Mickey Wright’s Pursuit of Greatness Began in San Diego

There is a wonderful symmetry to San Diego Country Club as the venue for the 2025 U.S. Senior Women’s Open. The history of women’s golf has deep roots here. Mary Kathryn Wright was born in San Diego on Valentine’s Day in 1935. Mickey, as everyone knew her, won local tournaments at San Diego C.C. as a teenager and in 1964 came home to capture the U.S. Women’s Open there for a record fourth time.

This year is not only the 90th anniversary of Mickey Wright’s birth but also marks the 70th anniversary of her rookie season on the LPGA Tour. In 1952, Wright won the U.S. Girls’ Junior then went off to Stanford University. While still a student, she made it to the finals of the 1954 U.S. Women’s Amateur, losing to fellow Californian Barbara Romack, 4 and 2, finished fourth in the U.S. Women’s Open and won the World Amateur Championship.

That run of success convinced her to turn pro and in 1955 she joined the LPGA Tour. When Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego wants to brag about alumni with success in sports, the first two names it can throw out are Wright, one of the best ever to swing a golf club, and Ted Williams, one of the best to ever swing a baseball bat. What followed for Wright was as remarkable for its artistry as it was for its success.

With a graceful, flowing swing that earned praise from both Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, Wright won 82 times on the LPGA Tour, second behind Kathy Whitworth's 88. Thirteen of her victories were in major championships, second to Patty Berg's 15. Wright and Betsy Rawls are the only four-time winners of the U.S. Women’s Open.

While also serving two stints as Tour president, Wright won at least one LPGA title for 14 consecutive seasons, from 1956 to 1969. That run culminated in her retirement from full-time golf at the age of 34 –  partly because of physical problems with her feet and partly exhaustion from her tireless efforts to promote the LPGA.  Despite injuries and her duties to grow the Tour, she remained a remarkable golfer: She is the only player to hold all four major LPGA Tour titles at the same time, winning the last two majors of 1961 and the first two of 1962.

Wright won the U.S. Women’s Open for the third time at Baltusrol Golf Club in 1961 by six strokes over Rawls. It included a masterful 69-72 on the 36-hole final day, posting the only sub-70 round of the championship. That prompted World Golf Hall of Fame writer Herbert Warren Wind of The New Yorker to pen: “It’s hard to think of a comparable exhibition of beautifully sustained golf in a national championship, unless it is Ben Hogan’s last two rounds at Oakland Hills in the 1951 Open.” 

History hangs heavy over San Diego Country Club. In addition to hosting the U.S. Women’s Open in 1964, the club was the venue for the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1993 and 2017. Upon entering the clubhouse, the Billy Casper Grill is on the right, the Mickey Wright Lounge is on the left. Few if any clubs have spawned two greater champions than Wright and Casper, each of whom were members in their youth; Casper, who won the U.S. Open in 1959 and 1966, remained a member until his death in 2015.

“It was a great experience for a little neophyte girl to watch [Casper] practice at dusk,” Wright told Golf Digest before the 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur. “He said at dusk or very early at dawn were the best times to practice putting, to develop feel.”

Wright’s passion for golf began when, age 11, she saw a 1946 exhibition match between Byron Nelson and Leo Diegel at San Diego C.C. At the time, Wright’s father, Arthur, was a member of La Jolla Country Club north of downtown San Diego, where Mickey first took lessons. Later, Arthur left La Jolla and joined San Diego C.C. south of downtown in Chula Vista.

“I got in with the women’s group down there, who are just wonderful people,” Wright said. “I played on San Diego Country Club’s city intramural team, and we won it. I just made a lot of good friends down there and spent a lot of time there.”

Her greatest memory of San Diego C.C. came at the 1964 U.S. Women’s Open. Wright defeated Ruth Jesson in an 18-hole playoff to win the title for a record fourth time.

“It was the first time my mother and father, who had been divorced, were both at a tournament I won,” Wright said. “They were there that day. And there’s something about winning at home that’s very special. You almost feel like you’re cheating, which is good honest cheating.”

When the USGA celebrated the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Women’s Open in 2020, Wright was asked about winning the championship four times. “Those four wins were the most important statistic in my résumé,” she said. “The only other statistic that means almost as much was winning 44 tournaments in four years,” which is what she did from 1961 through 1964.

In that span, Wright played almost constantly. She won 10 tournaments in both 1961 and ’62, 13 tournaments in 1963, a single-season record that still stands, and 11 in 1964.

“It was a lot of pressure to be in contention week after week for five or six years,” Wright told Golf World in 2000. “I guess they call it burnout now, but it wore me out. Unless you’re a golfer, you can’t understand the tension and pressure of tournament play. And it was the expectations: It was always, ‘What’s wrong with your game? Are you coming apart?’ Second or third isn’t bad, but it feels bad when you’ve won 44 tournaments in four years.”

The greatest praise came from her competitors – a telling sign of the respect Mickey garnered.

“Kathy [Whitworth] was the greatest winner,” said Louise Suggs, one of the 13 LPGA founders and champion of the U.S. Women’s Open in 1949 and ’52, “but Mickey was the greatest golfer.”

Wright was also a tireless promoter of the LPGA Tour and women’s golf, playing even when exhausted to please the sponsors.

“When Mickey was winning, she was also helping run the LPGA,” Whitworth said about her competitive foe and personal friend. “She was president of the Tour and she knew that if she skipped a tournament the sponsors wouldn’t be happy, so she’d play even when she was exhausted so that everyone else would have a chance at a payday.”

In June 2012, Wright became the first woman – and fourth player – to be honored with her own exhibition room at the USGA Golf Museum, in Liberty Corner, N.J., joining Hogan, Bob Jones and Arnold Palmer. Jack Nicklaus became the fifth person to have a dedicated room in 2015. Wright donated more than 200 personal items for the Mickey Wright Room. She also received the Bob Jones Award, the USGA's highest honor, in 2010.

“She was the best I’ve ever seen, man or woman,” Whitworth told espnW.com 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. She had 82 wins, but she would have won over 100 with no trouble if she had stayed on tour.”

At the heart of Wright’s success was her love of the game. She found joy in the challenge of shot making.Even in her later years, she’d hit balls off a mat at her Florida home into an adjacent fairway just to experience the pleasure of a well-struck shot.

“When I play my best golf,” Wright once said, “I feel as if I’m in a fog, standing back watching the Earth in orbit with a golf club in my hands.”

The fog Mickey Wright’s greatness emerged out of was the marine layer that often shrouds San Diego on misty mornings, the part of the Earth where she first picked up a golf club. This week that greatness will be honored by the USGA, San Diego Country Club and the 120 competitors in the 7th U.S. Senior Women’s Open.

Ron Sirak is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer whose work has previously appeared on USGA websites.