Jane Bastanchury Booth: Bio of Amateur Standout
Jane Bastanchury Booth was a big winner in the amateur ranks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although she never won the biggest one. She is also remembered for a spectacular Curtis Cup record. Later, her daughter also played Curtis Cup, making them the first mother-daughter pair to do so.
Date of birth: March 31, 1948
Place of birth: Whittier, California
Date and place of death: June 23, 2018, in West Palm Beach, Florida
Also known as: Most of her victories happened under her maiden name, Jane Bastanchury. After marriage she went by Jane Booth but was often referred to in tournaments and in the news as Jane Bastanchury Booth or Jane B. Booth.
Her Biggest Wins
- 1965 California State Junior Girls Championship
- 1965 Women's Western Junior Championship
- 1967 Trans-Mississippi Women's Amateur
- 1968 Women's International Four-Ball (partnered by Martha Wilkinson)
- 1969 Women's Western Amateur
- 1969 Women's National Intercollegiate
- 1969 Trans-Mississippi Women's Amateur
- 1969 Women's International Four-Ball (partnered by Martha Wilkinson)
- 1970 Women's Western Amateur
- 1970 Women's International Four-Ball (partnered by Martha Wilkinson)
- 1971 Trans-Mississippi Women's Amateur
- 1972 Doherty Cup
- 1972 North & South Women's Amateur
- 1973 Doherty Cup
- 1974 Women's International Four-Ball (partnered by Cindy Hill)
In the Curtis Cup
Booth was part of Team USA as a player three times in the Curtis Cup, and all three times Team USA defeated Team Great Britain & Ireland:- 1970 Curtis Cup: Booth, playing under her maiden name, Jane Bastanchury, lost her first Curtis Cup match. It was a foursomes in which she and partner Shelley Hamlin fell to Team GB&I's Dinah Oxley/Mary KcKenna. But she then beat Oxley in singles, 5 and 3. Booth and Hamlin won their Day 2 foursomes, and Booth beat Ann Irvin in Day 2 singles, 4 and 3.
- 1972 Curtis Cup: Booth and partner Barbara McIntire split two foursomes matches, losing on Day 1, winning on Day 2. In her Day 1 singles match, Booth beat Belle McCorkindale Robertson; on Day 2, she lost to Mickey Walker, 1-down, on the final green.
- 1974 Curtis Cup: Booth partnered with Anne Quast Sander in two foursomes victories. In singles, she defeated Mary McKenna, 5 and 3, on Day 1; and bested Julia Greenhalgh, 7 and 5, on Day 2.
Her nine total match victories were, at the time of her final Cup in 1974, the record for Team USA. Today she still ranks fourth in just three appearances, with the three golfers who won more matches all appearing in at least five Cups.
Booth was 51 years old when she was selected to captain Team USA in the 2000 Curtis Cup. That squad was the first American team to win in Britain since 1984.
More About Jane Bastanchury Booth
The Curtis Cup wasn't the only international team tournament in which Jane Bastanchury Booth made her mark for Team USA. She played in the Espirito Santo Trophy (aka the World Women's Amateur Team Championships) in 1968, 1970 and 1972, all victories for Team USA. That made Booth the first golfer ever to play on three consecutive winning teams in that tournament.Booth was small of stature but big in spirit on the golf course. She was barely 5-foot-2. The authors of the 1975 The Encyclopedia of Golf (affiliate link) noted that "like other small figures before her," Booth "commands above-average length by getting up on her toes at the shot, and on the greens she is a tigress."
Golf writer Alistair Cooke, in his book The Marvellous Mania (affiliate link), used the same animal comparison to comment on her size, calling Booth "a tiger disguised as a mouse."
She got her winning ways started in her native California in 1965 with victory in the California State Junior Girls, and also won the nationally contested Women's Western Junior that year.
Booth attended Arizona State University, playing on the golf team from 1966-69. In 1969, she won the women's national collegiate championship. By the time she graduated with a degree in education, she already had victories in the Women's Western Amateur, Trans-Mississippi and Women's International Four-Ball, all tournaments she won multiple times.
Each year around that time she was on the short list of favorites for the U.S. Women's Amateur. But that biggest of amateur titles for women was the one that got away.
In the 1967 U.S. Women's Amateur, Booth beat Barbara White Boddie and Judy Bell before falling to Phyllis Preuss. In 1968, she lost in the quarterfinals to Catherine Lacoste.
She made the semifinals of the 1970 U.S. Women's Amateur, her best showing, after wins against, among others, Alice Dye and Bonnie Lauer. But Booth lost in those semis to Cynthia Hill. In 1971, she was co-medalist in the stroke-play qualifying, but went out in the first round to Barbara McIntire.
Booth had three Top 10 finishes in the U.S. Women's Open: she tied for third in 1971, tied for sixth in 1972, and tied for ninth in 1972. She was low amateur in both the 1971 U.S. Women's Open and 1972 U.S. Women's Open.
With that kind of success in the U.S. Women's Open, you might expect that a long career on the LPGA Tour followed. But Booth, insisting she only played golf for fun, never turned pro, never tried the LPGA Tour.
After marrying in the early 1970s, Booth drew back from competition. But she spent most of the rest of her life involved on the organizational and administrative sides of the game, with a focus on junior golf.
She joined her father, Louis Bastanchury, in running the Southern California Junior Golf Association and its tour for young golfers. In 1993, Booth was awarded the SCGA's Presidents Award, nine years after her father had won it.
For 26 years, from 1985-2011, Booth served on the U.S. Girls' Junior Committee for the United States Golf Association.
Along the way, Booth was inducted into the Arizona State Athletics Hall of Fame, NCAA Intercollegiate Hall of Fame, SCPGA Jr. Golf Hall of Fame, Southern California Golf Hall of Fame, and Women's Golf Coaches Association Players Hall of Fame.
She was 70 years old when she died in 2018. Booth had been married to husband Michael Booth for 46 years, and they had one child, daughter Kellee Booth.
And Kellee Booth took up right where her mother had left off on the golf course. Kelley won the 1993 U.S. Girls' Junior during the time when Jane was serving on the tournament committee.
Like her moth, Kellee was a standout college player at Arizona State, and like her mother was inducted into the school's athletics hall of fame — the first mother-daughter pair so honored.
When Kellee was named to Team USA for the 1996 Curtis Cup, it made Jane and Kellee the first mother-daughter pair to play in that tournament. In the 1998 Curtis Cup, Kellee joined her mother on the list of American golfers to go 4-0-0 in the tournament.
Sources:
Arizona State University. "Former Sun Devil Standout Golfer Jane Bastanchury Booth, 70, Passes Away," June 26, 2018, https://thesundevils.com/news/2018/06/26/former-sun-devil-standout-golfer-jane-bastanchury-booth-70-passes-away.
Cooke, Alistair. The Marvellous Mania, 2008, Penguin Books Limited.
Elliott, Len, and Kelly, Barbara. Who's Who in Golf (affiliate link), 1976, Arlington House Publishers.
Encyclopedia.com. "Booth, Jane Bastanchury," https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/booth-jane-bastanchury-1948.
Ladies National Golf Association. Past Amateur Champions, https://www.ladiesnationalgolf.org/Images/LadiesNationalGolfAssoc/pages/amateur-championship/LNGA_AMATEUR_CHAMPIONS_2025_to_1927.pdf.
Pine, Julia. "Ex-Curtis Cup Player, Captain Jane Booth Dies at 70," USGA, June 25, 2018, https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/articles/2018/06/ex-curtis-cup-player--captain-jane-booth-dies.html.
Southern California Golf Association. "Remembering SCGA Hall of Famer Jane Bastanchury Booth," June 25, 2018, https://www.scga.org/news/view/remembering-jane-bastanchury-booth.
Southern California Golf Association. Special Award Winners, Presidents Award, https://scpga.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/34/2021/01/Special-Award-Winners.pdf.
Steel, Donald, and Ryde, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1975, The Viking Press.
United States Golf Association. Champions Media Guide 2014, Curtis Cup Records.
United States Golf Association. Official USGA Record Book, 1895-1990 (affiliate link), Triumph Books, 1992.
Women Golf Coaches Association. Players Hall of Fame, Members, https://wgcagolf.com/page/PlayersHOF_YMBLD.
Women's Western Golf Association. Women's Western Junior History, Past Champions, https://womenswesternjunior.com/history.
