Mickey Wright

Hometown

San Diego

California

Year Inducted

1976

Inducted Category

Competitor

Birthdate

Feb 14,1935

Date Deceased

Feb 17,2020

Major Championships: 13

LPGA Championship: 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963
U.S. Women’s Open: 1958, 1959, 1961, 1964
Titleholders Championship: 1961, 1962
Women’s Western Open: 1962, 1963, 1966

Additional LPGA Tour Wins: 69

1956: Jacksonville Open
1957: Sea Island Open, Jacksonville Open, Wolverine Open
1958: Sea Island Open, Opie Turner Open, Dallas Open
1959: Jacksonville Open, Cavalier Open, Alliance Machine International Open
1960: Sea Island Open, Tampa Open, Grossinger Open, Eastern Open, Memphis Open
1961: St. Petersburg Open, Miami Open, Columbus Open, Waterloo Open, Spokane Women’s Open, Sacramento Valley Open, Mickey Wright Invitational
1962: Sea Island Women’s Invitational, Milwaukee Open, Heart of America Invitational, Albuquerque Swing Parade, Salt Lake City Open, Spokane Open, San Diego Open, Carlsbad Cavern Open
1963: Sea Island Women’s Invitational, St. Petersburg Women’s Open, Alpine Civitan Open, Muskogee Civitan Open, Dallas Civitan Open, Babe Zaharias Open, Waterloo Women’s Open Invitational, Albuquerque Swing Parade, Idaho Centennial Ladies’ Open, Visalia Ladies’ Open, Mickey Wright Invitational
1964: Peach Blossom Invitational, Clifford Ann Creed Invitational, Squirt Ladies’ Open Invitational, Muskogee Civitan Open Invitational, Lady Carling Eastern Open, Waldemar Open, Milwaukee Jaycee Open, Visalia Ladies’ Open, Tall City Open, Mary Mills Mississippi Gulf Coast Invitational
1965: Baton Rouge Invitational, Dallas Civitan Open
1966: Venice Ladies Open, Shreveport Kiwanis Invitational, Bluegrass Ladies Invitational, Pacific Ladies’ Classic, Shirley Englehorn Invitational, Mickey Wright Invitational
1967: Shreveport Kiwanis Club Invitational, Bluegrass Invitational, Lady Carling Open, Pensacola Ladies Invitational
1968: Port Malabar Invitational, Palm Beach County Open, Tall City Open, 500 Ladies Classic
1969: Bluegrass Invitational
1973: Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle

Additional Wins: 9

1952: U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship
1954: World Amateur Championship
1959: Hoosier Celebrity
1961: Haig and Haig Scotch Mixed Foursomes
1962: Naples Pro-Am
1963: Haig and Haig Scotch Mixed Foursomes, Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf
1966: Ladies World Series of Golf, Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf
1967: Seven Lakes Invitational

Awards & Honors:

Vare Trophy: 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964
Los Angeles Times Sports Award: 1960-61
San Diego Breithard Hall of Fame: 1961
President, LPGA: 1961-64
Breitbard Hall of Fame: 1962
LPGA leading money winner: 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964
Woman Athlete of the Year, Associated Press: 1964
Putter of the Year, GWA: 1966
Babe Zaharias Award: 1980
International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame: 1981
Golfer of the Decade (1958-67), GOLF Magazine: 1988
California Golf Writers Association Hall of Fame: 1993
The Memorial Tournament Honoree: 1994
Female Golfer of the Century, Associated Press: 1999
Stanford University Athletic Hall of Fame: 2000
Southern California Golf Association Hall of Fame: 2007
PGA of America Hall of Fame: 2017

Ben Hogan described her swing as the best he ever saw. So did Byron Nelson. For 14 years, she dominated women’s golf, winning 82 tournaments and carrying the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour on her shoulders. Mickey Wright was not burdened by potential. Potential, in her words, was but a hope to be fulfilled. What made her retire, at age 34, was the burden of being Mickey Wright.

“The pressure was so great,” remembers Kathy Whitworth. “Sponsors threatened to cancel their tournaments if she didn’t play. And, knowing that if they canceled, the rest of us wouldn’t be able to play, Mickey would always play.”

The buzzword today is burnout. Wright played 33 tournaments in 1962, another 30 in 1963 and 27 in 1964. She won 10, 13 and 11 tournaments in those years, and as the LPGA’s president, it was Wright’s duty to promote the tour by doing every conceivable interview and attending every press conference that was scheduled. That just wasn’t her. “I’m not real good as far as wanting to be in front of people, glorying in it and loving it,” Wright has said. “I think you have to love that to make that kind of pressure tolerable. It finally got to where it wasn’t tolerable to me.”

“I feel as if I’ve earned my own version of a master’s degree in psychology in study and experience, trial and error, on golf courses throughout the United States. For psychology…is as integral a part of good golf as an efficient swing.”

It had also reached the point where there wasn’t much left to accomplish. Wright won the U.S. Women’s Open and the LPGA Championship four times each. She won the Vare Trophy five times, was the leading money winner four times, twice had winning streaks of four straight tournaments and held LPGA records for lowest round (62), lowest nine-hole score (30) and most birdies in a round (nine). At the peak of her career, Herbert Warren Wind described her as “a tall, good-looking girl who struck the ball with the same decisive hand action that the best men players use, she fused her hitting action smoothly with the rest of her swing, which was like Hogan’s in that all the unfunctional moves had been pared away, and like Jones’ in that its cohesive timing disguised the effort that went into it.”

Citing an adverse reaction to sunlight, an aversion to flying and foot problems, Wright cut back her schedule dramatically after the 1969 season to lead a quieter, simpler life, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Although she came back in 1973 to win the Dinah Shore, Wright knew that she had fulfilled her potential and elected to bow out on her terms. “I maintain that she could have won 100 tournaments if she hadn’t quit early,” says Whitworth, who won 88.

Born February 14, 1935, in San Diego, California, Wright began to hit balls with her father at age 4. At the age of 11 she received her first lesson at La Jolla Country Club, and within a year had broken 100. Three years later, she posted a round of 70 in a local tournament and, in 1952, Wright won the USGA Girls’ Junior championship for her first national title.

Fact

Mickey Wright’s 13 wins in 1963 remain the most in a single LPGA season.

For a year, Wright studied psychology at Stanford, but she left school after her freshman year to play a fulltime schedule. In the summer of 1954, she lost in the final of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, finished fourth in the Women’s Open to Babe Zaharias and won the World Amateur staged by golf promoter George S. May. Those three tournaments convinced Wright to leave school and turn professional. “Golf has brought me more rewards, financially and personally, than I ever could have earned had I become the psychology teacher I set out to be,” Wright said later in life. “I feel as if I’ve earned my own version of a master’s degree in psychology in study and experience, trial and error, on golf courses throughout the United States. For psychology…is as integral a part of good golf as an efficient swing.”

Mickey Wright was originally inducted through the LPGA category.