Oldest surviving United States team player passes away

MAUREEN ORCUTT (99),

LAST LINK WITH BIRTH

OF CURTIS CUP, DIES

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
The oldest surviving Curtis Cup match player, Maureen Orcutt, has died at the age of 99 at Durham, North Carolina.
Maureen, whose father was a New York journalist and mother a leading golfer of her day, was born on April 1, 2007 on Park Avenue, New York. She played for the Americans in the forerunner to the Curtis Cup – an informal Britain versus United States match at Sunningdale in 1930.
The Curtis Cup was formalised after that and Maureen played for the United States in the first four one-day matches before World War II – 1932 at Wentworth, 1934 at Chevy Chase, Maryland, 1936 over the King’s Course, Gleneagles and in 1938 at Essex, Massachusetts.

BEATEN BY HELEN HOLM
She won five of the eight Curtis Cup ties she played. One of her defeats was in 1938 when, partnered by Estelle Lawson Page, she lost a foursomes tie by two holes to the legendary Scottish player, Helen Holm and Clarrie Tiernan.
Also figuring in the 1938 match, for Great Britain & Ireland, was the English champion, Phyllis Wade (later Wylie), who has lived in Troon for many years. “Phil,” as she is better known, is in her 96th year and now becomes the oldest surviving Curtis Cup player.

Maureen was introduced to golf at the age of seven when her birthday presents included a cut-down mashie niblick (akin to a modern seven-iron). When she was 12, she told her mother, Elizabeth Kelly, that she wanted to play in the local club's women's championship - and that she could win it.

Mrs Orcutt told Maureen that if she did win the title, she could have her clubs and her membership. Maureen borrowed her dad's clubs - won the club championship ... and legend has it that her mother never played golf again.
MAUREEN KNEW THEM ALL
During her long amateur career, which predated the advent of women's professional golf tournaments, Maureen Orcutt played exhibition matches with and against Bobby Jones and competitively against Joyce Wethered and Glenna Collette Vare. She was on first-name terms with the likes of Babe Zaharias, Cecil Leitch, Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead. She knew them all.

The story goes that Maureen once beat the legendary Babe Zaharias in an exhibition, and the defeat upset Zaharias so much that she left without paying off a $10 bet.
Orcutt also once partnered Walter Hagen, then at his peak as a professional. Hagen, never short of a few works, expressed his disappointment at being paired with a woman ... but Maureen Orcutt proved she belonged in Walter's company and made him eat his words.

"CARRIED HAGEN FOR NINE HOLES"
"I didn't say anything," she later recalled. "But the next day, I carried Hagen for nine holes and we won."
In the 1920s and 1930s, Maureen was one of the world’s premier female amateur golfers and won dozens of tournaments, including the Canadian women's open amateur championship twice, but could never manage to land the United States women’s amateur title. She lost twice in the final, in 1927 and again in 1936 when the English player, Pam Barton, beat her 4 and 3.
When Maureen won her first USGA senior women’s amateur title in 1962 – when she had been in her 55th year – she was reduced to tears.
“It was the thrill of my life finally to have won a United States title, ” she said later. She was to win it again in 1966.
Maureen was also a pioneering sports journalist in the days when female reporters were few and far between. She followed her father, the music critic at the “New York Tribune” and the “New York Times,” into journalism.
She covered women's golf tournaments for the “New York World’’ and began writing a column called "Women in Sports" for the "New York Times" in 1937. For years, she was the only woman among an editorial staff of 50 men. She would often report on golf tournaments in which she herself was playing.

ONLY WOMAN IN A STAFF OF 50

Orcutt began covering women's golf and writing a column called "Women in Sports" for the "New York Times" in 1937 and for years was the only woman among about 50 men in the sports department.
She retired from from the "New York Times" and moved to Durham, North Carolina in 1973, where she won her club championship at Croasdaile Country Club seven times, the last at age 82. Well into her 80s, she would play golf two or three times a week.
She was a severe critic of modern-day golf journalism, frequently writing letters to sports editors or phoning television stations to complain about their golf coverage.
“Next time, send somebody to cover the Greensboro Open who knows something about golf,” she told one newspaper editor over the telephone.
With the death of Maureen Orcutt, the last link with the birth of the Curtis Cup match has gone.

+Picture shows Maureen Orcutt in action in the 1936 Curtis Cup match at Gleneagles (courtesy of the United States Golf Association).