Long before she became a golf champion, personality, promoter, teacher and LPGA founding member, Patricia Jean Berg competed against the boys on south Minneapolis' sandlots.
Born in Minneapolis in 1918 and raised on Colfax Avenue while the 1920s roared, Berg ran track and was a winning park-board speedskater at Powderhorn Park. She played pickup hockey and basketball as well as intramural volleyball, basketball and softball when there were no girls' or women's teams.
Most famously, the red-haired, freckled tomboy later known everywhere as "Patty" quarterbacked a neighborhood boys' team called the 50th Street Tigers that included a blocker named Bud Wilkinson. That kid went on to lead the Gophers to three consecutive national championships in the mid-1930s and later legendarily coached Oklahoma.
"I was the quarterback because I was the only one who could remember the plays," she told the Star Tribune in 1999, seven years before she died at home in Florida at age 88.
The one she remembered calling mostly — known as 22 — went like this:
"Everybody ran wherever they wanted," she said. "We didn't have any tight ends or wide ends. We only had loose ends. We didn't lose any games — just teeth."
Her father, Herman, was a prosperous pre-Depression grain dealer who joined Interlachen Country Club in Edina. When he bought her brother a city golf pass, Patricia — third of four children — said there was no reason she shouldn't have one, too.
Her father agreed, provided she dedicate herself. Her mother, Theresa, had cared enough for her daughter's bruises and torn clothes and was pleased when Patricia embraced golf because of its tempo, rhythm and balance that taught her patience, concentration and confidence.
