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by guest writer
Rick Woelfel
Having established herself as the premier female golfer in the world,
Lorena Ochoa is poised to make an assault on the record books. Ochoa
arrives at Bulle Rock for the McDonald’s LPGA Championship Presented by
Coca-Cola in search of her third consecutive major championship, while
seeking to keep her hopes alive for a Grand Slam. Both feats are quite
daunting to say the least.
 The
last player to win three LPGA major championships in succession was Hall
of Famer Pat Bradley, who won the final major of the 1985 season, the du
Maurier Classic, in Montreal in July, then followed up by taking the
Nabisco Dinah Shore the following April and the LPGA Championship two
months later at King's Island, Ohio. Bradley's bid for a Grand Slam was
stopped by Jane Geddes at the U.S. Women's Open in Dayton, Ohio in July,
but she successfully defended her du Maurier title two weeks later in
Toronto, giving her four major titles in five tries. Bradley went on to
win the Vare Trophy and Rolex Player of the Year honors that season. The
only player to make a serious run at a Grand Slam since then has been
Annika Sorenstam, who won the first two legs in 2005, the Kraft Nabisco
and the McDonald's. In fact, no LPGA player has ever won four major titles
in a single calendar year, in part because for many years, LPGA players
didn't have four major championships to play for.
In terms of major championships, the modern era of
the LPGA began in 1983 when the Nabisco Dinah Shore Invitational, as it
was known then, achieved major status, alongside the LPGA Championship,
the U.S. Women's Open and the du Maurier Classic. In 1994, the McDonald's
Championship became the McDonald's LPGA Championship and seven years
later, the du Maurier disappeared from the schedule and the Women's
British Open, which was sponsored by Weetabix at the time, became a major
championship, creating the alignment in place today. From 1979-82 there
were only three LPGA majors and for nine of the 10 years prior to that
just two. There were four majors between 1955 and 1966 however and it was
then that the legendary Mickey Wright became the only LPGA player to hold
four major crowns simultaneously.
In April of 1961, Wright won the Titleholders
Championship at Augusta, Ga. Country Club by one shot over Louise Suggs
and Patty Berg. Mary Lena Faulk prevailed at the Western Open in June in
Nashville, but Wright came back less than a month later to win the U.S.
Women's Open at Baltusrol, then claimed the LPGA Championship in Las Vegas
in October. In 1962 she successfully defended her Titleholders title in
April, then captured the Western in May at Montgomery Country Club in
Montgomery Alabama. For 47 days, until Murle Lindstrom was crowned the
U.S. Women's Open champion in Myrtle Beach, S.C. the 27-year-old Wright
held her sport's four most significant titles. Nearly four decades before
Tiger Woods achieved his own Tiger Slam, Wright reigned supreme.
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