The Chicago Sun Times has published a detailed profile of Catherine Lacoste, daughter of Rene Lacoste, and the only amateur winner of the U.S Women’s Open.   In the piece, they note that “Lacoste came by the athletic ability honestly as the daughter of Rene Lacoste and Simone Thione de la Chaume, who won the 1927 British Ladies Amateur. She recalls being a 24-handicap as a 13-year-old, but her improvement after that was marked.”

When Lacoste came to play in 1967:

She “never thought in any way” that she would win the tournament that week, but someone else did.

“I think the only person who thought I might win the U.S. Open was my father because he’d won the U.S. Open in tennis and obviously he had the spirit to think, ‘Why can’t she do it in golf?”

Lacoste returned to the U.S. in 1968 to defend her Women’s Open title but finished 13th, 13 shots back. More impressive over the following year was her sheer dominance in women’s amateur golf. She was focused on getting better at match play by then, and from October 1968 to October 1969, she never lost a single match. Victories piled up, including at the Women’s Western Amateur, U.S. Women’s Amateur and British Ladies Amateur.

Read more of the profile at The Chicago Times.