LEGENDARY golfer Jeanne Bisgood who helped beat the US for the first time ever in an iconic competition has died aged 100.
Bisgood was a leading player during the 1950s and won national and international titles in the sport.
She won the English Women’s Amateur Championship three times and played for Great Britain & Ireland in the Curtis Cup.
Bisgood was part of a 1952 team which was the first to beat the US since the Curtis Cup had begun in 1932.
The Curtis Cup is a biennial team trophy for women amateur golfers in a match play format between the US and the UK and Ireland.
Bisgood won the English titles in 1951, 1953 and 1957.
She is one of only three women to win the English Amateur title more than twice and was the last to do so.
Before her extraordinary golf career she had studied history at Oxford and worked on breaking codes during World War 2.
Following the war she trained as a barrister and was called to the Bar in 1948.
Representing Britain overseas meant that she was able to sidestep the tough currency controls while overseas during the post-war period.
She said: “You were only allowed to take a pitiful sum of money out of the country at the time,” the Telegraph reported.
“But if, on the other hand, you were playing in an international event, you were allowed to take an extra £10 a day, which made it all possible.”
In the 1960s she began a political career and left behind competing in high level golf and being a barrister.
But she was a non-playing captain in the 1970 edition of the competition played at Brae Burn Country Club in Massachusetts.
Bisgood was also a long-standing Tory councillor for Poole.
She chaired the Dorset County Council education committee for a decade from 1974 – work for which she was awarded a CBE for in 1982.
Once asked about her secret to a long life, she cited her Catholic faith.
She said: “The closer I get to the day of judgement the more closely I stick to the rules.”
