Jane Blalock won more than a dozen times on the LPGA Tour and once made 299 cuts in a row. Yet some of her biggest battles were fought away from the course. By her own telling, one of the biggest ones began in 1971 with something that sounds almost silly today: a pair of shorts at a private club in Florida. In fact, it set her against Louise Suggs, one of the 13 founders of the LPGA and a 61-time winner on the tour.
To see where that started, we have to go to Pine Tree Golf Club in Florida that year.

The 1971 Dispute

Blalock was still making a name for herself when she joined Pine Tree Golf Club in Boynton Beach in 1971. Suggs was also a member. When Blalock looks back at how her troubles with the tour began, she keeps coming back to this year.

Writing about the same in her book, she said, “I believe it all went back to that Pine Tree incident.”

Blalock had started playing in shorts, and before long, the manager called her into his office to say that some of the women members had complained about her outfit. Moreover, the complaint led to the club passing a rule against shorts on the course. As things turned heated, Blalock had to resign her membership.

It’s easy to see how a pair of shorts could cause that much stir. Women’s golf had watched its image closely since its early days. A USGA account of the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open at Salem Country Club says women in the crowd wore half-length skirts and calf-length skirts, and that even Babe Zaharias, the tour’s biggest draw, would have worn shorts if she could. The LPGA was only four years old then, and its players were expected to make a good impression. Suggs came from that generation, and a private club in 1971 was still a place where skirts were the usual look.

Blalock’s Suspension and Her Fight With the LPGA

On paper, what happened next had nothing to do with shorts. A month after Blalock won the Dinah Shore Colgate Winners’ Circle on April 16, 1972, she was accused of moving her ball marker on the green at the Bluegrass Invitational in Louisville. She was disqualified and put on probation. Then 27 players signed an affidavit asking the tour to punish her more severely, and the LPGA board suspended her for a year starting June 1, 1972, saying her conduct went against its code of ethics. But notably, the tour never mentioned shorts.

The link to the Pine Tree incident was Blalock’s own belief, though she wasn’t the only one who thought the tour had gone too far. Fellow player Sandra Palmer spoke up for her, and she was herself put on probation and told to stop making statements of support. Events escalated, and Blalock sued the tour for five million dollars. A federal judge let her keep playing while the case went on, later ruling that the suspension was ill-founded.

Blalock stayed outspoken long after that. Another incident came in June 1985. The Washington Post caught up with her at the Lombardi Memorial Golf and Tennis Tournament, where she called herself the LPGA’s watchdog.

She said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m running around putting fires out.”

That year, she took another strong stand, and her latest target was the tour’s glamour marketing: an annual photo release showing players in evening gowns and slitted skirts, which she called a backward way to sell golf. She made a similar complaint in 1981 about photos of Jan Stephenson posing in shorts and bathing suits.

Notably, neither fight was about wearing shorts to play, but both raised the question of who gets to decide how a woman golfer should look.

That December, Golf Digest named her Comeback Player of the Year, and UPI reported how she had rebuilt her game and her look, including one very important point.

She said, “I had changed the length of my shorts.”

She didn’t explain how, but that change sat on a list alongside a change of partner, her equipment, her hairstyle, and a new coach. Suddenly, it was part of a much bigger change she brought to the course.

LPGA’s Dress Code

Eventually, shorts stopped being the issue, but the tour kept writing rules about clothes. In the middle of the 2017 season, the LPGA emailed players a stricter dress code. Plunging necklines and joggers were out, as were leggings unless worn under a skort or shorts. Skirts, skorts, and shorts had to be long enough that no one could see a sensitive area, even in undershorts and even when bending over. At pro-am parties, players were told to dress professionally, with cutoffs and jeans with holes banned. The first offense carried a $1,000 fine, which doubled with each subsequent offense.

The tour’s Heather Daly-Donofrio called the changes minor adjustments to account for changing fashion trends, meant to help players look professional and show the game in a good light. That was the same concern the tour had in 1954.

But things had changed by 2024. Golf Monthly reported that the tour’s FAQ allowed sleeveless and collarless shirts and set no length rule for skorts or shorts, though denim, cutoffs, and workout clothes were still off-limits.

Regardless, Blalock’s name stayed in the record books for much more than clothes. She later helped found the Legends Tour and was inducted into the Legends Hall of Fame in 2014. That’s a sharp turn of events for a player who once resigned from a club and fought with tour leadership over a pair of shorts—an issue that certainly outlasted the rules.