The Loop

Let's take a moment to marvel at Mickey Wright's sublime golf swing

February 15, 2015

Mickey Wright turned 80 on Valentine's Day, which is as good an excuse as ever to study the swing Ben Hogan famously described as the best he ever saw.

It's fair to say women's golf in general doesn't get the attention it deserves, but that is even more the case with Wright, who won a ridiculous 82 tournaments in her LPGA career, but decided to retire at age 34 because she never quite enjoyed the attention.

"I'm not real good as far as wanting to be in front of people, glorying in it and loving it," Wright said once. "I think you have to love that to make that kind of pressure tolerable. It finally got to where it wasn't tolerable to me."

But it's not as though Wright doesn't still like to contribute to the game. One of the most interesting revelations in a worthwhile ESPNW profile of Wright by former Golf World senior editor Bill Fields is that the Hall of Famer has been corresponding with 12-year-old Lucy Li, who played in last year's U.S. Women's Open at age 11.

"I made a couple of comments which she seemed to take to," Wright told Fields. "I mentioned a couple of technical points, but the main thing was just don't get messed up with too much instruction and keep doing what you're doing."