Player Profiles: Sally Little

Sally Little

Sally Little was born in Cape Town, South Africa. As a youngster, Sally would tag along behind her father, Percy, on his regular weekend round of golf. At 12 years old, she began to play the game in earnest.

At the age of 17, Little had won more than a dozen national and regional amateur titles at home. She headed for the United States and quickly made her mark, winning the LPGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year honours 1971.

In her time abroad, she collected 15 LPGA Tour titles, two Majors - the LPGA Championship in 1981 and the Du Maurier Classic (Canadian Open) in 1988 - and won the Nabisco Championship, which became a major just a year after Little secured the title.  Consistently ranked in the top five in the world for more than a decade, Little also starred in countless made for television tournaments which pitted the world’s top women golfers against their male peers.

The titles, the fame and the celebrity took South Africa’s hottest export to nearly every corner of the globe. At home, though, her impressive resume didn’t always gain the attention it warranted. Over three decades, South Africa’s Sally Little carved out a little history of her own as the country’s most celebrated female golfer.

She continues to compete on the Legends Tour, the women’s senior division of the LPGA, of which she is a founding member. She is also involved with both junior and amateur golf development in South Africa. Sally’s course design boasts of Kingswood, her signature golf course on the Garden Route. Her business interests include the Sally Little Eyewear line, the Sally Little Linen Collection by WhiteHouse, and the Sally Little Golf Bracelet.

Most important to Sally today is her passion for breast cancer causes. Through her own foundation, as well as through her role as Global Ambassador for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, she supports awareness, research, treatment and the eradication of breast cancer.

This year marks Little’s fourth appearance in the Gary Player Invitational presented by Coca-Cola. She teed it up in the event from 2006 to 2008 and has been on the winning side once. In 2007, she combined with current world number one Luke Donald to lift the betterball title and the pair partnered Alex Maditsi of Coca-Cola to victory in the alliance team competition.