RANcho Mirage, Calif. — Marilyn Haag-Fossler, Hall of Fame player and last living founder of the LPGA Tour, passed away Tuesday morning, her family said. She was 89 years old.
Hagge-Vossler has won 26 times on the LPGA Tour, including the 1952 LPGA Championship, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002.
Marilyn Bauer was 15 when she joined 12 other women—including her older sister, Alice Bauer—in signing the incorporation papers in 1950 for the fledgling LPGA Tour.
After her death, the LPGA is among the leading women’s sports associations in the world, with players competing this year for $100 million in prize money.
“We will miss Marilyn dearly, but I can guarantee she will never be forgotten,” said AARP Commissioner Molly Marco Semaan. “She was a remarkable athlete, a fiery competitor, and at a young age showed women and girls that they can achieve greatness in all areas of life. We are so grateful for her contributions to the LPGA, women’s golf and women’s sports in general.”
Her family said she died in memory care and had physical problems for the past year due to a fall, the Desert Sun reports.
Among the co-founders she’s joined are Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Louise Suggs, and Patty Berg. While Hagge-Vossler is already in the Golf Hall of Fame, the remaining co-founders were elected in March for the 2024 induction course.
They played golf and mostly promoted their league. Hagge-Vossler was a star on and off the court, known as one of the “glamor girls” of the early days of the LPGA.
A year before the LPGA started, she won the Youngest American Girls’ Race at age 15, and in 1949 was the youngest female athlete to be voted out by the Associated Press.
She won her first LPGA Tour event in the 1952 Sarasota Open. Her last win was in 1972 at the Burdine Invitational in Miami.
Born in South Dakota, her family moved to California during her childhood.
She won the Long Beach City Boys Junior title when she was ten years old. At the age of 13, she won the Los Angeles Women’s Championship, the Palm Springs Women’s Championship and the Northern California Open. She was the youngest player to win the US Women’s Open and finished eighth.
“When I won the Los Angeles City Women’s Championship in 1947 when I was 13, it said on the back of the scorecard that children under 14 were not allowed on the course,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1987.
She married Bob Haag in 1955, shortly after his divorce from her sister, Alice. They divorced in 1964 and she married former PGA Tour professional Ernie Vossler in 1995. Her husband passed away in 2013.
Former LPGA commissioner Charlie Mechem told The Desert Sun: “Marilyn had a very special place on the tour. Not only was she a good player, but she was beautiful, charismatic and popular.” “The Tour and golf as a whole would miss it.”