Mary Ann Downey Cooke was raised in Baltimore across the street from Hillsdale Golf Course, now called Forest Park. She attended Chestnut Hill College in Pennsylvania and was a 50-year member of Baltimore Country Club. She played in only two BCC Club Championships, winning each before turning her focus to the regional and national stage. Its trophy is named in her honor.
Ms. Cooke was a 12-time winner of the Women’s Golf Association Championship, five-time Maryland Women’s Amateur Champion, three-time Middle Atlantic Amateur Champion, two-time Eastern Women’s Golf Association Champion, Trans-Mississippi Women’s Champion, Southern Women’s Amateur Champion, and Greiner Champion.
The year 1949 for Mary Ann Downey was very memorable. As a 23-year-old, she won four of the five major women’s local titles, three of them for the first time. The four events included the Women’s Golf Association title, followed by the Maryland Women’s Amateur, The Greiner, and concluding with the Middle Atlantic Women’s Amateur crown.
In 1956 she represented the United States as a member of the Curtis Cup, which was held in Sandwich, England. That same year she made it to the quarterfinals in the Women’s British Amateur. She also was an alternate on the 1952 and 1954 Curtis Cup teams. In 1988 the USGA named Ms. Cook, Honorary Chairman of the Women’s U.S. Open hosted, at BCC. That week, she was quoted in the News American: “Playing on the Curtis Cup Team was my biggest thrill in golf. Representing your country and listening to the National Anthem as the American Flag is raised, is a memory I relive time and time again.”
In 1979 Mary Ann Downey Cooke was inducted into the Maryland Sports Hall of Fame and honored by Golf Digest as the greatest female golfer ever, from Maryland. The Middle Atlantic Golf Association inducted her into their Hall of Fame in 1992.
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