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The Lanky Lass from New Mexico
Set the WABAC machine for November 1963, San Antonio, J. Press Maxwell’s formidable Pecan Valley Golf Club, a few weeks before the Kennedy assassination. After a fitful start, Kathy Whitworth, 24, is having her first big year on the LPGA Tour. With eight wins already, she enters the week the winner of three of the last 10 tournaments, with three seconds, finishing no worse than tenth.
Pecan Valley: Considered stout enough to host the PGA Championship in five years, this week it’s playing wet and long, “toughest course they played all year,” said one observer afterwards. “Period. Exclamation point.”
Per custom, the press bestows a nickname. Miss Whitworth—a longtime Dallas resident, born in Texas, but raised in the small town of Jal along the Texas/New Mexico border—becomes on second reference, “the Lanky Lass from New Mexico.”
Which she still is, far from her “peak” of 215 pounds, before her will, diet and golf pulled her out of the house, down the scale, and on her way into the record books. It’s hard to imagine her, as she recalls, “almost as wide as I was tall.” Harvey Penick teased, “It looked like her favorite sport was ice box,” but she says now, “there’s no question that if golf hadn’t come along I might not have lost all that weight.”
Eight wins notwithstanding, that week—as all that year—Mickey Wright was the favorite. Because you can’t help but notice, Mickey’s single-season, record-breaking 1963—with an astounding 13 wins!—netted $30,000. Tennis diva Serena Williams recently eclipsed Annika Sorenstam as the all-time earner in women’s sports and to balance out the comparative figures between 1963 and the present just insert two more triplets of zeroes. A short Whitworth chip leads to a costly bogey at the 72nd hole and her final-round 75 squandered what was once a three-shot lead. Watching her adversary play in, she confides to golf writer Johnny Williams: “Mickey can scare you to death when she is coming at you.” Forty-six years later, the comment elicits a laugh, a full, rich West Texas, gracious Kathy Whitworth laugh.
“She’s just such a great competitor and I know what she’s capable of,” she says. Notice the tense: present. Not, she WAS a great competitor, or I knew what she WAS capable of. For a moment we’ve been transported back in time. Pretty cool this WABAC machine stuff, eh?
She catches herself and continues: “That’s why when I lost to her I didn’t feel like…you know…I just got beat. But occasionally to beat Mickey…I could sneak one through there.”
Enter the trademark Whitworth humility. She’s unequivocal in her praise of Wright, one of the modern era’s true immortals. Remember this comes from a player with impeccable credentials, including 88 pro wins, more than anyone, ever. “There’s no question, and I still feel this way,” she says with conviction, “that Mickey was the best player ever.”
They finish tied at 299, and head back to the first tee for the playoff. Both find the middle of the fairway with their drives on the 405-yard, slight dogleg-left par-four. Kathy hits a 4-iron to 25 feet and two putts. Mickey pulls her 5-iron into the front left bunker, blasts out to 20 feet and misses her par putt. Your 1963 S.A. Civitan champion, the lanky lass. First prize: $1,300.
Next year she successfully defends her title, bettering her score by an amazing 12 strokes, and pockets an extra $200. Gracious in defeat, Mickey says: “Kathy deserved this win.”
They’re still in touch. “Much closer,” Whitworth says, “since we both left the tour.” They talk “about the tour, new players, the state of golf men and women. We don’t have an agenda, just touching base, just keeping up with each other.” Mickey was a positive influence even before Kathy, at 19, headed out with her mother in their green Plymouth, having made the fateful decision to turn pro. Betsy Rawls, another established Penick acolyte, was equally supportive. “It wasn’t an intimidation type of thing,” Kathy says. “(Mickey) helped me a lot. I’d go to her for advice. It wasn’t as much that other people couldn’t have told me the same thing, but I trusted her, and I knew if she said it, it was true. She helped me many times out there during my career.”
Years before Sorenstam had her star turn at Colonial, the LPGA greats teamed at the Legends of Golf, in Austin. Galleries loved them. The reclusive Wright was a sensation, as long, if not longer, off the tee than some of the men. They beat a bunch of teams, nine to be exact. PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman sidled up to Kathy—the memory provokes another laugh—and told her: “Enjoy it, because you won’t be back next year.”
That Mickey would play with her, “thrilled me to death,” she says. “I thought ‘Oh, boy!’ This is going to be a treat because I was still playing pretty well.” They were “right in the thick of it but then the course got too long for me and I couldn’t really help Mickey.”
True story, Harvey did tell her once, very early on: “You can play swinging like this, but you’re going to have to practice harder.”
“I just laughed. I tell people that he was appealing to my laziness. Okay, what do I have to do to fix it, to be better, or to not have to work so hard. He was just so clever in knowing what to tell a player.”
She still plays; still takes pleasure in the game although social golf was an adjustment. She’ll go out occasionally to play by herself. “You get into your mind, your game. You’re not worried about somebody else. That really was what the tour was about. Once you got inside the ropes, it was just you, what you’re trying to do. You’re concentrating and your focus is just on your game, not on what’s going on around you. That part I do miss.”
Her voice conveys nothing if not a champion’s clarity.
Photo credit: Courtesy USGA Archives/E. Schneider. |
