Betsy King Biography
Betsy King's biography is filled with golf championships. Her golfing career spans an impressive thirty years.
King was born in 1955 in Reading, Pennsylvania. In her amateur career, she was a semifinalist at the U.S. Girl's Junior Championship in 1972. She finished second at the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament in 1977. This made her eligible to play for the LPGA. In 1979, she made two hole in ones. She won her first title playing in Japan at the Itsuki Charity Classic. King was playing good golf and doing well in the tournaments, but she went for seven long years without winning a tour title. Finally in 1984, she had her first victory at the Women's Kemper Open. That same year she won two more titles as well. She would not go a year without winning a championship for the next ten years. She was named Rolex Player of the Year in 1984.
She won three titles in 1985, including the Ladies' British Open. She took home two championships in 1986. Both were sudden-death playoffs. King had a big year in 1987. She was awarded her first Vare trophy. She won her first major championship. She had another hole in one shot and she won four tournaments. She followed that up by winning three tournaments the next year. She set a record in 1989 by becoming the first player to earn five hundred thousand dollars in one season. She didn't stop there, either. She passed the six hundred thousand dollar mark that season as well. That pushed her over the two million dollar mark in career earnings. She won her second Rolex Player of the Year award that year.
King continued her success winning three events in 1990. She crossed the three million dollar earnings mark that year. She was only the third LPGA player to have done that. She continued to set records in 1992, as she was the first player to have four rounds of golf in which she scored in the sixties in a major event. She also was only the second player to earn over four million dollars over the span of her career. She met this milestone in 1993, the same year that she had fifteen finishes in the top ten. She was a member of the U.S. Solheim Cup Team in 1994.
She won her thirtieth career championship in 1995. In 1997, she won the Nabisco Dinah Shore title, becoming only the second player to win that championship three times. She had accumulated eight million dollars in career earnings by 1998, and was the first player in LPGA history to earn that much. She won two titles in 2000, passed the seven million dollar mark in 2001 and led the U.S. Solheim Cup Team to victory in 2007.
In addition to golfing, King is involved in several charity activities. She worked with Habitat for Humanity, went to Romania to work with orphans, and organized a mission trip to Honduras. She helped form Golf Fore Africa which helps those affected by the genocide in Rwanda.