Frances "Bunty" Stephens (married name Frances Stephens Smith or Frances Smith Stephens; 26 July 1924 – 23 July 1978) was an English amateur golfer.

Personal life

Stephens was born in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

where her father Fred was club professional at

Bootle Bootle (pronounced ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside, England, which had a population of 51,394 in 2011; the wider Bootle (UK Parliament constituency), Parliamentary constituency had a population of 98,449. It is pa ...

Golf Club. She faced discrimination from golf administrators because of his

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

occupation. In 1955 she married Roy Smith, a Scottish Airlines pilot killed in a 1957 crash in Libya. They had one daughter. Stephens curtailed her playing career to raise her daughter, but subsequently was active in golf administration and developing junior golf. She was made

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

for "services to Ladies Golf" in the 1977 New Year Honours, a year before her death from cancer.

Golf career

Stephens' home club was

Royal Birkdale Royal Birkdale Golf Club is a golf course in the United Kingdom in North West England, located in Southport, Merseyside. It is one of the clubs in the rotation for both the Open Championship and Women's British Open and has hosted the Open Cham ...

. She won the

British Ladies Amateur The Women's Amateur Championship, previously known as the Ladies' British Open Amateur Championship, was founded in 1893 by the Ladies' Golf Union. It is organised by The R&A, which merged with the Ladies' Golf Union in 2017. Until the dawn of t ...

in 1949 and 1954, and was runner-up in 1951 and 1952. She played in all six

Curtis Cup The Curtis Cup is the best known team trophy for women amateur golfers, awarded in the biennial Curtis Cup Match. It is co-organised by the United States Golf Association and The R&A and is contested by teams representing the United States and " ...

s from 1950 to 1960, and was non-playing captain of the Great Britain and Ireland team in 1962 and 1972. Her final-hole victories over Polly Riley in the 1956 and 1958 tournaments secured a win and a draw respectively for the British team, the first time it retained the cup. In the United States she was "hardly known", though she finished tied for 6th in the 1949 U.S. Women's Open. She was also a non-playing captain of the British team in the

Vagliano Trophy The Vagliano Trophy is a biennial women's amateur golf tournament. It is co-organised by The R&A and the European Golf Association and is contested by teams representing "Great Britain and Ireland" and the "Continent of Europe". It is played in o ...

Herbert Warren Wind Herbert Warren Wind (August 11, 1916 – May 30, 2005) was an American sportswriter noted for his writings on golf. Early years Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, Wind began golf at age seven at the Thorny Lea Golf Club in Brockton, and played ...

called her a "slight, quiet, entirely undramatic girl" and an outstanding

clutch A clutch is a mechanical device that allows an output shaft to be disconnected from a rotating input shaft. The clutch's input shaft is typically attached to a motor, while the clutch's output shaft is connected to the mechanism that does th ...

player. Enid Wilson said she had "a very frail physique but ... the temperament of a tigress". Her swing had a pronounced hiatus at the top, which Wind called "most unimpressive", although Henry Cotton said she had "one of the prettiest swings in the game".

Team appearances

(representing Great Britain & Ireland):

1950 Events January * January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed. * January 5 – 1950 Sverdlovsk plane crash, Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 ...

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Cairo Fire, Black Saturday in Kingdom of Egypt, Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, ...

(winners),

1954 Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head ...

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, E ...

(winners),

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the thir ...

(tied),

1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Janu ...

1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...

(non-playing captain), 1972 (non-playing captain) *

(representing Great Britain & Ireland): 1947 (winners), 1948 (winners), 1949 (winners), 1953 (winners), 1955 (winners), 1959 (winners), 1971 (non-playing captain, winners) * Commonwealth Trophy (representing Great Britain): 1959 (winners), 1963 (winners)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephens, Frances English female golfers Amateur golfers Officers of the Order of the British Empire Deaths from cancer in the United Kingdom Sportspeople from Lancashire 1924 births 1978 deaths 20th-century English sportswomen