By Steve Eubanks for the LPGA
Six-time winner and one of the original LPGA pioneers, Jo Ann Prentice, passed away on May 18 at the age of 92. A native of Birmingham, Ala., Prentice is one of few female golfers in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame alongside several notable Alabamians such as Jesse Owens, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Carl Lewis.
Prentice was also instrumental in creating the Birmingham Classic, a tournament she never won but one that remained a popular mainstay on the LPGA Tour for a decade from 1972 to 1982.
Her most notable victory came in 1974 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. at the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle, the event that would become the LPGA’s first major of the season, The Chevron Championship. On April 21, 1974, Prentice defeated Jane Blalock and Sandra Haynie in a playoff for what was, at the time, the largest check in women’s golf.
She won again three weeks later, this time a two-shot victory over Laura Baugh at the American Defender Raleigh Classic. She finished the 1974 season with just over $67,000, fourth on the LPGA Tour’s Official Money List that season.
Prentice joined the LPGA Tour in 1956 and played with most of the 13 Founders. Colorful and outspoken, she remained winless for almost a full decade until breaking through at the 1965 All State Ladies’ Invitational in Jackson, Miss. where she beat Kathy Whitworth by a single shot. She won again in 1967 at the Dallas Civitan Open.
While always a consistent money earner, Prentice didn’t win again until 1972 when she captured the Corpus Christi Civitan Open in a 10-hole playoff against Whitworth and Sandra Palmer, what remains the longest playoff in LPGA Tour history.
She won once in 1973 before her two wins in 1974. Those proved to be her last, even though she played the LPGA Tour full-time for a total of 24 years and continued to make appearances at The Chevron Championship well into the mid-1980s.
A student of famed instructor Bob Toski, Prentice bought a golf course in Oneonta, Ala. and for years ran a club-fitting studio in Tucson, Ariz.
“The LPGA Tour was blessed to have pioneers like Jo Ann Prentice who added depth and color to those early years while building the foundation on which we all work and play today,” said LPGA interim commissioner Liz Moore. “Jo Ann did it all. She was a fantastic and consistent player, a wonderful teacher, an entrepreneur and a great friend. Her six wins came against some of the stiffest competition in our history.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends.”
