Gloria Ehret: Bio of LPGA Major Winner
Gloria Ehret had a 15-year-career on the LPGA Tour that started in the mid-1960s. It included a couple victories, one of which was in a major championship. She had a knack for finishing second and also for getting into playoffs.
Full name: Gloria Jean Ehret
Date of birth: August 23, 1941
Place of birth: Allentown, Pennsylvania
Nickname: Glo
Her Biggest Wins
Gloria Ehret had two victories in official LPGA Tour tournaments, the first of which was a major:- 1966 LPGA Championship
- 1973 Birmingham Classic
In the Majors
Ehret's claim to fame is her win in the 1966 LPGA Championship (the LPGA major that today is known as the Women's PGA Championship) in her second year on tour. And she beat a legend, Mickey Wright, to claim the title.Ehret was three behind Wright after opening 70-70 in the first two rounds. But in the third round, Ehret took the lead by scoring 67 to Wright's 71. And in the final round, Ehret scored 75 to Wright's 77 to win by three strokes. Wright was the only golfer to finish within six strokes of Ehret.
Ehret had a second-place finish in a later major, the 1973 U.S. Women's Open. She tied Shelley Hamlin, five strokes behind the winner, Susie Maxwell Berning.
Including her win and runner-up, Ehret had eight Top 10 finishes in majors, starting with fifth place in her rookie year on the LPGA at the 1965 LPGA Championship. She was also 10th in the 1967 LPGA and seventh in that major in 1972.
Her other Top 10 finishes in majors were tied for 10th in the 1966 Women's Western Open, tied ninth in the 1966 U.S. Women's Open, and tied sixth in the 1972 USWO.
More About Gloria Ehret
Gloria Ehret took up golf as a teen-ager, learning the game at Allentown (Pa.) Muncipal golf course. She briefly attended St. Petersburg Junior College in Florida, but returned to Pennsylvania to focus on playing amateur tournaments in the early 1960s.And as an amateur, Ehret won the Tri-State Amateur back-to-back in 1963 and 1964. (That tournament is run by the Tri-State Section of the PGA of America, which covers western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and northwest Maryland). She had two other amateur wins of note in 1964: the Connecticut State Amateur plus the International Four-Ball in Florida.
Ehret turned pro in 1965 and joined the LPGA Tour. She showed a lot of promise: a fifth-place finish in the LPGA Championship, a season-ending finish of 30th on the money list.
That promise appeared to be realized in 1966. Ehret had her career-best finishes in three of the four majors she played over her career in 1966: winning the LPGA Championship, 10th in the Women's Western Open and 15th in the Titleholders Championship. And she also finished ninth in the 1966 U.S. Women's Open.
Ehret got into a playoff at the 1966 Glass City Classic, catching second-round leader Sandra Haynie near the end of the third round to force extra holes. But Haynie won the playoff. Ehret's LPGA Championship victory happened three weeks later. And in an unofficial money tournament, Ehret teamed with Judy Kimball to win the 1966 Yankee Women's Open. At the end of the year, she was named the LPGA's "most improved player" by Golf Digest.
But in the words of an early 1970s LPGA media guide, "a few lean years followed." It wasn't until the early 1970s that Ehret got fully back on track, when she started regularly posting Top 10s and competing for wins agin.
At the 1972 Bluegrass Invitational, Ehret got into a playoff but Kathy Cornelius won it on the first extra hole.
Her second (and, it turned out, last) LPGA win happened at the 1973 Birmingham Classic. That was one of five tournaments in which Ehret got into playoffs, but the only one she won. Ehret beat Betty Burfeindt and Clifford Ann Creed in extra holes. She also had her second-place showing in the U.S. Women's Open in 1973, and was runner-up to Kathy Whitworth in the Lady Errol Classic. At the end of the year, Ehret ranked a career-best sixth in season scoring average.
In another playoff at the 1974 Lawson's LPGA Open, Ehret was beaten by Sandra Haynie on the fourth extra hole. And in 1978 she posted three runner-up finishes: Ehret lost a playoff to Janet Coles in the Lady Tara Classic; was second to Whitworth in the National Jewish Hospital Open; and was runner-up to Jane Blalock in the Orange Blossom Classic.
But by 1979 Ehret was starting to feel the effects of burnout, tiring of all the travel. She had only a best finish of eight place that year, and fell to 50th on money list — not a bad finish at all, but the lowest money-list finish of her career.
Shocking friends and fans, Ehret announced her retirement from the tour early in 1980. "I got to the point where ... I didn't even want to practice anymore," Ehret told LPGA.com reporter Madison Donley years later. "I was done, period, and that was it."
In addition to her two wins, Ehret finished second 12 times on the LPGA Tour. She finished in the top 40 on the money list every year from 1965-78. Her career-best money-list finish was 12th in 1966, and she was 14th in both 1972 and 1973.
Among her second-place finishes not already mentioned were the 1967 Venice Ladies Open (to Whitworth); the 1968 Shirley Englehorn Invitational and 1969 Raleigh Ladies Invitational (both to Carol Mann); and the 1975 Lady Tara Classic (to Donna Caponi). When Ehret finished second, she finished second to a very high class of opponents.
After her retirement, Ehret went nearly 15 years without playing golf. She ran a lawncare company. But eventually, encouraged by friends and fans, Ehret picked up the game again in the late 1990s.
When the Women's Senior Golf Tour (today known as the Legends of the LPGA) played its inaugural event in 2000, Ehret hit the new tour's very first tee shot. She played eight times on the senior tour with no Top 10 finishes.
In 2022, Ehret was one of the honorees at the LPGA's Founders Cup.
Looking back on her career, she described her game this way to LPGA.com: "I was a terrible, terrible putter. Driving the golf ball was quite an ace for me; my iron play was OK. ... I felt like my short game was pretty decent. I'd probably hit 16 to 17 greens in one round and walk away with 40 putts. It got to the point where it was mental."
Ehret is a member of the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) Golf Hall of Fame.
Sources:
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Alliss, Peter. The Who's Who of Golf, 1983, Orbis Publishing.
Altvater, Fred. "1966 Glass City Classic Offered the Largest Purse in LPGA History," Indiana Golf Journal, https://indianagolfjournal.com/1966-glass-city-classic-offered-the-largest-purse-in-lpga-history/.
Donley, Madison. "The Glory of LPGA Honoree Gloria Ehret," LPGA.com, May 10, 2022, https://www.lpga.com/news/2022/the-glory-of-lpga-honoree-gloria-ehret-pioneer.
Elliott, Len, and Kelly, Barbara. Who's Who in Golf, 1976, Arlington House Publishers.
LPGA.com. Players, Gloria Ehret (.pdf), via Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20100113112034/http://lpga.com/content/oldplayerbios/EhretGloriaFinal.pdf.
Legends of the LPGA Tour. Players, Gloria Ehret, http://players.thelegendstour.com/details.php?PID=65.
PGA of America. Tri-State Section, About Us, https://tristate.pga.com/about-us/
Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review. "Sandra Haynie Wins At Vegas," Associated Press, September 27, 1965, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vzpWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TekDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1963%2C4094001.
