Marion Hollins was an excellent amateur golfer, a friend of Bobby Jones and worked alongside golf course architect Alistair MacKenzie on Cypress Point and Pasatiempo, two of the finest golf courses in the nation. But was Marion a man? Or was Marion a woman? John Wayne, after all, was Marion Michael Morrison. The answer is she was a woman.
Hollins was a native of East Islip, Long Island, born into a wealthy family that owned a 600-acre estate. She must have led the Downton Abbey-type of life, riding horses, shooting, playing tennis, racing cars, playing polo and, above all, playing golf.
Hollins won Metropolitan Golf Championships, two Long Island Championships and the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur, which is how she became friends with many of the day’s top golfers, including Bobby Jones.
In winning the amateur, she defeated Alexa Sterling, a star at the time in women’s golf. As the inaugural captain of the U.S. Curtis Cup team in 1932, Hollins brought home a victory over the strongly favored British and Irish squad headed by the legendary Joyce Wethered, who was a playing captain. Wethered won nine ladies’ amateur titles in the U.K. during the 1920s.
But Hollins is not best known for her golf titles. Her life changed dramatically in 1922 when she met Samuel F.B. Morse, the developer of the Monterey Peninsula, including the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links. Morse lured her to the Monterey Peninsula by making her athletic director of Pebble Beach Golf Links. She promptly created the Pebble Beach Championship for Women, which began in 1923 and was last played in 1951. Hollins won the tournament seven times and was second six times.
In between Hollins’ golfing exploits, Morse put her in charge of creating what would become Cypress Point. She is credited with bringing the brilliant course architect Alister MacKenzie to the project. MacKenzie, as many know, was the lead architect for Augusta National. But first he worked on Cypress Point for Hollins.
MacKenzie has written about some of her input in the designing of the course, including the dramatic par three 16th that is perched on a rocky peninsula. MacKenzie wanted to make the hole a par four. He thought it was too difficult for a par three because the tee was just above the ocean surface with waves crashing around it, and the green was 233 yards away, high above, on a cliff.
Hollins disagreed and said it should be a par three. The story goes that she convinced MacKenzie when she dropped a ball on what would be the teeing area and hit it to the proposed green location. However, even today, sensible mid-handicappers would play it as a par four.
Always on the lookout for opportunity, Hollins discovered 570 acres in Santa Cruz, about 45 miles north of Monterey, California. She had made money with some of her own investments and bought it with the idea of building her own golf course there and hiring Alister MacKenzie for the design. MacKenzie loved the course so much that he built a home there for himself and his wife. The course was called Pasatiempo.
Pasatiempo opened in September of 1929 around the time of the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. Before the Amateur, MacKenzie walked with Bobby Jones, Francis Ouimet and Cyril Tolley as they played Cypress Point. After Jones’ loss in the first U.S. Amateur match, he went to Pasatiempo for an exhibition to open the course, playing with his friend Marion Hollins. So, it was through Marion Hollins that Jones was introduced to MacKenzie. It was because of the work Hollins and MacKenzie had done at Cypress Point and Pasatiempo that Jones asked MacKenzie to design what would be his new course in Augusta, Georgia.
While many people suffered during the Great Depression, Hollins, likely because of her family connections, continued to have visitors from stage, screen and New York society. Stars who came to Pasatiempo for golf included Claudette Colbert, Bing Crosby, Jack Dempsey, Joan Fontaine, Mary Pickford, Will Rogers, Babe Didrikson Zaharias and members of the Chrysler, Rothschild, Vanderbilt and Whitney families.
Marion Hollins died in 1944 at age 51.
