By Marvin Pave
November 21, 2016

On the verge of winning the 1955 Massachusetts women’s amateur golf championship, Pippy Rooney O’Connor drove her tee shot into the rough on the 17th hole at Pine Brook Country Club in Weston.

As she addressed the ball, it moved ever so slightly. She reported the violation to a tournament official, resulting in a one-shot penalty. Mrs. O’Connor, who was then Pippy Rooney, lost the hole but won the match on the 18th, sinking an 8-foot downhill putt.

Her respect for the game never wavered over the next six decades as she provided opportunities and mentoring for future generations of young golfers.

“Pippy was a role model, a confidante, and someone I respected tremendously and wanted to learn from,” said women’s professional golf legend Pat Bradley. “I felt honored to be her friend. Pippy was one of Massachusetts and New England golf’s treasures.”

Mrs. O’Connor, who formerly chaired junior golf for the Women’s Golf Association of Massachusetts and at Charles River Country Club in Newton, where she was a longtime member, died Nov. 15 in Elizabeth Seton nursing home in Wellesley from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was 86 and had lived in Wellesley for many years.

As an inductee to the New England Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, she reflected on her decision to not turn professional, even though she more than held her own when pitted against pros as an amateur.

“I realized I loved teaching and I got great satisfaction out of helping others,” she told the Globe that year. “You had to give up everything to reach the top level and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. I wanted a normal life.”

Mrs. O’Connor, who was noted for her long drives and fluid swing, was coach of the first girls’ golf team at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham and founding director of the Independent School Girls’ Golf Classic.

“She gave back to the game so much,” the late Claire Nolan, who was one of Mrs. O’Connor’s closest friends and formerly ran the state public school girls’ tournament, told the Globe in 2000. “I can’t tell you how wonderful she is and how great she was in a very quiet way. She never says anything about herself. You would never know that she is the player that she was.”

Together, they arranged matches between junior players from Charles River and Nolan’s home course, Woodland Golf Club in Newton.

Current professional tour player James Driscoll was 10 when Mrs. O’Connor urged him to compete in a national junior tournament that “gave me the confidence to play against kids from all over the country and was my introduction to golf at that level. She was a major influence and I owe her a lot.”

At tournaments she held for Charles River’s junior players, he added, “she set the tone and we would feed off that enthusiasm.”

Chelsea Curtis, who is on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Golf Association of Massachusetts, or WGAM, had played in the ISL Classic and said that girls were drawn to Mrs. O’Connor “because of her energy, enthusiasm, and support. She was incredibly involved and incredibly thoughtful.”

Theodora Catherine Rooney grew up in Jamaica Plain, a daughter of the former Dora Clexton and John J. Rooney, who nicknamed her Pippy.

She graduated in 1948 from Girls’ Latin School, and in 1952 from the Bouve-Boston School of Physical Education at Tufts University. Mrs. O’Connor started her teaching career at Beaver Country Day School in Newton, where she was joined on the faculty by Geneo McAuliffe, who became a lifelong friend and state women’s amateur golf champion.

“Pippy was one of a kind,” McAuliffe said. “She loved being around people and was great with kids.”

As a teenager, Mrs. O’Connor thrived under the summertime tutelage of Jack Igoe, a golf professional who conducted youth clinics at Hatherly Country Club in North Scituate, where he would take movies of his young players’ swings. “He was way ahead of his time,” Mrs. O’Connor told the Globe in 1998.

Mrs. O’Connor’s accomplishments included becoming the WGAM Junior champion in 1948, a quarterfinalist in the 1953 US Women’s Amateur, and a three-time qualifier for the US Women’s Open.

She was also a winner at the 1955 Bermuda Ladies Championship, an 11-time women’s club champ at Charles River, and seven-time women’s champ at Hatherly.

When she married Robert O’Connor in 1963, she was photographed swinging a golf club while in her wedding gown. On their honeymoon, the couple played in the Mixed Bermuda Golf Championship.

“She was the most positive and energetic mom one could ever wish for,” said their son, Ted of Cohasset. “If we were having a bad day, she’d change that mood around quickly.”

Robert O’Connor, who died in 2009, was a program analyst for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the US Department of Transportation. He operated a baseball memorabilia business in Wellesley, coached youth sports, and was Wellesley Little League president.

Mrs. O’Connor, an all-around athlete, also coached and taught in Palm Beach, Fla., at Harvard University and Radcliffe College, and at the Winsor School in Boston, where a softball award is named for her.

In 2005, her last year as ISL girls tournament director, Mrs. O’Connor was honored at The Country Club during the tournament.

“She was a class act and I’ll always remember her sayings that we called the Pippy Principles, things like ‘No explaining, no complaining, nobody cares,’ ” recalled Mrs. O’Connor’s cousin Ginger O’Shea, who directs the Pippy O’Connor Independent School Girls’ Golf Classic and is girls’ golf coach at the Taft School in Connecticut.

A service has been held for Mrs. O’Connor, who in addition to her son Ted leaves another son, Robert Jr. of Needham; a brother, John J. Rooney Jr. of Fredericksburg, Va.; and four grandchildren.

LPGA tour pro Alison Walshe was 9 and had just played in her first state junior event where Mrs. O’Connor pulled her mother aside.

“She predicted, ‘Your daughter can get a college scholarship,’ and she encouraged me to pursue that goal,” Walshe said. “That was Pippy in a nutshell, and she’s 100 percent the reason I fell in love with the game.”

In 2010, Mrs. O’Connor was honored before 250 guests at Charles River. Proceeds were donated to the WGAM’s Pippy O’Connor Junior Program Fund.

“It was a time to appreciate Pippy and to realize that it was a passing of the torch,” said Caitlin Sullivan, who participated in the junior program at Charles River and was a close friend. “Her joy was introducing newcomers to the game, and she never asked for anything in return.”