Grace Lenczyk: Brief But Great Golf Career
Date of birth: September 12, 1927
Place of birth: Newington, Connecticut
Date and place of death: Dec. 13, 2013, in Walpole, Massachusetts
Also known as: After marriage, she was known in golf news accounts as "Grace Lenczyk Cronin," or was sometimes listed as "Mrs. Robert Cronin." If you come across references from 1958 or later in books, magazines or newspapers to a golfer called "Mrs. Cronin," Lenczyk is who is being discussed.
Her Biggest Wins
- 1946 Connecticut Women's Match Play
- 1946 Endicott Cup
- 1947 Canadian Women's Amateur
- 1947 All American Open*
- 1948 U.S. Women's Amateur
- 1948 Canadian Women's Amateur
- 1948 U.S. Intercollegiate Championship
- 1957 Connecticut Women's Match Play
- 1961 Connecticut Women's Match Play
- 1962 Connecticut Women's Match Play
More About Grace Lenczyk
Grace Lenczyk (pronounced Len-sick) was a 20-year-old amateur champion as she played the 1948 U.S. Women's Open. But professional golf for women was so new at that time that most of the players in the Open field were amateurs.But Lenczyk was the one who tied an all-time women's scoring record. In the third round, Lenczyk scored a pedestrian 41 on the front nine. But over the back nine, she blistered the course with a 32, a 9-hole score so low for the era that newspaper reports all mentioned it. In fact, many of them stated it was the lowest 9-hole scored yet recorded by any woman in a significant tournament. In reality, Lenczyk's 32 was the second-known, tying the record 32 Opal Hill recorded in a 1937 round. But young amateur Lenczyk held the U.S. Women's Open's 9-hole scoring record for many years to come.
Lenczyk finished fourth in that 1948 U.S. Women's Open, earning low amateur honors. She was an emerging star, but just a couple years later Lenczyk was finished, by choice, with the national golf scene.
Lenczyk was born and grew up in Connecticut. She had two older brothers who worked as caddies at Indian Hill Country Club in Newington, Conn., whose 14th hole was across the street from the family home. They introduced their little sister to golf when Grace was 11. It was only 10 years later she won her U.S. Women's Amateur title. Her brother Ted remained her instructor throughout her competitive career, and won his own Connecticut state open and amateur titles.
Lenczyk's first big tournament win was in the 1946 Endicott Cup, which pitted golfers from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
But her first national notice happened in te 1946 U.S. Women's Open, the very first USWO ever played. The tournament used a match-play format for the only time that year. And Lenczyk, 18 years old, was a giant-killer: In the first round, she knocked out Babe Didrikson Zaharias. That loss ended a streak of 13 consecutive tournaments won by Zaharias, and newspapers covered it as a shocking result. But Lenczyk herself was knocked out in the next round.
She started winning in earnest in 1947, and was a threat to win in just about every national or regional tournament she entered. At the 1947 U.S. Women's Amateur, Lenczyk reached the semifinals before bowing to Louise Suggs. In the Women's Western Open, she was the stroke-play medalist, then made the semifinals before falling to Dorothy Kirby.
But Lenczyk won the 1947 Canadian Women's Amateur, beating a Mrs. F.J. Een by a 12-and-11 score. She repeated as Canadian Champ in 1948, and reached the title match again in 1951 before falling to Marlene Streit.
Another run she started in 1947 was in the U.S. Intercollegiate championship. Pre-NCAA, the American college championship was run by the DWGS, the Division of Girls' and Women's Sports. Lenczyk was playing for a small, local Connecticut school, Arnold College, and made the championship match before losing to Shirley Spork, 1-down.
But, after transferring to Stetson University in Florida, Lenczyk won the 1948 college championship, beating Marilynn Smith in the final. In 1949, it was Smith beating Lenczyk for the championship, and in 1950 Lenczyk again reached the championship match. In three of those four years, she was the tournament's medalist.
The year 1948 was her glory year. It included her biggest win in the U.S. Women's Amateur, plus victories in the Canadian and college championships, and her performance in the U.S. Women's Open. She also made the finals in the North & South Women's Amateur (losing to Suggs). In the Women's Western Open she reached the quarterfinals, and she finished solo eighth in the Titleholders, two tournaments today counted as LPGA major championships. That means Lenczyk had Top 10 finishes in all three women's professional majors that existed in 1948.
She also made her Curtis Cup debut in 1948. Lenczyk partnered Suggs in a foursomes loss to Jean Donald/Jacqueline Gordon. But in singles, she defeated Gordon 5-and-3.
But it was the 1948 U.S. Women's Amateur that still defines Lenczyk's golf career. The tournament was at Pebble Beach Golf Links and started one day after Lenczyk turned 21 years old.
Her run to the title match included a quarterfinal victory over Polly Riley. And in that championship match, Lenczyk defeated Helen Sigel 4-and-3. In so doing, Lenczyk became just the fifth golfer overall to win both the U.S. and Canadian women's titles, and just the third to do it in the same year. Today, the fifth hole of Pebble Beach's 9-hole short course called The Hay (redesigned by Tiger Woods in 2021) is named "Grace" in Lenczyk's honor.
The 32 in the 1948 U.S. Women's Open wasn't the only time Lenczyk went very low in a pro major. In the 1949 Women's Western Open, Lenczyk earned medalist honors in the stroke-play qualifying with a 66 — lowering the tournament's qualifying record by a whopping five strokes. But she lost to Zaharias in the second round of match play in part because Zaharias cut the corner on the 331-yard, dogleg 12th hole to drive the green and go 2-up. The final score of the match was 2-and-1.
Robert Browning, author of the 1955 book A History of Golf, the Royal & Ancient Game (affiliate link), wrote of that 66 that it "is probably the greatest single round in the annals of women's golf." He cited the course's length of 6,679 yards, its par of 75, and the fact that the score should have been a 65 — on one hole, Lenczyk nonchalantly tried to backhand the ball into the cup, a putt of just an inch or two, and whiffed.
She made the championship match of the Women's North & South Amateur again in 1949, but again lost, this time to Peggy Kirk.
At the time of the 1950 Curtis Cup, Lenczyk's second time selected for Team USA, she was still a senior at Stetson University and still (about 10 days before turning 23) the youngest player on the squad. She didn't play the foursomes, but in singles Lenczyk defeated Elizabeth Price.
It was just five years earlier Lenczyk had burst on the national scene with her shocking defeat of Zaharias in the 1946 U.S. Women's Open. But after getting home from the Curtis Cup, Lenczyk did something else shocking: She essentially quit championship golf. She withdrew from the 1950 U.S. Women's Open and went home to Connecticut.
Back home, she got deep into her love of painting and horses, and another love led her to marry in 1958. Lenczyk and her new husband moved to Massachusetts, where Grace lived for the rest of her life.
It wasn't that unusual a move around 1950 for a top female golfer to walk away from competition. There was very little money in the very young professional golf scene at the time, and society also put a lot of pressure on female athletes of the era to step away in their early to mid 20s.
But Lenczyk wasn't completely finished with competition. Her last big national (well, international in this case) showing was her run to the final in the 1951 Canadian Women's Amateur. And she did play multiple more times, into the 1960s, in the Connecticut Women's Match Play.
That was a tournament she first won in 1947. Coming back to it 10 years later, Lenczyk beat her sister Lorraine in the championship match in 1957, 12-and-10. She reached the title match again in 1960, then won it again in 1961 and 1962.
Lenczyk is a member of the Connecicut Golf Hall of Fame and of the Stetson University Hall of Fame. She was 86 years old when she died in 2013.
Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
Browning, Robert. A History of Golf, the Royal & Ancient Game, 1955, E.P. Dutton & Company.
Connecticut State Golf Association. "Grace Lenczyk Cronin – 1969 Connecticut Golf Hall Of Fame Inductee," https://csgalinks.org/news/grace-lenczyk-cronin-1969-connecticut-golf-hall-of-fame-inductee/.
Decatur (Ga.) Daily Review. "Miss Lindsay Loses, 5 and 3," June 20, 1947.
Elliott, Len, and Kelly, Barbara. Who's Who in Golf, 1976, Arlington House Publishers.
Gibson, Nevin H. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1964, A.S. Barnes and Company.
Glenn, Rhonda. "Women’s Am Champs Gloried in Their Feats, Camaraderie," March 18, 2013, https://www.usga.org/articles/2013/03/champions-bonds-21474854781.html.
Glenn, Rhonda. The Illustrated History of Women's Golf, 1991, Taylor Publishing Company.
Hannigan, Frank. "Pebble Beach: Johnstone Got His Feet Wet," USGA Journal and Turf Management, August 1961 (via Internet Archive), https://web.archive.org/web/20150901163549/http://gsrpdf.lib.msu.edu/ticpdf.py?file=/1960s/1961/610804.pdf.
Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette. "Grace Lenczyk Canadian Champ," Associated Press, September 21, 1947.
Mass Golf. Competitions, Past Champions, "Endicott Cup & Tri State Matches Past Champions," https://www.massgolf.org/competition/womens-tri-state-champions/.
Pebble Beach Company. The Hay, "A Reimagined Short Course Experience at Pebble Beach," https://www.pebblebeach.com/golf/the-hay/.
Tenneson, David. "Women's Championship Series #3: 1947-1950," February 27, 2024, https://5count4.substack.com/p/womens-championship-series-3-1947.
United States Golf Association. Official USGA Record Book, 1895-1990, Triumph Books, 1992.
United States Golf Association. "U.S. Women's Amateur Records," https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/media/online-media-center/usga-records/u-s--women-s-amateur-records.html.