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Kathy Cornelius, 1956 U.S. Women's Open champion, dies at 93
Kathy Cornelius won the U.S. Women's Open as a 23-year-old rookie in 1956 and, with daughter Kay, formed the only mother-daughter pair to win USGA championships.
Kathy Cornelius, who won the 1956 U.S. Women’s Open in her first appearance and went on to win seven times on the LPGA Tour, has died at the age of 93. The USGA announced that she died on 28 September.
Cornelius and her younger daughter, Kay, who won the 1981 U.S. Girls’ Junior, are the only mother and daughter ever to win USGA championships.
Cornelius joined the LPGA Tour in 1956 and won twice in her first season. The bigger of those wins came at Northland Country Club in Duluth, Minnesota, and it took an extra day. She led by a shot after an opening 73, slipped two behind Marlene Bauer Hagge after a second-round 77, and was level with Hagge going into the final round. Both struggled on the last day, which let the amateur Barbara McIntire post a closing 71 and take the clubhouse lead. Cornelius had the chance to win outright on the 72nd hole but found water, made bogey and was forced into an 18-hole playoff.
In the playoff the next day Cornelius shot 75 and beat McIntire by seven strokes. At 23, she became only the second player to win the U.S. Women’s Open at her first attempt. According to the USGA, she celebrated with her daughter Karen, who turned two that day.
It was her only major title. Cornelius finished in the top 20 on the LPGA money list 12 times, between 1957 and 1965 and again from 1971 to 1973. The championship she won now carries a $12.5 million purse, which it will play for at Inverness Club next year (the 2027 LPGA schedule).
Born Kathy McKinnon in Boston, she moved to Florida as a schoolgirl and took up golf at 13, at a course she could reach by bike. She told the FORE The Good of the Game podcast in 2025 that, at first, “I was just having fun doing it.” She sometimes filled in for the men’s golf team at Florida Southern College, became friends with Babe Didrikson Zaharias, won the Southern Amateur in 1952 and was medallist at the Florida Intercollegiate in 1953. That year she married golf professional Bill Cornelius and turned professional herself.
From 1985 to 1999 she and her husband ran Magique Golf, a club-making company in Arizona, and she later taught part-time at Rio Salado Golf Course in Tempe. The USGA recalls that in 2022 she told Golfweek she was using an old pitching wedge as a walking stick after her doctor told her she needed a cane.
Cornelius lived in Chandler, Arizona. She is survived by her daughters, Karen and Kay.
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