U.S. Women’s Open: 10 champions from The Babe to Karrie Webb
Louise Suggs – 1949, 1952
Louise Suggs is a women’s golf legend. One of the Tour’s founders, she remained a central, visible, and vigorous figure in the game until her death in 2015. And the game reciprocated her love and loyalty, commemorating her contributions to the game and the Tour in the Louise Suggs Rookie of the Year annual award to the Tour’s outstanding rookie.
Suggs’ 61 Tour victories puts her at 4th on the all-time list. Two of her 11 major championship titles came at the U.S. Women’s Open, both by substantial margins.
It’s Suggs’ 1949 victory that gets her on my top-10 U.S. Open champions. The 26-year old who had turned pro the previous year faced down a giant in women’s athletics that year, Babe Zaharias. The Open was being contended at the Prince George’s Country Club in Landover, MD on a 6892 yard par-75 track.
Suggs outplayed The Babe, her closest competitor and the defending champion, by 14 strokes in a wire-to-wire victory and took home a winner’s purse of $1500!
Louise Suggs is remembered for many contributions and achievements. Among the original founds of the LPGA, the Tour’s president from 1955-1957, World Golf Hall of Famer, among the first women invited to join the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews stand out in a much longer list. But she is here because of that stunning 1949 U.S. Women’s Open victory over Babe Zaharias.
It’s also worth noting that in 1950 The Babe took back the trophy. Theirs was a rivalry of enormous intensity grounded in the honorable game.