Mickey Wright
Golfer who was hailed as the greatest woman player but disliked being compared to Arnold Palmer
MICKEY WRIGHT, who has died aged 85, was widely cited as the outstanding woman golfer in the game’s history; Ben Hogan judged her to have “the greatest golf swing I ever saw”.
She dominated the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour in the US in the first half of the 1960s, to the extent that by 1964 Sports Illustrated was detecting signs of professional ennui: “Mickey Wright, the best woman golfer of all time, is an Alexander the Great in Bermuda shorts. She is only 29, but for her there are very few records left to break, frontiers to push back or worlds to conquer.”
She won 13 majors, including four victories in the US Women’s Open and four in the LPGA Championship, and with her final tally of 82 wins she set a record that has only been beaten by her friend Kathy Whitworth, with 88. She proved so popular with the gallery that some sponsors would not run tournaments unless she was guaranteed to appear. Her winnings in the 1960s ran into tens of thousands of dollars – an unprecedented sum in the women’s game.
Statuesque and bespectacled, she gave off an air of cool competence, and her fluid, powerful swing was the envy of every golfer, male or female, of her generation. She could be inconsistent, however: “Sometimes I lose control of my emotions so completely that I don’t even know where I am or that it’s me hitting the ball.”
Perhaps her finest hour came in November 1964, during the inaugural Tall City Open at the Hogan Park course in Texas. Having played uncharacteristically poorly, she began the final day in 11th place, 10 shots behind the leader; she proceeded to shoot 62 on a course on which no golfer had ever gone below 66, establishing an LPGA 18-hole record that would not be broken for 34 years. She ended up tied for the lead, and completed her remarkable comeback by birdieing the two holes of the suddendeath play-off to win the tournament.
Although generally mildmannered, Mickey Wright could be riled, especially when journalists called her “the female Arnold Palmer”: “Palmer and I don’t have a thing in common. I have a classic swing. His is all wrong. He’s just lucky he’s strong as an ox.”
Mickey Wright strained to perfect all aspects of her game. When she started to play professionally in the 1950s her putting was mediocre, yet by 1967 the Golf Writers Association of America named her the game’s best putter, of either sex.
By this time, however, Mickey Wright had begun to feel the strain – anxiety, an ulcer – of meeting the expectations of her coaches and public; she also had to combine her playing career with an exhausting social schedule during a two-year term as president of the LPGA.
A sprained ankle in 1969 prompted her to announce her retirement at 34, having amassed more wins than most first-class golfers manage in much longer careers. In the event she did resume a sporadic professional career, playing happily on her own terms.
Mary Kathryn Wright was born in San Diego on February 14 1935. She became hooked on golf when, aged 11, she attended an exhibition at San Diego Country Club hosted by Byron Nelson. When her father Arthur, a lawyer, took her to the driving range, she swung so hard at her first session that she broke every club in her starter set.
She was 5ft 8in tall at 11, and pupils at Herbert Hoover High School nicknamed her “Moose”: “I had a terrible inferiority complex.
I needed something to show my prowess. Golf was it.” Her mother would drive her on the 250-mile round trip every Saturday to take lessons with Harry Pressler, who shaped her swing.
Mickey won the US Girls’ Junior Championship in 1952 before going on to study Psychology at Stanford University; she left after a year to concentrate on golf. In 1954, still an amateur, she was paired with Babe Zaharias in the final 36 holes of the Women’s Open; Mickey recalled her removing her girdle at one hole before yelling to the gallery: “Just watch me hit it now.”
Turning professional later that year, she joined the LPGA tour in 1955. By 1962 her book How to Play Golf the Wright Way was a bestseller. On retiring in 1969 she enrolled at Southern Methodist University, but soon left to resume competitive golf part-time.
Although she was playing rarely by the end of the 1970s, she was still effective enough to come second to Nancy Lopez in one tournament in 1979. She birdied the final hole of her last competitive game, at the 1995 Sprint Senior Classic.
In retirement she lived next to a golf course in Florida. She missed her playing career terribly in her final years, but felt that there was no point in playing a substandard game.
Though shunning the limelight, she remained a mentor to younger players, latterly advising Lucy Li, who aged 11 became the youngest ever qualifier for the Women’s Open in 2014.
Mickey Wright, who was unmarried, continued to work privately on her game into old age, observing in 2017 that “the joy comes from … identifying problems and then fixing them.”
Mickey Wright, born February 14 1935, died February 17 2020