83. LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott

While the eyes of the sporting world were on Memphis and the trio of former Dolphins stars Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the U.S. Women’s Open was being played in Atlantic City and the smart money was on Sandra Palmer who would win the 2nd major of her Hall of Fame career, edging out a young amateur by the name of Nancy Lopez who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career herself. Back in the pack playing in her first US Open was the 1975 LPGA Rookie of the Year… Amy Alcott, fresh out of high school, turned pro at age 18… a day after turning 19 she won her first professional tournament in February of ’75… a year later she won her 2nd of 29 LPGA titles… 5 of them majors including the 1980 US Women’s Open.  A golf prodigy, Alcott’s parents turned their home… and more specifically their front and backyards, into a golf playhouse for their precocious 8-year old… and before you knew it, she was putting, chipping, and improving her game on her own… until she met a man that changed the course of her life… Walter Keller was her coach her entire career, and he knew Amy was something special the moment he saw her first swing a club. Alcott herself would go on to a Hall of Fame career that included 3 major wins at the Nabisco Dinah Shore in Rancho Mirage, CA… and in 1988, when Alcott won for the 2nd time, she celebrated by taking a plunge with her caddie in the nearby pond… an iconic moment that has become a tradition for this major tournament on the Women’s tour. Alcott tells us on the Past Our Prime podcast that she never planned on taking the leap into the pond… it just kind of happened… and a tradition was born… in 1991, she won the tournament for a 3rd time, and with her mom having passed, Dinah Shore agreed to take the dive with Amy into the pond one last time. She tells of how she loved golf from the moment she first laid eyes on it, and that love has never wavered… She recaps her first major win and how she almost fainted from heatstroke late in that tournament, but plowed through to take home the title…  A member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Alcott reminisces about a time she showed up at La Costa and just happened to play a few holes with arguably the greatest Jewish athlete of all-time… Sandy Koufax… She is as precocious and fun today as she was when she walked into that golf school 60 years ago and Walter Keller told her mother, “She’s a little racehorse. This girls got talent.”  He was right. One of the best to ever do it, LPGA Hall of Fame golfer Amy Alcott on the Past Our Prime podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices