Where Are They Now: Former LPGA Tour member Judy Meister enjoys success in new sport

Where Are They Now? is an occasional Erie Times-News sports series on the current status of former Erie-area athletes, coaches, officials or administrators of interest. Suggestions for future articles in this series can be emailed to sports@timesnews.com.

All golfers have felt some level of pressure before the need to drive a tee shot onto a tight, tree-lined fairway.

Or chip out of a yawning sand trap.

Or drain a downhill putt that also breaks.

Most golfers, though, haven’t faced such shots with their livelihoods at stake.

That was Judy Meister’s experience for much of her 1973-78 LPGA Tour tenure.

“Teeing up at (that level),” the 1965 Harbor Creek graduate said, “was just a continuous and nerve-wracking thing.”

Meister, now 77, spoke to the Erie Times-News via a Zoom call from her home in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. It was part of a Sept. 26 media session at Whispering Woods Golf Course, and arranged exactly one month before the EDGA/EDWGA’s latest hall of fame induction ceremony at Lake Shore Country Club.

Meister was enshrined as the only Erie female who’s ever competed in an LPGA event, according to research by EDGA president Dave Hewett.

“(The induction) was certainly out of the blue at this point,” she said, “and kind of amazing.”

Last month’s ceremony was the second such enshrinement for Meister. It occurred 32 years after her induction for the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame’s Metropolitan Erie chapter.

‘Chasing a little white ball’

Meister began swinging clubs age eight.

“I’m not sure if my dad (William Mitchell) picked golf for me or it picked me,” she said.

Meister continued to play even though Harbor Creek and Slippery Rock University, where she also graduated, had no women’s golf programs. She won the EDGWA Match Play Tournament four times between 1965 and 1972, and a year later was the Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur titlist.

Such results preluded Meister’s LPGA career. She received more than $16,000 in prize money, according to golfstats.com.

That amounts to roughly $85,000 with current inflation.

“I traveled the world chasing a little white ball,” Meister said her EDWGA hall biography. “It was beyond my wildest dreams.”

The 1976 Sarah Coventry Naples (Florida) Classic represented Meister’s best tour result. She tied for second place (3-over par 219) with Sandra Haynie.

Each were one stroke back of Australian victor Jan Stephenson, who like Haynie is now a World Golf Hall of Famer.

More: Former PGA Tour pro, PIAA golf champ Tim Dunlavey due for EDGA Hall of Fame enshrinement

Off-the-course success

Meister moved with her husband, Richard, to North Carolina in 1994. It’s there in recent years she’s been a golf medalist for that state’s Senior Games.

However, Meister also has experienced success amid the surge of interest in pickleball. According to her EDWGA bio, she was a bronze medalist in her age and skill division for this year’s U.S. Open.

As fate held, that tournament took place in Naples.

If Meister has one lament about her golf career, is that she didn’t formally play in college. She graduated from Slippery Rock one year after the enactment of the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, better known now as Title IX.

As part of the 1972 Education Amendments, the federal civil right law prohibits sex-based discrimination for any school or education program that receives funds from the federal government.

Although athletics is never mentioned in Title IX’s wording, it’s the reason women’s sports have blossomed to their current status.

“I was recentlly talking with my daughter (Gail) about (Title IX),” Meister said. “Now, without it, it would be like taking something away as far as womens’ privliges.

“I would have liked to have been more a part of that, but I’m more pleased that it’s helped others.”

Contact Mike Copper at mcopper@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNcopper.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Where Are They Now: Former LPGA Tour member Judy Meister