By Travis Puterbaugh, Curator
In the history of the LPGA’s Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Award, nobody has ever followed up her rookie season the way Nancy Lopez did in 1979. Since the first LPGA Rookie of the Year honors were awarded in 1962, the so-called “Sophomore Slump” has been a real thing as almost half of these award winners have failed to follow up their rookie campaigns with a single victory the following season.
As a rookie, Lopez won nine times, which remains the high-water mark in the LPGA. Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak have set the modern standard as each logged four victories in their rookie seasons – the most in the last 40 years – but they still both fell five victories shy of what Lopez accomplished in 1978.
Lydia Ko followed up her three-victory rookie campaign in 2014 with five victories the following season. This was the closest anyone had come to matching Lopez’s second season on Tour.
To put it in perspective, during her sophomore season Nancy Lopez won eight times for a two-season total of 17 victories. Pak and Ko each combined for eight total victories in their rookie and sophomore seasons. No player in their first two seasons has ever grabbed victories in bunches the way Lopez did at the end of the 1970s.
One could make a case for Lopez as the most dominant rookie in the history of golf. Her nine rookie victories included a Major, the LPGA Championship, which she won by six strokes over 1975 Rookie of the Year Amy Alcott. Lopez won Player of the Year and the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average to go along with her Rookie of the Year honors, becoming the first player ever to win Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year in the same year (Sung Hyun Park pulled off the feat in 2017, though she shared Player of the Year honors with So Yeon Ryu).
Her rookie season also included wins in three consecutive weeks, as well as wins in five out of six consecutive tournaments, interrupted only by JoAnne Carner’s win at the Peter Jackson Classic in Canada. Lopez closed out the season with a win at the Colgate Far East Open in Malaysia and, despite an early-season bout of tendonitis, resumed her winning ways just four weeks into the 1979 season at the Sunstar Classic in Los Angeles.
Lopez won in all manner of ways against all manner of opponents in 1979, taking down future Hall of Famers Hollis Stacy, Donna Caponi, Mickey Wright and Pat Bradley. She avoided prolonged slumps as well, garnering wins in five different months throughout the year, playing in 19 events (with a winning percentage of 42 percent) and only going as many as six tournaments between victories the entire season (though during that stretch, she won an unofficial event in Portland teaming with Jo Ann Washam).
In 1979, Lopez again won the LPGA Player of the Year Award and Vare Trophy Award at 71.20 (a .56 improvement from 1978) and led the LPGA in winnings with $197,488. She finished in the Top 10 in 16 out of 19 events, and fended off a growing feeling from other players that the focus of the fans and media had become centered around her. No less an authority than Frank Sinatra, from the stage at Caesar’s Palace, had dubbed her a “legend.”
With all her winnings, even Lopez herself lamented what that might mean for the LPGA.
“I hope my winning so often is not bad for the Tour,” she said. “I think everyone is working harder out here as a result of my success, and there are a lot of strong players who can win each week.”
The rest of the Tour did catch up to Lopez as new stars emerged, and she would win less frequently in the ensuing years, but for a two-year stretch, Lopez reached heights in golf unlikely to ever be seen again.
