At age 16, Carol Semple won her first tournament by defeating her mother in the finals of the Western Pennsylvania Women's Championship.

A 1966 graduate of Miss Porter's School[1] and a 1970 graduate of Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, she defeated Anne Quast to win the 1973 U.S. Women's Amateur at the Montclair Golf Club in Montclair, New Jersey.

She is also one of only five people to have won three different USGA individual championship events, the others being JoAnne Carner, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Tiger Woods.

At age 53, she clinched the U.S. team's 2002 victory with a dramatic 27-foot birdie putt on the final hole.

In 2008, she was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in the Lifetime Achievement category.