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Founders' Note

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High praise

It’s nice to know that Mickey Wright, one of our first Hall of Fame inductees, continues to be recognized on a national level for her contributions to the game.

By Rob Lyon and Eric MarsonPublished: December, 2009

This month marks the eighth year we have inducted five people into the Southland Golf Hall of Fame. It’s our way of honoring people who have helped grow the game and accomplished great things on the course.

While we were readying profiles for our 2009 inductees — Corey Pavin, Phil Rodgers, Marlene Hagge, Charlie Sifford and Richard Nixon — we were pleased to learn about a distinguished award received by a member of our first class, Mickey Wright.

Born in San Diego and hailed as the greatest woman golfer of the 20th century, Wright received the United States Golf Association’s 2010 Bob Jones Award in late October.

It’s the association’s highest honor, created in 1955 to recognize a person’s “distinguished sportsmanship in golf.”

It’s impossible to argue against Wright’s inclusion on a list that recognizes the spirit and attitude of Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur ever to play the game. Her list of accomplishments speaks for itself with the 1952 U.S. Girls Junior title, 82 LPGA Tour victories and 13 major titles.

At the age of 27, over a 12-month span in 1961 and 1962, she held all four major titles, and she won the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average on the LPGA Tour from 1960-64.

But it wasn’t just on the course where Wright made a difference. She served as LPGA president in 1963 and 1964, part of a critical decade in which the player-run Tour was attempting to establish itself as a legitimate professional sports organization.

James Bunch, a member of the USGA Executive Committee and chairman of the Bob Jones Award Committee, alluded to Wright’s ability and demeanor when announcing the award.

“Many believe that she is the best woman golfer of all time,” he said. “This compliment, however, has been eclipsed by the many comments about her other contributions to the game, including her strong sense of the importance of integrity and etiquette in the game and the way she always went out of her way to help many of the younger players on the LPGA Tour. She personifies the essence of sportsmanship and the ideals behind the Bob Jones Award.”

And to think that it all began on the courses of San Diego County, where Wright picked up the game at the age of 11. Her brilliant career ended for the most part when she retired in 1969, at the early age of 34. She surprised the golf world, however, by winning the 1973 Colgate Dinah Shore (now the LPGA Tour’s first major of the year, the Kraft Nabisco Championship) in Rancho Mirage.

Now 74, Wright hasn’t played golf publicly since her stint at the Sprint Senior Challenge from 1993 to 1995.

But her accomplishments are important to tout and recognize, even in today’s hectic world.

Former USGA President Judy Bell wrote this in support of Wright’s nomination for the Bob Jones Award:

“Devoted to perfection, she nevertheless remains one of the most gracious people in all of sport. Modest as a winner, generous when she was so rarely defeated, Mickey Wright personifies the code of the true champion. No one has loved the game more than Mickey Wright.”

The award ceremony will be held February 6 at the USGA’s annual meeting in Pinehurst, N.C. We’ll be there in spirit, since Mickey Wright is our ultimate hometown hero.