Blalock, Jane

Golf Professional

Jane Blalock is a former LPGA Tour champion who won 27 times and is perhaps best known for her record 299 consecutive tournaments played without missing a cut.

Today, Blalock is involved with two significant golf properties that have had a huge impact on advancing women in the game for the past two decades: the Women's PGA Clinics and Legends of the LPGA, Official Senior Tour of the LPGA.
Golf champion. Business guru. Activist trailblazer. Jane Blalock has racked up a lifetime of achievements that few others can claim.

Blalock joined the LPGA Tour in 1969 and remains one of its winningest players in history with 27 titles. A record-holder across all professional men’s and women’s golf tours, playing 299 consecutive tournaments without missing a cut, she retired from the tour in 1985 but not the sport, and has continued to have an indelible impact.

She founded JBC Golf, Inc. in 1990. This Boston-based golf and event marketing firm creates golf sponsorships and marketing opportunities for Fortune 500 companies and major corporations, consistently delivering goal-driven results. In 2001, Blalock spearheaded the Women’s Senior Golf Tour – now known as Legends of the LPGA, official senior tour of the LPGA – a coup for women of professional golf age 45 and over, creating opportunities for continued competitive golf in career afterlife.

Blalock also created and now heads up Women's PGA Clinics, a 30-year program that brings advanced instruction to the growing number of women who’ve developed a love of the sport for business and pleasure. The clinics have become a valuable platform, as well, for businesses wanting to court a very influential consumer demographic.

Triumphant in reinventing her own career from the fairway to the boardroom, Blalock inspires and empowers other women – and men – not only with her own athletic talent, but with her keen intelligence, fierce tenacity, and unrivaled perseverance.

Beginnings
It all began when a pig-tailed teenage girl from Portsmouth, NH, picked up some used clubs and began hitting balls by the hour at a nearby country club. Obsessive practice and commitment to honing her golf skills led to five straight New Hampshire Amateur titles plus the New England Amateur title in 1967 and 1968. She attended Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, graduating in 1967 with a degree in history. While there in 1966 she won the Florida Intercollegiate Championship.

Professional Record
In her inaugural year as a professional, Blalock was named the LPGA Rookie of the Year and won her first tournament the following year. A mere two years later, she had the distinction of being the first player to stand in the Colgate Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle. It was this singular tournament (subsequently known as the Kraft Nabisco Championship and now the Chevron Championship) that catapulted the women’s game and those who played it into prominence. Blalock was well on her way to golf fame.

All told in her 18 years playing professionally on the LPGA tour, she was victorious in 27 official tournaments, won the Triple Crown Championships in 1977 and 1978, brought home the top prize from the World Ladies Championship in Japan in 1974 and 1978 and The Mazda Japan Classic in 1985.

For three consecutive years Golf Digest named her to its LPGA All American team, and twice she won the publication’s “Most Improved” award. In 1974 and 1975, playing with fellow tour professional Sandra Palmer, they snagged the LPGA Angelos Team Championship win. And in 1977, she and PGA professional Ray Floyd teamed together to win the International Mixed Championship. While she experienced a winning dry spell in the early 80s, she diligently worked to reinvigorate her game and attitude, and ultimately she was named Golf Digest’s 1985 “Comeback Player of the Year” for double wins that year: The Women’s Kemper Open and then The Mazda Japan Classic.


Beyond the Links
From a presidential appointment to book author, TV commentator to investment counselor, Blalock’s accomplishments are as impressive off the links as they are on them.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush appointed Blalock to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and she served throughout his four-year term. She authored two books: The first was Guts to Win published in 1977, followed by Gimmies, Bogeys and Business in 1999, which is a guide to using golf for success in business. A frequent commentator on ESPN for LPGA Tournaments, she was inducted into the Vince Lombardi Hall of Fame in 1980 and also into her college alma mater’s Sports Hall of Fame. In 1998, she was among the first class of inductees into the New England Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Another honorary first: Blalock was named Athlete of the Year in 1987 by the National Association of Girls and Women in Sports, the first time this award was bestowed. New Hampshire named Blalock an Athlete of the Century in 2000.
Acclaimed American artist LeRoy Neiman chose to immortalize Blalock on the golf course in a portrait that captures her swing. And, before fully immersing herself into her own business, she ventured into the commercial waters of Merrill Lynch, becoming a Vice President and Financial Consultant in the Boston office, a post she held for four years.

Giving Back
Blalock plays to win wherever she is, and that’s true, as well when it comes to CSR and giving back to the world she lives in. In 1980, she created the University of New Hampshire Pro-Am Classic, an annual tournament that endows her namesake scholarship fund for women athletes at the school. This cause has raised substantial funds during its 25-year tenure. And, built into The Legends Tour that she now oversees, is a fund raising component that has earned more than $18 million in contributions that have benefited dozens of charities, including the BJ’s Charitable Foundation, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the Dan Marino Foundation, the American Diabetes Association and more.