U.S. Women’s Open: 10 champions from The Babe to Karrie Webb

Catherine Lacoste, 1967

Catherine Lacoste is the only amateur to have won the U.S. Women’s Open in its 72 year history. Lacoste was 22 and playing in her third pro event when she outplayed 97 of the best women golfers in the world to claim a wire-to-wire victory at the Virginia Hot Springs Golf and Tennis Club in 1967.

The following year, 1968, Lacoste won the Women’s Western Amateur and in 1969 she hoisted trophies at the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the British Ladies Amateur.

The daughter of French tennis star René Lacoste and Simone de la Chaume, herself winner of the 1927 British Ladies Amateur, Catherine Lacoste retained her amateur status throughout her active competitive years.

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