Editor’s note: As the two-year anniversary of her death approaches, it’s worth taking another look at the remarkable life and career of Kathy Whitworth with this story from Jan. 7, 2023.
The clink of glasses during a New Mexico sunset punctuated my new layer of understanding and appreciation for World Golf Hall of Famer Kathy Whitworth.
During an assignment to write a feature about her in 1999 for Golf World magazine, I was invited by Whitworth to drive out with her to see the property she had purchased. She had sold her home in Texas and bought 43 acres 12 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was where she planned to build her desert dream home.
Whitworth loved the wide-open sky in a place where she felt as if she could see forever. We walked around the acreage, crunching on cacti and desert plants as she pointed in different directions, telling me what was where and why she wanted to settle here.
“Listen,” she said, as we stood on the vacant lot. “There’s nothing here but crickets.”
Then, as the sun began its descent, the golfer produced a bottle of vintage and we stood there on the land of her future dreams and toasted to tomorrow, to the setting sun, to the natural beauty of her home state and, pretty much, to Whitworth’s happy place.
Sure, I was there to interview the player who had amassed 88 tournament wins – more than any other male or female golfer on the planet – and who had spent 32 years on the LPGA Tour establishing milestones, while helping garner attention for the women’s tour.
I had a notebook scribbled full of career highs and lows from Kathy Whitworth’s remarkable journey, but what I learned on that trip to New Mexico was more about a human being and her interest in the world around her than some goal-obsessed, win-at-all-cost professional athlete who never stopped to notice the aspens.
This was the woman who: won at least one tournament in all but two years on tour from 1962 to 1985; won six major championships; led the LPGA’s money list eight times; was honored as the LPGA’s Player of the Year and Vare Trophy winner seven times each; and earned Hall of Fame entry in 1975.
But this was also the product of Jal, New Mexico – a ranching dot on the map east of El Paso, Texas – who once took a Greyhound bus as a teen with her mother to Augusta, Georgia, to play as an amateur in the LPGA’s Titleholders Championship. It took two days to get there and two days to get home, but that was the start of a big dream that turned into the game’s all-time record. She died Dec. 24 at age 83.
Whitworth insisted that I not rent a car for my interview assignment. Instead, she offered to pick me up at my hotel each day to show me around. So, for two days, we talked, I took notes and we rode around in her Isuzu Trooper. She pointed out fields of purple flowers, the golden leaves of aspens, gaping gorges and we visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and a Native American museum, where she respectfully explained the meaning of a Native dance ceremony.
During a visit to Taos Pueblo, we stood in a tourist line waiting to explore the historic Native American site when a woman in a golf visor rushed over and said to her, “I know you! Aren’t you Juli Inkster?”
“No, ma’am. I’m Kathy Whitworth,” she said.
The hall-of-famer wasn’t offended. She was kind and chatted with the fan, but she wanted to keep moving to make sure I saw this landmark.
At the end of my second day there, Whitworth picked me up at my hotel to go to dinner. As we were walking from the front door of the restaurant to her car afterward, I noticed a pickup truck speeding toward us, wheels squealing against the street curb.
I yelled for her to stop and to watch the truck barreling by only a few yards in front of her. Glass crashed on the pavement near Whitworth’s feet, either from a tossed bottle or a broken headlight. We both stood there watching the out-of-control truck zoom away.
I shuddered at the thought of what nearly happened.
And as we climbed back into her car, she apologized, saying, “I’m sorry this had to happen. This is what you’ll remember from your last night here.”
In her prime, Whitworth was as competitive as anyone on tour, and though it wasn’t always pretty, she regularly would find a way to get the ball into the hole.
I had a notebook scribbled full of career highs and lows from Kathy Whitworth’s remarkable journey, but what I learned on that trip to New Mexico was more about a human being and her interest in the world around her than some goal-obsessed, win-at-all-cost professional athlete who never stopped to notice the aspens.
In her prime, Whitworth was as competitive as anyone on tour, and though it wasn’t always pretty, she regularly would find a way to get the ball into the hole. Often frustrated by the end of her career, sometimes she would drag her putter on the ground behind her muttering: “Kathy, I don’t even know how you got your card.”
But she did back in 1959, and she made the most of it. Throughout her career, she respected those who had built the LPGA Tour and helped nurture the young pros who followed her.
So, it was appropriate that she toasted to that big sky years ago as this reporter witnessed her absolute joy in the high desert. To Kathy Whitworth, it didn’t matter whether she was in the spotlight as a champion or surrounded by crickets.