LPGA hall of famer Wright dies at 85
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The Mickey Wright room in the United States Golf Association Museum in New Jersey is the association's first permanent exhibit honouring a female golfer.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
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MIAMI • Mickey Wright, who won 82 LPGA Tour tournaments, 13 of them Majors, and was perhaps the finest player in the history of women's golf, died at the age of 85 after suffering a heart attack on Monday night.
The American had been hospitalised in Florida for the past few weeks after being injured in a fall.
A long hitter known for her compact and fluid swing, she dominated the Tour in the late 1950s and much of the '60s and was eclipsed in career victories only by Kathy Whitworth (88) and in Major victories only by Patty Berg (15).
Wright won both the US Women's Open and the LPGA Championship four times, and she captured the Western Open three times and the Titleholders Championship twice when they were Major events.
She was named the Woman Athlete of the Year by The Associated Press (AP) in 1963, when she won 13 LPGA tournaments, still a record for a single season, and in 1964, when she won 11 times.
Wright, in 1961 and 1962, and Tiger Woods, in 2000 and 2001, are the only golfers to have captured four consecutive Majors.
Wright's three women's Major victories in a single year (she won the US Women's Open, the LPGA Championship and the Titleholders in 1961) have since been equalled only by Babe Zaharias (1950), Pat Bradley (1986) and Park In-bee (2013).
In December 1999, a six-member panel assembled by the AP voted her the top women's golfer of the 20th century, while the late Ben Hogan, a nine-time Major winner, was often quoted as saying she "had the finest golf swing" he saw.
"She was the best I've ever seen, man or woman," Whitworth added in an interview for ESPN in 2015.
"I've had the privilege of playing with Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer and all of them.
"And some of our ladies had wonderful golf swings. But nobody hit it like Mickey, just nobody."
In an interview with Sports Illustrated in 2000, Wright spoke of a competitive fire which complemented that form, saying: "The great winners in golf - Hogan, Nicklaus, (Bobby) Jones, you might have to think about Tiger - they were all great swingers, but their inner drive was off the charts, too."
Asked if she would include herself in that list, she replied: "Yes, I would."
Except for a brief retirement in the mid '60s, Wright played regularly on the Tour until 1969 - her last victory on the circuit was in 1973 - and was inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame in 1964.
Living in retirement in Port St Lucie, Florida, she made few public appearances in her later years, telling magazine Golf World in 2000 she "liked life simple".
NY TIMES
