Barbara Young began playing golf at the age of 30 and she still plays regularly at 76, even after surgical replacements in both knees. When the Young family moved to Westport, she developed into a golf champion and now, some three decades later, she joins the state’s most accomplished players as a member of the Connecticut Golf Hall of Fame.
Playing at Westport Longshore, then at Aspetuck Valley CC, Young eventually won the Connecticut Women’s Golf Association championship in 1988 and ’91, and took the Connecticut Women’s Amateur title six times. Before moving to North Carolina, Young won the New England WGA championship twice (1986 and ’91), and has since captured the New England Senior Women’s Amateur title nine times. Two highlights of Young’s career were a second-place finish in the 1986 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Lakewood GC in Alabama, and a victory in the 1992 Canadian Senior Amateur in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Among other titles, she has won the CWGA Seniors three times, the Connecticut Women’s Senior Amateur eight times, the Women’s Eastern GA Seniors (1992), the Metropolitan (NY) Golf Association Seniors (1989), the North and South Seniors six times, the North Carolina Seniors twice (1994, ’99), the Carolinas Seniors (1998) and the Women’s Eastern Super Seniors three times (1999-2001).
Long before she took up golf, Young had an interesting athletic career as a shortstop for the Kenosha, WI, Comets of the All-American Girls Baseball League, made famous by the 1992 movie ‘A League of Their Own,’ starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna. ‘I was still in high school when 12 of us from New England traveled to South Bend (Indiana) for tryouts,’ Young said. ‘The league was popular because it filled a void with a lot of the men off at war. It was fun while it lasted. We even played in Yankee Stadium.’
Young’s athletic talent was not limited to golf and baseball. In tennis, she was New England Junior champion in 1948, played on the Junior Girls Whiteman Cup team in 1949, and lost to Maureen Connolly in the National Juniors in 1949. She also was an All-State field hockey player at Brookline (MA) High, and won the New England Platform Tennis doubles title in 1976. She received a Connecticut Sports Writers Alliance Gold Key in 1994.
