The CAPRICORN Golf Legend: Nancy Lopez

In 1978, the LPGA was in need of a star. Along came a Mexican-American girl, daughter of an auto-body shop owner in Roswell, NM. She won the state amateur when she was 12, two U.S. Girls' Junior titles, an NCAA title, and, in 1975, she finished second in the U.S. Women's Open. If this wasn't star behavior, single-handedly spicing up the ladies tour, it sure looked like it!

Her name was Nancy Lopez, and it wasn't long before everybody just called her Nancy. She won five consecutive tournaments in 1978, and everybody sort of hitched a ride on her star: the press, the fans, the sponsors, even the rest of the women playing the sport. It catapulted the ladies professional golf tour into the mainstream and beyond and nobody wanted it to end.

She won nine times that year, including the LPGA Championship, eight times in 1979 and she was the nicest person in the world. "After my first year I thought, 'I could be a flash in the pan,' and I was also determined to prove I was not," Lopez has said. "I was determined not to fall on my face, though it is easy enough to choke yourself to death trying to win."

From the World Golf Hall of Fame Profile of Nancy Lopez