USGA GOLF JOURNAL
Amateur golf legend Carol Semple Thompson, sporting her Curtis Cup Team blazer at Allegheny Country Club near Pittsburgh. (Fred Vuich/USGA)
Editor's Note: This week, Carol Semple Thompson is competing in the U.S. Senior Women's Open at NCR Country Club in Kettering, Ohio. It marks Thompson's 120th career USGA championship start, the most of any player.
Carol Semple Thompson first met her husband, Dick, in 1980 after giving a speech at her club for the USGA Green Section. Dick Thompson, a widower of six months, was in what Carol calls “the casserole brigade.” Women frequently brought him casseroles, and since Carol didn’t spend much time in the kitchen, she instead leaned heavily on golf.
“It took me a while to snag him,” she said with a wry smile.
Thompson, 73, recalled those early days of romance while sitting on the back patio of the Sawgrass Marriott in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. She was in town for the World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where Tiger Woods headlined a class of four. In 2008, Thompson was elected to the Hall under the Lifetime Achievement category.
Needless to say, one of the greatest amateurs ever to play the game snagged the eligible bachelor and enjoyed 37 years of marriage before Dick died on April 5, 2021, at the age of 90. Carol stepped away from competition for more than seven years to care for Dick, who had fallen ill with Parkinson’s disease. She had shoulder surgery earlier this year to correct damage sustained over time while helping her husband get around.
“He was the love of my life,” said Carol. “I poured my soul into it.”
Last summer, Thompson returned to competition at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, competing alongside friends JoAnne Carner and Ellen Port in the first two rounds at Brooklawn Country Club. To date, she has competed in 120 USGA championships, more than anyone in history. A seven-time USGA champion, only Bob Jones, Woods, Carner and Jack Nicklaus have won more titles.
“I want to be Carol when I grow up,” cracked Marlene Streit, 88, Canada’s most successful female amateur and a fellow World Golf Hall of Fame inductee.
Thompson’s longevity in the game is perhaps her finest achievement, and it’s due in part to the fact that her great loves – golf, horses and family – have kept both mind and soul balanced all these years. The National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP report that as of 2020, more than 1 in 5 Americans are caregivers, or an estimated 53 million adults, up from 43.5 million in 2015.
“It’s the hardest job I ever did,” said Thompson, “especially the last two or three years. Parkinson’s is a nasty disease.”
In the beginning, Thompson wanted to do it all herself. But eventually, she learned that the best course of action was to ask for help whenever she could.
“Anybody who appeared,” she said, “if I needed something, I asked.”
Dick caddied for his wife a few times. A 12-handicap player, he worked in real estate development and fit right in with Carol’s life on the family farm. He especially loved tractors and photography.
“The greatest present he ever gave me was my own weed-whacker,” she said, smiling.
Martha Lang, who later chaired the USGA Women’s Committee and served for several years on its Executive Committee, first met Carol Semple in college and describes her marriage to Dick as storybook, noting their kindness toward each other.
“They were always saying ‘sweetie pie’ and all that kind of stuff,” said Lang. “So in love.”
Carol made sure that she had someone come over at 5:30 a.m. to care for Dick when she wanted to clear her head and ride her beloved horse, Roman, through the woods of their Pennsylvania home. When someone came a little longer in the afternoons, she would hit golf balls at Allegheny Country Club between errands.
“You hear it all the time, ‘You’ve got to take care of yourself,’” she said, “and it is true.”
Dick was surrounded by Carol and his three children when he died, 15 minutes into his stay at a hospice care facility. Carol was still checking him in when they told her to come to the room.
“It was just a total blessing,” she said.
After years of taking great care of her great love, Carol found a sense of freedom in getting in her car at will and just driving around. Getting back into competition at Brooklawn proved difficult, but she greatly enjoyed the reunion it provided. Everyone who knows Carol talks about her presence in the game – and in a room. Her absence all those years was deeply felt.
A bucket-list trip to Anchorage for her 18th U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur appearance was on this summer’s docket, along with the U.S. Senior Women’s Open at NCR Country Club in Kettering, Ohio. In June, she served as a starter at the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles and a supporter of Team USA at the Curtis Cup at Merion Golf Club.
No one has been on more Curtis Cup Teams (11) or scored more points than Thompson, whose last berth came at age 53, when she sank the winning putt – a 27-foot big breaker – to retain the Cup for the Americans in 2002 at Fox Chapel Golf Club, 35 minutes from her Sewickley Hills home.
“People were watching because I was the local old bag,” she cracked. “The crowd erupted. It was quite fulfilling, I must say.”
University of Arizona head coach Laura Ianello (nee Myerscough) was one of the “long blonde ponytails” Thompson talks about on that team. “It wasn’t that much of a shock that she was on the team,” said Ianello. “She was one of the best amateurs in the world.”
Carol’s first title came at age 16 against her own mother, Phyllis, in the Western Pennsylvania Women’s Golf Championship. Carol was mostly oblivious, noting that mom was likely more nervous. Later that day,
Carol partnered with her pediatrician in a mixed event and made her first hole-in-one.
“I was on top of the world,” said Thompson, who now has 11 aces.
Lang likes to tell every young couple with children the rule that Phyllis Semple and husband Harton, a former USGA president, kept in place for the family.
“All of the children were going to play golf until they could break 90,” said Lang, “and then they could quit.”
By that point, of course, Carol was hooked.
Ellen Port, who like Thompson has seven USGA titles, got drummed, 6 and 5, the first time they met each other in a match. Years later, Port suffered a tough loss at the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur and noted that Thompson didn’t seem to get too upset when things didn’t go her way.
“Why do I?” asked Port, who took up the game at age 25. “Ellen, you just haven’t lost enough,” Thompson replied. Port repeats that story often to young players.
Hours before Woods was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Thompson recounted the time that then-USGA executive director David Fay pulled her aside at a party in Augusta, Ga., to tell her that she was going to be inducted into the Hall.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Thompson replied. Fay then told Thompson that she had to keep the news quiet until the rest of the class was informed. Thompson had about six family members at that party, and she marched right over and told them all.
A month or so later, Thompson was staying at a friend’s house in Baltimore with Pete and Alice Dye. Pete was in the shower when the PGA Tour commissioner called. Alice implored him to come out in his robe to take the call. Turns out Pete was going in the Hall in the same class, only this time Thompson kept her news quiet.
It is anecdotes like this that underscore what Dick and the entire amateur golf world have long known about Carol: There will never be another like her.
