Remembering Grace DeMoss Zwahlen – PNGA Hall of Famer

by Tom Cade, Editor

One of the finest women golfers the Pacific Northwest ever produced – Grace DeMoss Zwahlen – passed away on November 25, 2024, at the age of 97.

She was a shooting star.

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Zwahlen was one of the most dominant women amateur golfers in the U.S., on the local, regional, national, and international golf scene. All of it leading to her induction into the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame in 1993.

The daughter of Raymond and Mary DeMoss, Grace was born in Corvallis, Ore. in 1927. She was the youngest of five daughters, none of whom played golf. But her dad did.

Originally interested in participating in equestrian events – horseback riding competitions – Grace was 15 when a friend convinced her to climb the fence and sneak onto the Corvallis Country Club to give golf a try. After a few times doing this, the club pro called her dad, and the naturally athletic Grace confessed to him that she liked the game. Her dad encouraged her to keep at it, even arranging lessons with the region’s top instructors, including Al Zimmerman, who himself would later be inducted into the Pacific Northwest Section PGA Hall of Fame.

Grace entered her first tournament in 1945, finishing dead last in the Portland Open. The following year, however, she reached the final of the Oregon Women’s Amateur, eventually finishing runner-up; and was a semifinalist in the PNGA Women’s Amateur. In 1947, she was a finalist in the PNGA Women’s Amateur, and then won that year’s Portland City Amateur.

In those years, Corvallis High School did not have a girls’ golf program, so Grace played on the boys’ team.

In 1949, she won the Canadian Women’s Amateur, held that year at Capilano Golf and Country Club in West Vancouver, B.C., after which the townspeople of Corvallis threw her a parade for winning that national championship. The next year, she won the PNGA Women’s Amateur, which was also held at Capilano.

She followed this victory with a semifinalist finish at the 1950 U.S. Women’s Amateur, and was a finalist at the Canadian Women’s Amateur, the Women’s Trans-Mississippi, and the Oregon Women’s Amateur; and was medalist at the Women’s Western Open, a field that included professional and amateur players.

Grace graduated from Oregon State University in her hometown of Corvallis in 1952, but did not compete collegiately as Oregon State did not have a women’s golf team at the time. Yet she spent most of the 1950s continuing to dominate the game wherever she played.

In 1952, she was the first Pacific Northwesterner to be named to the U.S. Curtis Cup Team, with the competition held that year at Muirfield in Scotland. She was selected for the Curtis Cup again in 1954, when it was held at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. Being selected for this international competition was the highest honor for a women’s golfer during the days when the LPGA was in its infancy and women still played in long pleated skirts.

DeMoss won three Florida State Women’s Amateur titles (1955, 1957, 1958), and three consecutive Oregon Women’s Amateur titles (1956-1958). She would also win titles in California and Arizona.

In 1959, she married Fred Zwahlen, who was the founder and chairman of the Department of Journalism at Oregon State from the late 1950s until his death in 2004.

The busyness of raising two children, the lack of options for women amateur golfers, and physical wear-and-tear of playing that much golf, took DeMoss away from playing competitively. But she stayed involved with the game.

From 1986–2006, she was the girls’ golf coach at Crescent Valley High School in her hometown of Corvallis.

In 2007, three years after the death of her husband, she moved to Coto de Caza, Calif., to be closer to her daughter, Molly Walsh, and two grandchildren. She bought a home near the 17th hole of the Coto de Caza Golf Club and earned the reputation of being first every morning on the driving range, still hitting shot after shot – at age 80 – with perfect precision.

The word quickly got out about her competitive past and her experience in coaching, and from 2007–2017 she served as the girls’ freshman/sophomore golf coach at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in nearby Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. She stayed in this role until she was 90, and was affectionately known throughout the region as “Coach Gracie,” who taught her young charges about the importance of the game’s fundamentals, rules and etiquette.

“Everybody loved her,” said her daughter, Walsh. “Growing up, all my friends wanted to be around her. During her entire life, she kept up with the culture, the latest fashions, current affairs. Her can-do attitude about life could be summed up as, ‘Let’s just get on with things.’”

Grace’s son Skip Zwahlen, who now lives in Southern California, had played on the Oregon State men’s golf team, and remains an avid golfer, belonging to several clubs around the country, including Merion (site of his mother’s 1954 Curtis Cup appearance). During his mother’s years at Coto de Caza, he would often visit her and spend time with her on the range, each giving tips on the others’ golf swing.

Along with her induction into the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame in 1993, DeMoss Zwahlen is also a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame (1986), the Oregon State Athletics Hall of Fame (1991), and the Corvallis High School Hall of Fame (2016).