Former LPGA star Laura Baugh finds home in Augusta

It didn’t take former LPGA Tour star Laura Baugh long to get to Augusta National Golf Club on Wednesday to attend a practice round. She lives three miles away.

Baugh, who turns 60 next month, was the LPGA’s rookie of the year in 1973 and played the tour through 2000, finishing as a runner-up 10 times with 70 top-10 finishes. She was the pretty face of the tour in her early years through TV and print ads.

She moved to Augusta in Octo­ber 2013 on the spur of the moment, and less than a year later, she started the Laura Baugh Golf School, which is part of the Jones Creek Golf Center in Evans.

After living in Orlando, Fla., she was looking for a fresh start. She chose Augusta after her youngest daughter, Jamie Cole, now 17, played in a junior tournament at Forest Hills Golf Club. They liked the area near the course, and Laura asked where Jamie would be interested in moving to Augusta after the school year. Jamie suggested they move right then, so they did. Laura bought a house near Forest Hills.

She didn’t know it at the time, but a neighbor told her it’s the same house Dave Marr rented when he played in the Masters nine times from 1960 through 1970.

“I’m such good friends with Dave Marr III, I know Dave Marr Jr. and I knew Dave Marr very well,” she said. “It’s a small world and I’m convinced nothing is by happenstance. Everything happens for a reason. This was the only house for sale within the circumference that my daughter and I circled.”

The move to Augusta was “a no-lose situation,” Baugh said. “I moved to a place that has wonderful people. It’s got arguably the best golf tournament in the world once a year. I love to run; it’s got great hills. It’s a different time for me in my life. My youngest daughter is going to be 18. I’m not married. I’m definitely able to put in the time for a golf school. … It’s all exciting, a little scary, but exciting.”

When Baugh attended the 2004 Masters, it was the first time she’d been at Augusta National in 37 years. In 1977, she was a 20-year-old “madly in love” with her future husband, Bobby Cole, who was playing in his fifth Masters.

She had a “wife’s credential,” she said, and followed Cole everywhere at Augusta National.

“On Tuesday, I walked inside the ropes with him,” she said. “Everything was completely whatever I wanted. I ate there. When I came back last year, I saw it from a gallery’s point of view so it was a different look.”

But not much had changed about the tournament.

“It’s odd because one of the great things is that the real things, the important things, haven’t changed,” she said. “It’s bigger and grander and the golf course is longer and only so many people are allowed in there. … The Masters still takes your breath away. The whole atmosphere, the condition, the whole way it’s run.”

She said the concession prices are still similar, and the iconic leaderboards look the same as they did on her last visit.

“Tradition is priceless,” she said while bemoaning the LPGA’s decision to take Dinah Shore’s name off one of its flagship events.

Baugh plays in a few LPGA Legends events each year, but she has another reason to keep her game sharp now. In February, the U.S. Golf Association announced it was creating the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, starting in 2018.

“I think it’s overdue. I think it’s great,” she said.

Baugh tried to qualify for the men’s event last year.

“I tried to make a statement,” she said. “When I did the qualifying over in Atlanta for the men’s, the other players would say, ‘Laura, why aren’t you just playing in the ladies?’ There was not one man who didn’t know there wasn’t a U.S. Women’s Senior Open. The minute they found out, they were like, ‘Good, you should be here.’ There was 100 percent support. Good for the USGA. I love the USGA. They really made the good decision.”