Mickey Wright
Mickey Wright, born Mary Kathryn Wright on February 14, 1935, in San Diego, California, is celebrated as one of the greatest female golfers in history. Raised in a supportive family, she began playing golf at a young age, encouraged by her father, an amateur golfer. Her talent quickly became evident, and she turned professional after an impressive amateur career that included significant tournament successes. Known for her exceptional long-drive capabilities and elegant swing, Wright won a total of 82 tournaments, including four LPGA Championships and four US Women's Opens. In 1963, she achieved a remarkable milestone by winning thirteen major tournaments in a single year, a record that highlights her dominance in the sport. Throughout her career, she earned numerous accolades, including being named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year twice. Despite facing challenges later in life, including a back injury, Wright's contributions to golf were recognized when she was inducted into the LPGA Tour Hall of Fame. She passed away on February 17, 2020, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire golfers around the world.
Mickey Wright
- Born: February 14, 1935
- Birthplace: San Diego, California
- Died: February 17, 2020
- Deathplace: Florida, United States
Sport: Golf
Early Life
Mary Kathryn Wright was born in San Diego, California, to attorney Arthur Wright and Mary Kathryn Wright on February 14, 1935. With the same legal name as her mother, she soon became known as “Mickey.” She grew into an adolescent with a larger-than-ordinary body. Her friends at school sometimes teased her, calling her “Moose.” She later said that this teasing motivated her to find something at which she could excel.
Golf proved to be Wright’s niche. Luckily for her, she was already good at it. Her father was an amateur golfer, and he had encouraged her to practice on a driving range since she was nine years old. By the age of eleven, Wright played her first round and scored 145. At twelve, she broke 100; at thirteen, she was already down to 80 strokes per round. For years, she had been reading everything she could about golf and keeping scrapbooks of the famous golfers she idolized.
The Road to Excellence
Wright played in her first tournament in San Diego when she was fifteen. She shot a 70. By the next year, she was beating the male professionals at her local course. At one point, her elbow kept flying out too much on the backswing. Professional Paul Runyan showed her how to weaken her grip to fix that. Wright’s mother made her an elastic band that let her arms swing freely but would not allow her elbows to separate. Wright practiced by the hour, wearing the contraption. By 1952, she had progressed so well and quickly that she was able to claim victory at the United States Golf Association’s Junior Girls’ Championship.
Wright enrolled at Stanford University. When summer came, she was back on the links, proving herself as the best-scoring amateur in the US Open, as well as the St. Petersburg Open and the Tam O’Shanter tournaments. She was also the runner-up in the US Amateur. After only one year in college, she convinced her father to let her take a leave of absence from school in order to play as an amateur on the professional tour that coming winter. Wright did so well on the tour that, when she calculated what she would have earned had she played as a professional instead of as an amateur, she saw that it made sense for her to immediately switch to professional status.
The Emerging Champion
As a professional, Wright earned an excellent income right from the start. When she was twenty years old, she earned $7,000, and then in the next two years, $8,500 and $12,000, respectively. By 1958, she was winning major tournaments like the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Championship and the US Open.
Later in that year, though, she went into a slump during the St. Petersburg Open. Her roommate, Betsy Rawls, recognized Wright’s self-pity for what it was and snapped her out of it. Rawls made Wright see that she could blame her performance on no one but herself.
In 1960, Wright began to work with her new golf teacher, Earl Stewart, the professional at the Oak Cliff Country Club in Dallas, Texas. Wright moved to Dallas to be near him. As a first and essential lesson, Stewart taught Wright how to relax her perfectionist attitude toward work. He wanted her to play one shot at a time without getting emotionally involved in the shots to come or those behind her. Stewart’s primary assistance was psychological, but he also worked on Wright’s swing.
As a result of Stewart’s tutelage, Wright won the Vare Trophy for lowest average strokes per round in 1960. For the next three years, no one surpassed her average. The following year, she achieved a remarkable feat: She was the winner of the US Women’s Open, the LPGA Championship, and the Titleholders Championship.
The year 1963 proved to be Wright’s greatest year ever and represented one of the greatest years ever achieved by a woman golfer. She won thirteen major tournaments, for a lifetime total of fifty-three tournament victories, including her fourth LPGA title. In addition, her average score was 72.81, the lowest among all her competitors, for the fourth time. The Associated Press polled sports editors nationwide for their annual selection of female athlete of the year. Wright was the easy choice.
Continuing the Story
Between 1961 and 1964, Wright’s income rose from $18,000 to $31,269, surpassing that of all other women golfers. In addition to her place at the top of LPGA money-winners, Wright was also the best long-ball hitter. She consistently hit drives averaging 225 to 270 yards. Once, aided by a strong wind, she overshot the green of a 385-yard hole. Wright was a strong, 5-foot 9-inch golfer; she was no longer self-conscious about her size.
Wright’s swing was considered the best of all time. Golfers everywhere marveled at her grace and balance and at how well her swing was synchronized. She never appeared to be swinging hard, yet she could hit as far as the top male players and was compared to Jack Nicklaus.
Later, Wright went into the brokerage business, while living in Port St. Lucie, Florida. When she injured her back, she stopped playing golf regularly. Though she made her last official LPGA Tournament appearance in 1980, Wright competed in the Senior Sprint Challenge from 1993 to 1995. She finished in the top five each year, including a second-place finish in 1994. Her paycheck from that event was $30,000, the largest of her career. Wright died of a heart attack on February 17, 2020, in Florida at the age of eighty-five.
Summary
Mickey Wright was the greatest long-ball hitter in the history of women’s golf. She is often considered the finest woman golfer ever. She won both the LPGA title and the US Women’s Open four times and the Vare Trophy five years in a row. For two years in succession, she was named female athlete of the year by the Associated Press. She was the first woman ever to win as many as thirteen major tournaments in a single year. Wright had the second-highest number of tournament titles, eighty-two, behind Kathy Whitworth, and in 1999, the Associated Press named her golfer of the century. For all of her achievements in golf, she was inducted into the LPGA Tour Hall of Fame.
Bibliography
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Goldstein, Richard. "Mickey Wright, One of the Greatest Players in Women's Golf, Dies at 85." The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/obituaries/mickey-wright-dies.html. Accessed 4 Nov. 2020.
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Wright, Mickey. Play Golf the Wright Way. Dallas, Tex.: Taylor, 1990.