The players who came along after Patty Berg—an LPGA founder, dynamic force of nature and ultimate ambassador of golf—learned things from her. Kathy Whitworth, who died on Christmas Eve at 83, sure did. When Whitworth was in her 40s, she was still a force on the women’s tour amid an influx of younger stars who would join her in the Hall of Fame one day.
“I thought she was a real old lady,” one of those newcomers, Patty Sheehan, told the Los Angeles Times in 1986 of first encountering Whitworth on tour. “It’s like meeting the Pope—you never expect to really meet the guy.”
Whitworth was still showing the youngsters a thing or two because she hewed to Berg’s philosophy on competition: “It’s not how quick you get there but how long you can stay.”
Berg won tournaments for a quarter century, 1937 to 1962, 60 in all, 15 of those majors, the most of any female golfer. Whitworth’s winning years spanned nearly as long, 1962 to 1985, and she lifted eight trophies after her 40th birthday, titles that took to her to the pinnacle of the sport.
That late push in middle age—historically rare in the women’s game, which makes Whitworth contemporary JoAnne Carner’s 19 wins after turning 40 even more phenomenal—meant 88 victories. That is the most on the LPGA or PGA Tours, six ahead of Mickey Wright, Sam Snead and Tiger Woods. Only Roberto De Vicenzo’s more than 130 victories on his home circuit in Argentina eclipses Whitworth’s tally on a single professional golf tour. As Ron Sirak, my former colleague at Golf World, has long been fond of pointing out, Whitworth also had 93 runner-up finishes. The other such one-two history that leaps to mind is Jack Nicklaus’ 18 victories and 19 seconds in professional major championships.
Whitworth was hard on herself and easy on those around her while achieving what she did, which goes a long way toward explaining the reactions to sudden death. She berated herself plenty for mistakes on the course—to a legendary degree, in fact—but to others Whitworth was kind and nurturing, a premier sportswoman, talented but humble.
“Things I really loved about Kathy Whitworth,” Judy Rankin tweeted after her friend’s passing. “She was always honest! Her word was good! You could count on her! She could make a case and be part of a great argument! She was never cocky! She was so good for the game and our tour.”
Whitworth lived most of her life outside Dallas but grew up in tiny Jal, New Mexico, on Texas’ western border. Taking up golf at 15, she was on tour at 19, in 1959. The game hooked her hard from the start. “I’ll never forget that first round,” Whitworth told the golf historian Rhonda Glenn in 1990. “I was terrible, but that made golf a real challenge. Because other sports had come to me so naturally, I was fascinated with this game I couldn’t master. Golf also appealed to me because I didn’t have to rely on another person in order to play. It was just me against the golf course, and I played against myself. How well I played didn’t depend on anyone else because I had par to shoot at.”
Motivated by golf’s universal appeal, Whitworth developed into an exceptional player with an extraordinary ability to get the ball in the hole. She was the LPGA’s leading money winner eight times between 1965 and 1973. The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1965 and 1966, Whitworth joined Berg, Wright and Babe Didrikson Zaharias as golfers who received that honor multiple times. (Nancy Lopez, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa later also earned the AP distinction more than once.)
Whitworth’s swing—molded in large part through lessons with the much-respected Harvey Penick after her hometown instructor, Hardy Loudermilk, thought she needed the expertise of such a master to fulfill her potential—didn’t wow people the way Wright’s did. It was a sound action, not an epic one. And how it endured. On Twitter, NBC/Golf Channel’s Nicole Gaddie posted a 3-wood swing Whitworth made last month when the producer visited Whitworth in Texas working a feature story. Whitworth had a wonderfully full, textbook backswing. The best part of the clip might be Whitworth’s understandably pleased reaction after hitting the shot well: the ball doesn’t know if you’re 18 or 83.
Snead, whose game aged magnificently, knew that feeling. He also could relate to the only hole in Whitworth’s record: failing to win a U.S. Open. Whitworth was runner-up to Carner in 1971.
No one is likely to break Whitworth’s record of 88 victories. The sporting world, for the most part, has flipped Berg’s belief. It’s all about ascending, quickly, and attention often precedes achievement.
It’s a cliché, but Whitworth did let her clubs do the talking. “It’s not necessary for people to know you,” she told Sports Illustrated’s Barry McDermott in 1983. “The record itself speaks. That’s all that really matters …”
For those who did know her, of course, much else mattered. “Kathy left this world the way she lived her life, loving, laughing and creating memories,” Bettye Odle, her longtime partner, said in the LPGA’s announcement of Whitworth’s death.
The woman, genuine and caring, and her record, chiseled with grit and grace, spoke volumes. Her passing leaves a large void in golf.