Champion: Heather Daly-Donofrio

Heather Daly-Donofrio took up golf for the first time at Roger Ludlowe High School, looking for a sport she could play when she was not busy with the swim team. No one in her family was a golfer; she taught herself by reading instruction books and playing with a set of clubs that her uncle bought at a tag sale. In order to learn more about golf, she got a job working in the bag room at Patterson Country Club, where she was one of the only girls.

Recruited to Yale for both swimming and golf, she spent much of her time outside the classroom on the golf course. After graduation, she turned pro, and accumulated victories on the LPGA SymetraTour while also coaching the women’s golf team at Yale to the Ivy League Championship in 1998. That same year, she qualified for the LPGA. She won her first LPGA event in 2001, and her second LPGA event in 2004. She served as the Tour president, and was on the tour until 2009. She became the only Yale graduate to win a professional golf tournament on a major U.S. golf tour. She is now the LPGA’s Chief Tour Operations Officer.