Mickey Wright leaves a legacy of big wins, beautiful swing

Golf great and early LPGA force, dies at 85

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida, Feb 18, (AP): The swing was so fundamentally sound that it got the attention of anyone who knew and cared about golf, even those considered to be among the greatest to ever play.

The appeal was so strong that it carried an entire tour, even as the attention became suffocating. The rate of winning was unprecedented. No one had ever held all four major championships at the same time.

That was the essence of Mickey Wright. Unlike the modern version Tiger Woods - Wright was consumed more with seeking perfection in the golf swing than utter domination, although one led to the other.

“I was always practicing, and repracticing, the same thing, over and over and over,” Wright said in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “You never get it. You just borrow it for a day or two. The feel of contact with a golf ball is unlike anything I ever experienced. And I loved it.”

Wright died on Monday of a heart attack at age 85, leaving behind a legacy that is measured as much by aesthetic beauty of her swing as her 82 victories and 13 majors during a comet-like career on the LPGA Tour.

She retired from full-time competition in 1969 when she was 34.

No telling how many times she could have won.

Wright won the LPGA Championship and the US Women’s Open in 1959. That began a seven-year stretch in which she won 59 times and 12 majors. She won at least 10 times a year for four successive years, and she still holds the LPGA Tour record for 13 wins in a single season.

Ben Hogan agreed to a rare interview in 1984 with the late Rhonda Glenn, who said she was setting up two tape recorders when she mentioned that Mickey Wright passed along her regards. Glenn said Hogan leaned back in his chair with a big smile, looked into the distance an said, “Mickey Wright ... greatest swing I ever saw. Boy, what a swing!”

Byron Nelson also said her swing was good as there ever was, and that came to define Wright.

“She was the best I’ve ever seen,

In this July 1, 1961 file photo, Mickey Wright poses after winning her third Women’s National Open golf championship, at the Baltusrol Golf Club at Springfield, New

Jersey. (AP)

man or woman,” Kathy Whitworth told 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 swings. But nobody hit it like Mickey, just nobody.”

Judy Rankin recalls a different impact. She joined the LPGA Tour as a teenager when Wright was at the peak of her powers.

“In her time, because of her enormous skill, she got the LPGA a lot of kudos from men in the game,” Rankin said Monday night from her home in Texas. “That’s happening a lot more today. In that time, it didn’t happen at all. In Mickey, I think the men saw something else. That was really good for us.” But only for so long. Wright held such appeal that sponsors threatened to cancel tournaments if she didn’t play. And Wright realized if the tournaments went away, the other players had nowhere else to go. So she played.

Wright averaged 30 tournaments a year between 1962 and 1964. She drove from one stop to the next, and when she arrived at her hotel for the night, she would hit putts into a glass in her room to get feel back into the hands that had been wrapped around a steering wheel all day.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, Feb 18, (AP): Florida lawmakers sought to delay when college athletes can begin striking endorsement deals, and agreed to extend the game clock for the NCAA on its own to address the issue of compensation for the 450,000 student athletes under its purview.

But the move did not slow the momentum that could make Florida the second state in the country – behind California – to allow student athletes to make money off their names much like professional athletes now do.

While the California law won’t go into effect until 2023, the proposal in Florida would have allowed athletes from some of the country’s highest profile sports programs to be the first in the country to reap the benefits of a growing movement to undo longstanding NCAA prohibitions.

If signed into law as expected, the new rules would have gone into effect July 1. But a Florida Senate committee on Monday unanimously agreed to push back that date a year, giving the collegiate body some wiggle room.

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis has already expressed his support for the effort. The movement has gained steam not only among lawmakers in Florida, but across several other states.

As a result, the NCAA has been under pressure to address the issue. Last year, it vowed to take up the matter but gave no definitive timeline to do so.

While there are still differing versions of the proposal, the essence of the bills would protect athletes from losing scholarships or being thrown off teams because of endorsement deals.

For years, the NCAA had argued that allowing athletes to profit from their prowess in the field or arena would do away with the distinction between amateur and professional athletes - a notion that has been increasingly dismissed by advocates who say colleges and the NCAA itself has for years profited from student athletics.

College sports generate billions of dollars in revenue, including $1 billion annually for the NCAA. But none of that money is allowed to go to college athletes.