Nancy Lopez - Part 1 (The Early Years and U.S. Open Near-Misses)

World Golf Hall of Fame member Nancy Lopez begins her story growing up and learning the game under the watchful eye of her father in Roswell, New Mexico. She had astounding success as a junior player winning her state's amateur title as a 12, 13 and 14-year-old. Nancy played on the boy's team in high school after successfully challenging an arcane rule that stood in her way. She won the U.S. Girls Junior, the Women's Western Junior 3 times and, competed in the Women's U.S. Open twice (with a T2 as Low Am in 1975) all before starting college. She was an All-American at Tulsa, the Women's collegiate champion, a Curtis Cup Team member (meeting the Queen) and won the Women's Western Amateur before deciding to turn professional after two years of college. Nancy finishes this episode reflecting on a couple of her near-misses in the Women's U.S. Open including her tough loss to Alison Nicholas in 1997. Nancy Lopez begins her life story, "FORE the Good of the Game."

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About

"FORE the Good of the Game” is a golf podcast featuring interviews with World Golf Hall of Fame members, winners of major championships and other people of influence in and around the game of golf. Highlighting the positive aspects of the game, we aim to create and provide an engaging and timeless repository of content that listeners can enjoy now and forever. Co-hosted by PGA Tour star Bruce Devlin, our podcast focuses on telling their life stories, in their voices. Join Bruce and Mike Gonzalez “FORE the Good of the Game.”

Thanks so much for listening!

Lopez, Nancy

Golf Professional

The year was 1978, and the Ladies Professional Golf Association was suffering an identity crisis. Growing up in Roswell, New Mexico, came an unidentified flying star, a Mexican-American girl whose father owned an auto-body shop. She won the state amateur when she was 12, two U.S. Girls’ Junior titles, an NCAA title, and, in 1975, she finished second in the U.S. Women’s Open. If this wasn’t the savior, then only God knows who was.

Her name was Nancy Lopez, and it wasn’t long before everybody just called her Nancy. She won five consecutive tournaments in 1978, and everybody sort of hitched a ride on her skirt tails: the press, the fans, the sponsors, even the rest of the women playing the sport. These were magical times for women’s golf, and nobody seemed to want to get in her way.

She won nine times that year, including the LPGA Championship, eight times in 1979 and she was the nicest person in the world. “After my first year I thought, ‘I could be a flash in the pan,’ and I was also determined to prove I was not,” Lopez has said. “I was determined not to fall on my face, though it is easy enough to choke yourself to death trying to win.”

Looking back on these years Jaime Diaz wrote in Sports Illustrated that Lopez had burst on the scene with as much charisma as anyone since Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

“I was determined not to fall on my face, though it is easy enough to choke yourself to death trying to win.”
Not even Zaharias had become a legend so fast. She was all of 21 years old, and the veterans marveled not only at her golfing abili… Read More

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