Maureen Orcutt, Winner Of Two USGA Events, Dies At 99


January 10, 2007

By RhondaGlenn, USGA

Maureen Orcutt, 99, the last surviving member of the first USA Curtis Cup team, a two-time USGA champion whose key tournament victories spanned more than 40 years and a pioneer sports journalist, died Tuesday in Durham,

Maureen Orcutt follows through during the third Curtis Cup Match, in 1936 at King's Course in Gleneagles, Scotland. (USGA Photo Archives)

Orcutt won her first important championship, the Eastern Women's Amateur, in 1925 and her last, the USGA Senior Women's Amateur, in 1966.  Her amateur playing career included matches against Bob Jones, Joyce Wethered and Glenna Collett Vare.  Her journalistic career included tournament coverage for The New York World and a sports column for The New York Times.

Jones, Wethered, Vare, Cecil Leitch, Gene Sarazen, Marion Hollins, Babe Zaharias and Sam Snead, she knew them all.  Lincoln Werden and William D. Richardson, legendary reporters from the last century, were her pals.  And Marible Vincent, Janet Owen and Nan O'Reilly were her fellow journalists who helped pioneer sports reporting for women.

A native New Yorker, Orcutt spent her later years in Durham and, well into her 80s, still played two or three times a week.  She willingly shared her keen memories of her early days with younger reporters who came to her door.  But Orcutt was no pushover. She was a sharp critic of modern-day golf journalism, frequently writing letters to the editor or calling television stations to complain about their golf coverage.  "Next time, send somebody to cover the Greensboro Open who knows something about golf!" she famously told one newspaper editor over the telephone.

Orcutt was a member of four Curtis Cup teams before World War II.  She took part in the original informal matches with English players organized by Vare and Molly Gourlay at Sunningdale in 1930.  Two years later, the Curtis Cup match was formalized.  Orcutt won the time-honored Eastern Women's Amateur in 1925, '28 and '29, the Canadian Women's Amateur in 1929 and 1930, the Women's North and South Amateur in 1931, along with a slew of the winter amateur events and was selected for the first team that defeated and in 1932.  In four Curtis Cup appearances she was 2-2 in singles play and 3-1 in foursomes.

In the 1920s and '30s, she was one of the world's premier amateurs and won dozens of tournaments.  She was even medalist in the British Ladies Open Amateur.  She was one of the game's finest long iron players throughout her career, but her putting was sometimes suspect and the championship she most wanted -- the U.S. Women's Amateur -- always eluded her grasp.  Orcutt was twice runner-up; in 1927 to Miriam Burns Horn (5 and 4) and in 1936 to Pamela Barton (4 and 3).  She was medalist in the Women's Amateur in 1928 and tied for medalist in 1931 and '32.

Her win at the first USGA Senior Women's Amateur Championship in 1962 brought her to tears.  "When I won it was the thrill of my life because I'd finally won a championship," Orcutt said in a 1991 interview for the United States Golf Association archives.

Orcutt was a respected reporter for The New York Times and The New York World, which helped her pursue amateur golf.  It was a highly successful pursuit. Several times her excellent tournament play conflicted with her reporting duties.  In 1968, she made the final of the Metropolitan Women's Golf Association amateur championship. 

"When I got into the finals, I called the office and said, 'I'm not covering the final, send somebody.'  And they did," she said.

Orcutt won the championship.

She followed her father, the music critic at The New York Tribune and The New York Times, into journalism.  Her earlier duties even included setting the agate type for the racing results.  Over the years she hauled her old typewriter to tournament appearances, playing her matches during the daylight hours, then scrambling to file her stories with Western Union before deadline.  On her first trip to in 1930 for the early matches with British players, Orcutt's mother did her reporting legwork, helping her to gather details for her stories.

Maureen was introduced to golf in 1917, at the age of 10 when her mother took her and her twin brothers, Sinclair and Bill, to the golf course in order to keep the children away from the polio epidemic.

Captain of her high school basketball team, Orcutt became an avid golfer and, with the permission of her teachers, skipped her senior classes in 1925 to play in the Eastern Women's Amateur.  She won and it was the first of many important women's championships.

As a junior she had won the 1924 New Jersey Girls' Junior and the 1922 and 1924 Metropolitan Women's Golf Association Girls' Junior.  She won the Met Women's Amateur four years in a row (1926-'29).

Orcutt dominated tournament golf in and the Met Women's Golf Association, but the Eastern Women's Amateur victory and a tour of the winter amateur circuit, where she won the Florida East Coast and Palm Beach Championships, among others, cemented her national reputation.

While she was born on Park Avenue , Orcutt was a working girl and her reporting career helped finance her amateur golf.  Over the years she was part of a group of elite players, Vare, Van Wie, Alexa Stirling, Pam Barton, and she beat most of them at one time or another.  Failing to win the Women's Amateur to cap off her career actually kept her in amateur golf, she said, as she pursued the vision of that elusive prize.

In her later years she became a frequent guest at USGA reunions and made convivial appearances to catch up with her pals.  By 1990, when the Curtis Cup matches were played at Somerset Hills C.C. in Bernardsville, , Orcutt was an honored guest.  She was one of the last players of her era, a legend from the days of Vare and Stirling and Van Wie. 

Regal of bearing, Orcutt had a voice that stayed with you -- the unmistakable elegance of , but the clipped no-nonsense voice of the reporter.  Still chipper, the then 83-year-old Orcutt sat in the grass on a hillside near the 18^th green, cheerfully chatting with the young American players Vicki Goetze and Brandie Burton as the network television cameras rolled.

She had been a fierce competitor but she took great delight in golf and its modern players.  Through the years, she remained staunch, cheery and a keen observer of the game. 

What one famous novelist wrote in his classic American novel could have just as easily been written about Orcutt as she gracefully became one of the game's grande dames:  "She was a golfer," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, "and everyone knew her name."

RhondaGlenn is a Manager of Communications for the USGA. E-mail her with questions or comments at rglenn@usga.org.