Peggy Kirk Bell

By Margaret Swaine

Unbeknownst to her, Peggy Kirk Bell, one of America’s best-known and admired golf celebrities has been my golf guide for years. I’ve been using “Women’s Golf” an instructional video that features her and several other LPGA “teacher of the year” award winners for years to brush up on my golf after every long Canadian winter. It was filmed at her own Pine Needles resort but when I mention it, she chuckles and tells me it was done by a Canadian firm and she hasn’t seen it in ages. (Eyelevel: www.eyelevelproducts.com, 1-800-387-7638). No matter, meeting this woman in the flesh is a joy. She’s one of the originals who turned pro in 1950 when the LPGA was started.

It’s mid morning and she’s just left the range where she was teaching participants in a Ladies Golfari. Golfari is Kirk Bell’s registered name for her “safari of golf” packages designed for those who want to improve their game in a fun atmosphere. She has 25 teaching pros on staff to give on-tee and on-course instruction. “We get the good ones,” says the 81 year old golf legend, reputed to be the best woman’s teacher in the country. Participants stay in the spacious rooms of Pine Needles on the club grounds. Good thing as stretching classes start at seven in the morning. The golfaris are separated into ladies only, adult, youth and beginner packages. However Kirk Bell tells me “women are easier to teach because they will listen”. While she talks I notice her golf glove is all marked up. There’s a dot marked in the middle of the hand, a lifeline sketched on the thumb joint, painted fingertips, people eyes drawn at a strategic point. “It’s the fundamentals of the grip,” she says. “We want the correct grip”. And then she proceeds to show me what she means, swinging around the club she has brought into the lobby. It seems a natural extension of her but as it swishes around me I look nervously at the table lamps and furniture, involuntarily ducking. She takes my hands and then puts them on the club. “We build the swing from a short swing.” “Stay in the tilt.” “Don’t break the swing.” The tips come fast and emphatic. I learn enough in a short time that an hour later playing on Mid Pines I achieve some birdies and pars to shoot 101, a score I haven’t seen in the two years since a shoulder injury. I also learn her school teaches about 1,500 women a year. Boy would I love to junk the video and stay to learn from the living person.