The premise is doubtful
Women’s major championships have not been a feature of South America. The events that are now counted as women’s majors have been staged in the United States, Britain and France, and none, as far as can be established, has been held on the South American continent. A “first woman to win a major in South America” therefore cannot be named, and this article does not name one. It is also clear that 1967 did not offer such a milestone.
What can be described, in general terms, is how golf arrived in the region, how women took it up, and why the top of the professional women’s game has been decided mostly elsewhere.
Golf comes with British clubs
Golf reached South America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through British, and in some places American, communities involved in railways, trade, banking and farming. Clubs were founded in and around Buenos Aires in Argentina, and in Brazil in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, among other places. The oldest clubs are generally credited to British expatriates, though precise founding dates vary between accounts and are not given here.
Argentina developed an especially strong golfing tradition, with many clubs and a national association that organised amateur and open championships. Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela also developed clubs, many of them in the capital cities and in resort areas. Golf in these countries was often a game for the wealthy and for expatriate communities, which limited its spread for decades.
Women and the amateur game
As in Britain and North America, women played from early on, typically in ladies’ sections of the clubs, with their own medals and competitions. National women’s amateur championships grew up in several countries, and South American women’s teams began to compete at continental level. The South American amateur team events, where national teams meet, have been a regular part of the calendar for a long time, and a Latin American amateur circuit has been a route to scholarships at American universities for talented young players in more recent decades.
The names of early champions are recorded in national association records, but a general article should not guess at them, so none is offered here.
Why the majors were elsewhere
The tournaments now recognised as majors grew up around the strongest professional tours, which were in the United States and later in Europe. Prize money, sponsorship and television all followed the main tours. South American players who wanted to compete at the highest level tended to move north or across the Atlantic, as players from many other regions did. Women’s professional golf within South America has remained small, with a limited number of events, and the continent has not been in the rotation for the majors.
Latin American women have made their mark on the LPGA tour, though the best-known early success is that of a Mexican player, Lorena Ochoa, in the 2000s, and Mexico belongs to North America. For South America itself, the story is of individual players making careers abroad and of regional amateur strength.
South America in 1967
In 1967 South America was in the news for reasons largely unrelated to golf. In October of that year the Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia, an event that made headlines around the world. In sport, football dominated the continent’s attention. Uruguay had hosted the 1930 World Cup, the first of its kind, and the club competitions between South American and European champions, such as the Intercontinental Cup, were heavily followed. Golf had a following among club members, but it was not a mass spectator sport.
For women, golf in 1967 meant club and national amateur competition. There was no professional women’s tour in the region, and no women’s major championship to win.
The modern picture
Since then, the number of women playing has grown, and golf federations across the continent have run junior programmes. Golf’s return to the Olympic programme in 2016, at a Games held in Brazil, drew new attention to the sport in the region. The Olympic course in Rio was a new construction, and the women’s competition was held on it. Details of how that has changed participation locally are not easy to measure, and it would be a mistake to overstate them.
Professional women’s events have appeared on regional and development tours from time to time, and some South American players have earned cards on larger tours. As with the rest of this cluster, the sensible reading is that the continent’s women golfers have built their careers through the established majors and tours rather than through a major of their own.
The tennis comparison is instructive. Maria Bueno of Brazil won Grand Slam titles in the early 1960s, and she is one of the best-known South American women in any sport of that era. Golf has had no equivalent breakthrough in a recognised major in that period, which is part of why this title’s premise does not hold.