Oh, Kentucky

The girls are golfing at Bowling Green Country Club today in the first round of the Leachman Buick-GMC-Cadillac/KHSAA Girls State Golf tournament, and so the Kentucky desk pauses to recognize some of the state's greats of the sport. The Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame includes eight women among its inductees:

-- Myra VanHoose Blackwelder, four-time KHSAA champion (1970-73) with Lexington Lafayette High School, the first female athlete to be awarded a full athletic scholarship to the University of Kentucky and 1980 LPGA rookie of the year;

-- Anne Combs, a Lexingtonian and five-time winner of the Women's State Amateur tournament, most recently in 1983;

-- Mary Lou Daniel Crocker, a Louisville native, 1962 U.S. Girls' Junior Championship in 1962 and the first and only woman to earn a letter in a men's varsity sport at the UK;

-- Bettie Lou Evans, a Mount Sterling native, UK's women's golf coach 1980-2011 and the school's current director of golf operations;

-- Marion Miley, "the only fine player in the insular world of golf to be murdered in her prime;"

-- Betty Rowland Probasco, an Irvine native, four-time State Am champ, 1950 National Intercollegiate Championship winner and 1955 Women’s Southern Golf Association Championship winner, and

-- Louise Wilson, a Goshen native whose successes spanned decades, such as six State Am titles captured from 1958 through '85.

Caldwell County High senior Emma Talley is shooting for her third-straight state title. Miss Talley tees off at 1:09 Central today.