Professional Career
In 1962 she won her first tournament, the Kelly Girls Open. She won a total of six major championships. She was LPGA Player of the Year seven times between 1966 and 1973, won the Vare Trophy for best scoring average by an LPGA Tour Player a record seven times between 1965 and 1972, and entered the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1975. She was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1965 and 1967. She was Named "Golfer of the Decade" by Golf Magazine for the years 1968 to 1977 during the 1988 Centennial of Golf in America celebration. She received the 1985 William Richardson Award from the Golf Writers Association of America for consistent outstanding contributions to golf.
She was the U.S. team captain at the inaugural Solheim Cup match in 1990.
In 1974 Whitworth won the Orange Blossom Classic. It was her fifth triumph in that tournament that was also known during its existence as the St. Petersburg Open. Only three other LPGA golfers have won the same tournament five times.
Whitworth retired from competitive golf in 2005 after competing in the BJ's Charity Classic, an event on the Women's Senior Golf Tour. She is a member of the New Mexico Hall of Fame, Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Texas Golf Hall of Fame, and the Women's Sports Foundation Hall of Fame
Read more about this topic: Kathy Whitworth
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)