[T]oday is the closing round of the annual Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic, a women’s golf tournament she began 40 years ago as the Georgia Invitational and later renamed the Women’s Southern Intercollegiate Championships. It has become one of the largest, most competitive and longest-running women’s athletic events in the country, a fitting tribute to someone who spent nearly four decades laboring for the simple pleasure of seeing other women have the opportunity to play sports.

“It’s been forty years since this tournament started, and that speaks a lot to who Liz Murphey was,” said Landers, who was hired by Murphey and then-athletic director Vince Dooley in 1979. “For her to start this women’s golf tournament when she did, when most places didn’t even have women’s golf teams then, it was a big deal when you think about it now. That shows her vision and the passion she had, as well as the courage that she had to step out and dare to dream of something different for women athletes. That’s what Liz was about — that opportunity.”