News & Events
“Matchless . . Rise of Women’s Golf” Wins 2026 USGA Book Award
Mar 9, 2026
On the eve of Women’s History Month, the United States Golf Association on February 28 at its 2026 Annual meeting in New York City, honored retired San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor Stephen Proctor as recipient of the USGA’s 2026 Herbert Warren Wind Book Award for golf literature, for Proctor’s Matchless: Joyce Wethered, Glenna Collett and the Rise of Women’s Golf.
"Matchless . . Rise of Women's Golf" Wins 2026 USGA Book Award for Stephen Proctor Photo Courtesy USGA
Writing in the September 27, 2025 Wall Street Journal, Proctor’s fellow-golf scribe Brad Klein lists “Matchless” among the 10 Books That Belong on Every Golfer’s Bookshelf.
“Fresh off the press, this book traces the history of late 19th- and early 20th-century women’s golf and how it culminated in a series of matches pitting the dominant female players of the interwar period on both sides of the Atlantic. Englishwoman Briton Joyce Wethered and American Glenna Collett are at the center of this account, . . . in what amounts to a generational “life and times” of women’s golf. What we have here is not mere game narrative of major championships, but sportswriting embedded in a larger cultural contest. This was, after all, as Proctor reminds us, “when suffragettes around the globe were fighting stubbornly, sometimes violently, to establish their rightful place in a patriarchal world.”
Since retiring from daily journalism in 2014, Proctor has, in addition to “Matchless,” authored two golf histories: “Monarch of the Green: Young Tom Morris, Pioneer of Modern Golf, and The Long Golden Afternoon: Golf’s Age of Glory (1864 – 2014). He now lives in Brevard County on Central Florida’s Atlantic Coast, where he is Chair of the nonprofit Golf Brevard, Inc., which manages two of Brevard County’s municipal golf courses. While in San Francisco, Proctor served two years as volunteer Club President at the municipal Gleneagles course.
Also at the USGA’s 2026 Annual Meeting, San Franciscan Michael McCarthy was confirmed to his second three-year term as a member of the USGA’s 15-member Executive Committee.
