Kris Tschetter - Inducted 2013
A Sioux Falls Washington High grad, Tschetter is South Dakota’s greatest golfer of the last 50 years.
She played from 1988-2012 on the LPGA Tour and now plays on the Legends Tour. The former Texas Christian University standout has almost $3 million in career earnings. She won the 1992 Northgate Computer Classic and teamed with good friend Billy Andrade to win the 1991 JC Penney Classic mixed team event.
She finished second in two majors, the 1996 U.S. Open (to Annika Sorenstam) and the 1997 Nabisco Dinah Shore (to Betsy King). In all, Tschetter had 10 runner-up finishes and 50 top-10 finishes – she lost to Cindy Figg-Currier in a playoff at the 1997 State Farm Rail Classic. She was one of the top players in the LPGA for much of the 1990s. She finished 12th on the money list in 1995 and 14th in 1996, but much of her later career was hindered by hip surgeries – seven in all. In 2001, she received the Heather Farr award, which is voted on by peers and given to a player each year who has demonstrated determination, perseverance and spirit in fulfilling her goals as a player.
As an amateur, Tschetter won the 1983 American Junior Golf Association Tournament of Champions and was a four-time South Dakota women’s stroke-play champion (1983-86) with losses in playoffs in 1981 and ’82. She was a state high school champion in 1982 and 1983. She qualified for her first U.S. Open in 1984 and played in 17 U.S. Opens throughout her career. At TCU, she was a three-time all-Southwest Conference player, and she finished ninth at the 1987 NCAA Championship.
She founded the Kris Tschetter Celebrity Golf Benefit for Kids in 1991 in Sioux Falls and for the past six years has hosted the YMCA Fore Kids Golf Classic, which has raised more than $1 million.
Her book, Mr. Hogan the Man I Knew, published in 2010, has received rave reviews from fans and critics alike. It is about her close friendship with the great Ben Hogan while she was living in Texas in the 1980s and ’90s.
