Louise Suggs

Louise Suggs was an American professional golfer and one of the 13 founders of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in 1950. One of the dominant women’s golfers of the 1940s and 1950s, she won 61 LPGA Tour titles, including 11 majors, and remains one of the most important figures in the history of women’s professional golf. No reliable modern net worth figure exists for Suggs, whose career unfolded decades before the era of large tournament purses and endorsement deals; her legacy is best measured in titles and influence rather than a dollar figure.

Early Life & Family

Suggs was born on September 7, 1923, in Atlanta, Georgia. She learned to play golf on a nine-hole course in Lithia Springs, Georgia, that her father built and managed, and developed a powerful, efficient swing that she carried into a standout amateur career in her teens and twenties.

Rise to Fame

As an amateur, Suggs won the Georgia Women’s Amateur (1940, 1942), the Southern Women’s Amateur (1940, 1947), the North and South Women’s Amateur (1942, 1946 and 1948), and the U.S. Women’s Amateur (1947). She was selected for the 1948 Curtis Cup team and won the British Ladies Amateur Championship that same year, after which she turned professional.

Career History

Suggs won the U.S. Women’s Open in 1949 by a record 14-stroke margin and again in 1952. She won the LPGA Championship in 1957, the year she also received the Vare Trophy for the tour’s low scoring average, and led the LPGA in tournament earnings in 1953 and 1960. Across her career she won 61 LPGA Tour titles, 11 of them majors, and in 1957 became the first player to complete the LPGA’s career Grand Slam. In 1950, she was one of 13 women who founded the LPGA, and she served as the organization’s president from 1955 to 1957.

How They Built Their Wealth

Suggs’s income during her playing career came from tournament winnings at a time when women’s golf purses were a small fraction of what they are today, along with later work connected to golf instruction, exhibitions and her enduring status as an LPGA founder. No reliable figure exists for her career earnings or net worth in modern terms.

Personal Life

Louise Suggs died on August 7, 2015, in Sarasota, Florida, from complications of melanoma, at age 91. The LPGA’s Rookie of the Year award is named in her honor.

As a founder of the LPGA and one of the sport’s first true stars, Louise Suggs’s legacy rests on the tour she helped build and the 61 tournament wins that made her one of the greatest women golfers of her era.