Honorees

In a career spanning only fourteen years, a classy lady with a swing Ben Hogan described as the best he ever saw raised women’s golf to a plateau no one else has ever reached. The winner of 82 titles on the LPGA Tour, including four U.S. Women’s Open championships, Mickey Wright ranks as one of the greatest-ever women’s golfers. Wright’s first victory was in the 1956 Jacksonville Open. She won three tournaments in 1957 and five in 1958, including the Women’s Open and the LPGA Championship.  In the next seven seasons, Mickey Wright won 63 tournaments, including at least one major championship a year.  She hit such high, towering shots that even men’s golfers were bowled over, and her pure skill netted side benefits when her instruction book, Play Golf the Wright Way, was published in 1962, as well as a syndicated newspaper column.

Mickey was the leading money winner four straight years and the Associated Press Woman of the Year twice. In 1962, she won 10 tournaments. In 1963, she won 13, four of them in a row. Mickey Wright played, not gingerly, not timidly, but with a full-throttled grace that called attention to her “perfect” swing.