Kansas golf lost a legend this week with the passing of Natasha Matson Fife.
Five-time winner of the Kansas Women’s Amateur, seven-time winner of the Wichita city championship and three-time Broadmoor (Colorado) Invitational champion, Fife took a self-imposed ten-year hiatus to raise her daughters, then returned to competitive golf and captured seven Kansas Women’s Senior Championships.
The daughter of four-time Kansas Amateur champion George Matson (1932, ’33, ’36 and ’37), Natasha was recognized as an “up and comer” by the USGA and, as a fourteen-year-old, was offered a special invitation (along with fellow Kansas legend Judy Bell) into the 1950 US Women’s Open at Rolling Hills.
It was during that tournament that thirteen women, including Babe Zaharias, Patty Berg, Opal Hill, Betty Jameson and Marilyn Smith came together to form the LPGA. And young Natasha was there to witness it.
She also played in five USGA Women’s Amateurs, making the quarter finals in 1960 (Tulsa). That year the USGA had her ranked among the Top- 10 amateurs in the country in both the Women’s and Senior Women’s categories.
Fife began teaching Physical Education at Wichita State in 1959 and, a decade later, was instrumental in creating a separate women’s athletic program, ushering in the “varsity era” of women’s sports at WSU. In 1974 she was named the school’s first Director of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics. After Title IX was established and the Men’s and Women’s programs were merged, she served as Associate Athletic Director until 1984. She retired from WSU with “Emeritus” status in 1998.
Fife was inducted into three Halls of Fame: the Kansas Golf Foundation Hall of Fame (1993), The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame (2006) and the Shocker Sports Hall of Fame (2018). In 2023 she became the first woman to be included in the Hall of Legends in conjunction with the Legends of Kansas Championship.
Central Links Golf extends our condolences to Natasha’s family and legions of her friends throughout the state of Kansas. She made a difference.