She was born and grew up in Paris, France, with her parents, René Lacoste and Simone de la Chaume and three older brothers.

[1] Her father was, beside a world class tennis player (having won seven Grand Slam singles titles), also a 6-handicap golfer.

Young Lacoste practised many different sports; skiing, skating, swimming, horse riding and tennis and, from 8 years of age, golf.

Her family spent many holidays in the coast resort area of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in France close to the Spanish border, near the Golf de Chantaco.

[3] French golfer Jean Garaïalde and his father Raymond were her golf teachers when she learned the game at young age.

[4][5][6] Lacoste decided to skip the 1967 European Ladies' Team Championship to travel to the 1967 U.S. Women's Open, to be played June 29 to July 2 at the Cascades Course of The Homestead, in Hot Springs, Virginia.

Playing on this occasion – as an amateur – in just her third professional golf tournament, she was the first European and only the second non-U.S.-citizen to win an LPGA major after Fay Crocker of Uruguay (whose father was American), and she remained the only French woman to have done so until Patricia Meunier-Lebouc won the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship.

At the 1968 Espirito Santo Trophy at Victoria Golf Club, Melbourne, Australia, Lacoste was again the individual winner and the French team bronze-medalists.

[2] This year Lacoste became the only women to have held the open amateur titles of United States, Great Britain, France and Spain at the same time.

[4][5][6] After her competitive career, she served as a non-playing captain of the French women's senior amateur team.

[3] She has been a member of the board of Lacoste, the major fashion company, founded in 1933 by her father, who invented the crocodile trademark.