Peggy Kirk Bell, a leading golf instructor who owned Pine Needles resort and spent a lifetime as the premier advocate for women’s golf, died Nov. 23 at her home in Southern Pines, N.C. She was 95.
Kelly Miller, her son-in-law and the club president at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club and the Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club, both in Southern Pines, announced the death. No cause was reported.
Mrs. Kirk Bell was one of the top amateurs in women’s golf in the years before the LPGA Tour was formed. She won the Ohio Amateur three times, captured the 1949 Titleholders by two shots over Patty Berg and won the North and South Women’s Amateur. She also played on the 1950 Curtis Cup team.
She and her husband, the late Warren Bell, bought the Pine Needles resort and developed it into a top destination. Pine Needles hosted the U.S. Women’s Open three times; the winners were Annika Sorenstam in 1996, Karrie Webb in 2001 and Cristie Kerr in 2007.
The Bell family later bought Mid Pines.
Carolyn Bivens, the LPGA Commissioner, left, on the first tee with Louise Suggs and Peggy Kirk Bell during the final round of the 2007 ADT Championship in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2007. (David Cannon/Getty Images)Margaret Anne Kirk was born in Findlay, Ohio, on Oct. 28, 1921. She was a gifted athlete with limited playing opportunities. She wanted to teach physical education and tried golf at 17.
“I found it more of a challenge than any sport I’d tried,” she said in “The Gift of Golf,” a 2001 memoir co-written with Lee Pace. “You simply couldn’t haul off and slam the ball like you would a softball. It took dexterity, but you had to apply it properly. Power was nothing without timing in golf.”
She attended Rollins College in Florida and built an impressive amateur career.
She married in 1953, and the Bells bought Pine Needles. Mrs. Kirk Bell helped develop a concept called “Golfaris,” golf instruction taught by women for women.
She was a member of seven Halls of Fame and was the first woman inducted into the PGA Golf Instructors Hall of Fame. The USGA awarded her the Bob Jones Award in 1990, its highest honor. She also served as chair of the Peggy Kirk Bell Girls Golf Tour, the largest circuit for young women.
Her husband died in 1984. Survivors include three children and eight grandchildren.
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