also a member of the Douglas County Sports Hall of Fame.  

Georgia Trend sums up Louise Suggs’ professional career this way: 50 tournament victories and 11 professional major championships: the U.S. Women’s Open (1949, 1952), the Western Open (1946, ’47, ’49, '53), the LPGA Championship (’57), the Titleholders (’46, ’54, ’56, ’59) and two amateur crowns, the U.S.Women’s Amateur (’47) and the British Women’s Amateur (’48).

The toughest obstacle she has ever faced, she says, was working to start the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “The men fought us all the way,” she says. “Civic clubs put on tournaments for us, and that is what got us started. The Dallas (Texas) Civitan and the Sea Island Company were our biggest boosters.”

“I played a lot on dad’s course at Lithia Springs. Nine holes cost 25
cents, 18 holes 50 cents, and 18 holes on the weekend 75 cents,” says Louise,
who went from collecting pennies per putt to becoming the LPGA Tour money
leader in 1953 and 1960. Louise won the 1949 U.S. Women’s Open by 14 strokes.  Only Tiger Woods (15 strokes) at the 2000 U.S. Open has won by more in any men’s or women’s major.

After retiring to Sea Island, she worked for a time as a golf expert at The
Cloister. Today Miss Suggs lives in St. Augustine, FL.

The last round of golf at the Lithia Springs Golf Club was played in 1975. 

It’s hard to imagine what the course would have looked like back then, but from now on when I’m sitting at the red light along Bankhead heading into Austell, I’ll never think of the area in the same way again. I’ll picture a perfect father-child moment–Louise Suggs and her father each holding a golf club making their way across the highway and up the hill toward the ninth hole and home.

Happy belated Father’s Day to all the fathers out there!