The LPGA was struggling at the time despite featuring brilliant golfers like Wright, Rawls and Louise Suggs. Galleries were relatively sparse and touring players sought out low-budget hotels and traveled by auto.
Whitworth didn’t win a tournament until her fourth year on the tour, when she captured the Kelly Girl Open. She cited her second victory, later in 1962, at the Phoenix Thunderbird Open as giving her the confidence to withstand pressure.
Whitworth was approaching the final hole at that event, dueling for the title with Wright, who was playing behind her. She didn’t know Wright’s score at the time since there was no leader board, but, “I made a decision to go at the hole,” she told Golf Digest, although “the pin was stuck behind a trap.”
“I whipped it in there about 15 feet and made the birdie,” she recalled.
She won by four strokes and established herself as a force on the tour with eight victories in 1963.
Whitworth recorded her 88th LPGA victory in May 1985 at the United Virginia Bank tournament. She competed on the women’s senior circuit, the Legends Tour, then retired from competitive golf in 2005.
In her later years, Whitworth lived in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, gave golf lessons, conducted clinics and organized a junior women’s tournament in Fort Worth. A wooden case at her home course, Trophy Club Country Club in Roanoke, Tex., houses numerous trophies and 88 nickel-plated plaques engraved with details of her victories.
The LPGA statement identified Bettye Odle as Whitworth’s longtime partner. It did not list other survivors, and Golf magazine reported last year that Whitworth’s sisters, Carlynne and Evelynne, had died.