Judy Rankin
Judy Rankin is to be awarded a Doctor of Laws (LLD) on Monday 30 June 2025 during the afternoon ceremony.
Born Judy Torluemke in St Louis, Missouri, Judy started playing golf at the age of six under the guidance of her father Paul and has received instruction from Eddie Held, Bob Greene and Bob Toski.
Her victory as a 14-year-old in the 1959 Missouri Amateur is still a record for youngest winner in that event. At 15, she became the youngest player to finish as low amateur at the US Women’s Open in 1960 and went on to add another Missouri Amateur victory to her canon in 1961.
Judy married Yippy Rankin in 1967, and the following year she captured her first LPGA Tour victory at the Corpus Christi Open. From 1968 to 1979, she would go on to win 25 more times and currently ranks 23rd on the LPGA Tour’s All-Time Wins List.
In 1973, she won four tournaments and recorded a total of 25 top ten finishes, going on to earn her first of three Vare Trophies. In 1976, she was the first player to gross US$100,000 in a season thanks to six victories and ended the year with her first Player of the Year (POTY) honour of her career.
Her last win came in 1979 at the WUI Classic, and her last full season on Tour was 1983, having amassed a total of two POTY awards and three Vare Trophies. Rankin also went on to captain the 1996 and 1998 victorious US Solheim Cup teams.
Judy Rankin was inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame under the Veteran’s Category (now dissolved) and the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2000. Her other accolades include earning GWAA Female Player of the Year honours in 1976 and 1977, the LPGA Founders Award in 1998, the discontinued LPGA Patty Berg Award in 1999, the USGA’s Bob Jones Award in 2007 and, most recently, the LPGA Commissioner’s Award in 2021.
From 1984 until 2018, Rankin was a golf commentator for ESPN and ABC, She became the lead analyst on LPGA broadcasts on the Golf Channel in 2010.