Inductees

Years before all of her golf success, before taking home trophies from the Missouri Women’s Amateur, before competing in LPGA Tour events and several USGA Women’s Senior Amateurs – before it all – there was a time when she was just trying to convince herself that she belonged.

For Barbara Bubany Berkmeyer, that moment came in college when representing the University of Missouri at the national tournament. She was matched opposite the defending champion, Arizona State’s Carol Sorenson, who lit a cigarette to calm nerves.

“We got to the 17^th hole and I was even,” Berkmeyer said. “I looked at my caddie and said, ‘I can’t believe that I am playing this woman who is a big deal and making her nervous. That’s when I finally realized that I can play this game.”

Berkmeyer played it well, actually, with a track record that led the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted her with the Class of 2021.

Check out the resume: Five Missouri Women’s Amateur titles (1965, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1984) and four runner-up finishes in that event (1968, 1972, 2000, 2003); and a 13-time champion of the Missouri Women’s Senior Amateur. That’s over five decades.

Nationally, she was a competitor in five U.S. Women’s Amateur Championships; four LPGA events (twice finishing with the low amateur score); the 2002 runner-up of the USGA Women’s Senior Amateur and twice a Round of 16 qualifier in the event (1999, 2000); and the runner-up of the 2002 Canadian Ladies National Senior Championship.

This for a St. Louis native whose game was groomed by her father, Frank, winner of the 1953 Iowa PGA Championship.

After the family relocated back to St. Louis from Iowa – and lived in a home near the No. 2 tee box at Algonquin Golf Club, where Frank was the greens superintendent – the game only grew on her.

A talented St. Louis amateur, Jimmy Jackson, helped to shape her game, too.

“My father respected him not only as a player but as a person,” Berkmeyer said. “He believed that, to learn golf, you needed to watch people who were excellent in it.”

She won the St. Louis Women’s District Championship in 1962 during her senior year at Nerinx Hall High School.

Berkmeyer soon became the first woman to receive a scholarship to Mizzou, and twice advanced to nationals. Turned out, Spencer Gould had contributed financially to the athletics department, in hopes that Berkmeyer could launch a national career.

However, she preferred not to chase the LPGA dream full-time.

“Golf has always been important, but it has never been a priority,” she once said. “Most of my life, it had to be something that I did that kept me healthy and interested. It was a family thing. But as far as being a priority, I had too many other things that were more important than golf.”

Her 1965 victory in the Missouri Women’s Amateur kick-started her statewide success.

“I could only play in that, because it was here in St. Louis and I could afford to,” Berkmeyer said.

Along the way, she won her first district title as a junior and then went on to win 10 district championships, two Metropolitan Amateur Championships and five Metro Senior Player of the Year awards.

In the Missouri Senior Women’s Amateur, her victories covered the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

She also was twice the Missouri Senior Women’s Player of the Year (2003, 2004) and won the 1999 Women’s Western Senior championship.

In the U.S. Women’s Amateur, she played in 1964, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1991, 2003 and also competed several years in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur and the USGA Women’s State Team Championships. In 2007, she placed third in the Women’s Western Senior Championship.

Along the way, Berkmeyer was a teacher for 25 years, mostly in the Parkway School District, and, from 1977 to 1979, served on the MU Board of Curators – and was its president in 1979.

She also raised a family with husband Rick. Their son, Skip, went on to be an NAIA All-American golfer at St. Ambrose University in Iowa.

“Some of my fondest memories are of family golf – my husband and son and I playing golf,” Berkmeyer said. “That’s what I remember most about golf. I think of standing at St. Andrews with my husband and son and playing golf, and there is nothing better than that. What I accomplished in golf is fun, but what golf has allowed me to do is fun.”