‘The players didn’t really like me’: How a sex symbol paved the way for Australia’s female golfers

Jan Stephenson has one regret. Her role as a sex symbol took priority over getting ready for the majors, and now she wonders what might have been.

Not that she set out for her looks to sell golf; it was a role handed to her by the game’s first LPGA commissioner, Ray Volpe, to save a faltering tour from bankruptcy by showing fans that golfers were attractive, and could hit the ball.

Stephenson, Australia’s most famous female golfer, made that clear without any sense of bitterness over the phone from Florida.

“I wish I had spent more time getting ready for majors. I wonder how many I could have won if I had not been working on the LPGA. But like Ray says, ‘There may not have been an LPGA’,” she said.

Those sentences reach the heart of the Stephenson story.

Her fame, much of it manufactured through Volpe’s marketing prowess, transcended golf in the ’70s and ’80s and made her a superstar who became universally known for her looks and vivacious yet provocative marketing of the game to a new audience and sponsors.

However, her sex symbol status overshadowed her achievements on the golf course for many years, as well as her motivation for becoming the face of golf despite initially making her unpopular with her peers.

It’s a familiar lament for many generations of female athletes who have seen their sport sold on style rather than substance. Names such as tennis player Anna Kournikova and ice skater Katarina Witt became as famous for their looks as their athletic prowess. The infamous nude Matildas calendar released in 1999 ahead of the Sydney Olympics and the “golden girls of athletics” photoshoot, which included Jane Fleming sprayed in gold, were hugely controversial and sparked commentary from politicians and fellow athletes.

Stephenson was comfortable with the decisions she was making, but the backlash was slightly unexpected and, ultimately, unfair.

“At the time I didn’t realise the tour was struggling, but I just said, ‘Absolutely, I will do whatever it takes’,” Stephenson said. “The players really didn’t like me. They were furious because they thought it was taking a step back for women.”

Her efforts became crucial to resurrecting an LPGA tour that was almost broken as it battled a legal case and little interest from spectators, sponsors or broadcasters.

The current golden generation of female Australian golfers – nine teed up in the British Open last July in an attempt to make it three major wins in a row for the Australian women – respect Stephenson’s record and what she has done to further the game of golf.

‘The players really didn’t like me. They were furious because they thought it was taking a step back for women.’

Australian golf legend Jan Stephenson

Minjee Lee equalled Stephenson’s record of three majors in claiming the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in 2025 and now has career earnings of more than $US18 million ($26 million). A quieter personality than Stephenson, she is universally regarded for her skill and professional approach.

Stephenson loves Minjee and her brother Min Woo Lee, saying their different personalities (Min Woo is known for his social media presence as well as his golf) makes her laugh. Grace Kim, Gabriela Ruffels and Stephanie Kyriacou have followed in the footsteps of Stephenson, Karrie Webb and then Hannah Green to make their mark on the LPGA.

Green, who won a major in 2019, and is one of 31 Australians who lined up in this weekend’s Women’s Australian Open at Kooyonga in Adelaide, is in contact with Stephenson and the affection for the woman 45 years her senior is real.

“I love Jan. She was amazing for golf. The way that she would style herself, and obviously how good a golfer she was back in the day. I think more girls should maybe look up how Jan’s career went, if they didn’t know already,” Green said before heading out for a practice round ahead of last July’s British Open.

For anyone who didn’t know, the record is astonishing.

Stephenson was the first female Australian golfer to win three major championships (having already won the 1973 and 1977 Australian Opens) and only a terrible car accident stopped her from being the No.1 golfer in the world. Webb, who later won seven major tournaments and is a friend of Stephenson, and Lee, with three, sit in her stratosphere. Stephenson was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2019 and this year marks 50 years since her first LPGA tour win, the 1976 Sarah Coventry Naples Classic.

“[The perception of her approach] is a bit different when you can actually back it up with results. It was different. I guess the style was different. I kind of look back at photos of everyone, and I’m just like, well, they just put their flair on golf. I guess everyone nowadays has to be very proper,” Green said. “I kind of rate it. It’s not for me, personally – I’m just very boring and not stylish at all. But Jan rocked it.”

Stephenson’s world changed when Volpe was appointed LPGA commissioner and identified the young Australian, who had won rookie of the year in 1974, as the woman who could make the genteel game of golf a commercial proposition.

He moved the LPGA offices from Atlanta to New York and began selling the game with Stephenson, a willing and hardworking participant, as the main attraction.

“I would fly to New York every Sunday after a tournament and I would meet potential sponsors, play golf with them and go to dinner with Ray and the potential sponsors,” Stephenson said. “We signed a lot of 10-year contracts at that stage.”

Whenever she arrived for a tournament, she would be scheduled to have dinner with a local celebrity and a photographer would be tipped off to the restaurant.

“90 per cent of it was set up. [With] social media, imagine what that would be like now,” she said.

Somehow, despite the demanding schedule, she kept pace with the other players and personalities on the tour such as Pat Bradley, Nancy Lopez, Patty Sheehan, Amy Alcott and her good friend Mary Bea Porter-King.

“I was exhausted, but I was very motivated to play. I feel like in so many tournaments I didn’t play practice rounds because I would get back in from wherever I was on a Tuesday night or Wednesday without playing a practice round. I don’t know how I did it because now – even at a senior event – you just focus on your golf. I don’t know how I did all that social stuff as well,” Stephenson said.

She mixed with the rich and famous and then teed up to win as the tour grew and her profile exploded in America. But not everyone on tour appreciated what was being developed around her.

“We would have meetings where they would say, ‘Why does Jan have to get all the attention?’ and [Ray] would say, ‘She is the one everyone knows, and she is wearing short shorts’,” Stephenson said.

“I was pretty upset when I would walk into the locker room and everyone would be talking, and then they would stop so you would know they were talking about you, and you would feel really uncomfortable.”

It was a different time, and on the golf course Stephenson was anything but airy-fairy. She trained in the gym every chance she had away from the course, and the smile disappeared when the job of winning arose. Her tee-to-green game was superb and if she hit the front, good luck catching her.

“If I could have putted well I would have won more. I was pretty sure of myself, and I was very, very confident,” Stephenson said. “I was so motivated. I loved playing competitive golf.”

Her favourite major win was the 1982 LPGA title when her dad Frank was caddying and her personal life was being trawled over in the media. She collected $30,000 for the win to bring her career earnings, according to a New York Times piece at the time, to $582,061. She passed the million-dollar mark for career earnings in 1985 and by 2002 had reached $3 million in career earnings.

By comparison, Lee earned a handy $1.8 million for her victory in the same tournament in June last year while golfing legend Greg Norman reached $1 million career earnings in 1986 and had surpassed $3 million by 1990.

The golfers playing in this weekend’s Women’s Australian Open are competing for a total prize pool of $1.7 million.

Over time, any angst towards the Australian subsided. Peers such as Alcott apologised later on when she fully understood how hard Stephenson had worked to improve the tour.

Even Jane Blalock, who had taken legal action against the LPGA and criticised Stephenson publicly in the ’70s, later became a firm friend and business partner on the senior tour.

Stephenson’s “Jan for Juniors” program, a forerunner to the wildly successful Karrie Webb scholarship that has fostered a golden generation of Australian golfers, saw her host Sarah Jane-Smith, Jane Crafter and Sarah Kemp in their fledgling days as professionals.

Now when she bumps into today’s established stars, she feels the warmth.

“The girls are very friendly. They are so talented. I am so impressed,” Stephenson said. “Minjee reminds me so much of me, but it is a different attitude.”

Stephenson respects the different outlook of this generation and the way they protect their spare time in a manner she never considered.

She is content with her lot, still swinging a club and running golf programs for veterans while keeping an eye on the Australians coming through. She has been spending time in Australia this summer and recently revealed to Australian Golf Digest that her battle with brain cancer is progressing well. “I’m doing really well,” Stephenson said.

Her health is good right now and a film and book are in the works. She even has a line to the US president, revealing she spoke to Donald Trump last year to check whether he was comfortable if she included a few stories involving him in a book she is penning.

“I put down a lot of the stories of playing golf with famous people like Tiger [Woods] and Greg [Norman] and I had a bunch of stories on the Donald, so I called him to ask if I could have permission to write these stories, and he said ‘Send them to me but I trust you’, so that was nice,” Stephenson said

Her reference to him as “the Donald” reflects her ability to never take herself too seriously, even when taking the game of golf as seriously as ever at the age of 74.

“I can’t believe I still love golf this much,” she said.

Even her lingering regret that she may have achieved more if she had not been so busy off the course, where images of her replicating the famous Marilyn Monroe pose with a golf club remain part of golfing folklore, has dissipated.

Stephenson is satisfied with the legacy she has left and the way women’s golf is perceived now, with the athletes respected as they should be for their driving and putting prowess. Kim’s major victory last July was built off three of the best shots seen by an Australian in a major win.

“It was a lot of work for me, but it is nice to see now it is paying off now for the girls. I love to see how much money they are making and how good they are,” Stephenson said.

“Women’s sport has come so far. [There are] so many amazing personalities.”