Women’s Golf Month
Women Who Led the Way: Three Pioneers of the Middle Atlantic PGA
June is Women’s Golf Month. Here’s a look at three women who changed what was possible in our Section — and, in some cases, in professional golf altogether.
The Middle Atlantic PGA has been around for more than 100 years. For most of that time, it was an organization built around and run by men. The women on this list didn’t accept that as the final answer.
They were players, teachers, and leaders. More than one of them was the first woman to do something that had never been done before in this Section. Their stories are worth knowing.
Mary Alice Canney — The First Woman to Compete in a MAPGA Tournament
Before she made history in 1980, Mary Alice Canney had already built one of the stronger amateur records in the region. Growing up in the Baltimore area, she won the Maryland State Women’s Amateur Championship in 1962, was the runner-up at the national junior girls championship that same year, and went on to claim the Virginia State Women’s Amateur title in 1968. She was a fixture in mid-Atlantic women’s golf for more than a decade before she ever turned pro.
She joined the LPGA Tour in 1972, playing six to ten tournaments a year while managing a full family life with her husband Dick (head professional at Chantilly Country Club) and their four children. “On the tour, everything is geared to golf,” she once said. “At home, golf is merely another part of life and must be fitted in with my husband and the children.”
By 1980, she was working as an assistant at Chantilly and had been accepted as a PGA apprentice. On June 7 of that year, she stepped to the first tee at Belair Country Club for a MAPGA pro-am. She was the first woman ever to compete in a Middle Atlantic PGA event.
“I didn’t want to disgrace myself. By the same token, I wish I could have played a little better. I didn’t hit it well. I was very inconsistent.”
Mary Alice Canney — Belair Country Club, June 7, 1980
She was nervous. She said so. But she played. She shot 75 from the men’s tees in the sweepstakes division, and in doing so, proved the door was open. MAPGA Executive Director Dave Leonard said at the time that he expected her to become a full PGA Class A member within a year.
Her first competitive appearance in a MAPGA event had originally been scheduled for May 19 at Chantilly, but rain wiped out the round while she was already on the course. She had to wait a few more weeks. When the moment came, she was ready.
Troy Beck — MAPGA Hall of Famer and Junior Golf Champion
Troy Beck grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, and spent her entire American golf career in one place: Glenn Dale Golf Club in Glenn Dale, Maryland. She earned her LPGA membership in 1987 and her PGA membership in 1989. Over the next three decades, she did a lot with both.
On the playing side, she was a serious competitor. She appeared in four majors (the 1984 and 1985 U.S. Women’s Open and the 1994 and 1995 McDonald’s LPGA Championship) and won the LPGA National T&CP Championship in Texas in 1994. She was named MAPGA Women’s Player of the Year four times, in 1993, 1994, 1998, and 2003.
What she may be best remembered for, though, is junior golf. Through The Troy Beck Golf Academy at Glenn Dale, she reached roughly 800 junior golfers a year, with her students playing close to 5,000 rounds at the club annually. She was named MAPGA Junior Golf Leader of the Year twice, in 1992 and 2000, and served as LPGA Section President from 2003 to 2007.
In 2008, she became the first recipient of the LPGA Nancy Lopez National Award, which recognizes an LPGA member who exemplifies leadership, passion, and approachability.
In 2021, Troy Beck was inducted into the MAPGA Hall of Fame, the first woman to receive that honor. She passed away on February 25 of that year, in hospice care, just before the announcement was made. In lieu of flowers, her family asked that donations be made to PGA REACH Middle Atlantic or LPGA/USGA Girls Golf in her name.
Lynne Hunter — First Female President of the Middle Atlantic PGA
Lynne Hunter’s path into golf started with a summer internship. A graduate of James Madison University with a degree in business administration, she got her first golf job in the accounting department at TPC Avenel in Potomac, Maryland. That was enough to hook her.
In 1997, she joined the staff at Kenwood Golf & Country Club in Bethesda. She worked her way up over 15 years and was named Head Professional in 2012. She became a PGA member in 2007 and holds LPGA membership as well.
The awards came steadily. She was named a U.S. Kids Top 50 Junior Golf Instructor four times. She won LPGA Northeast Section Golf Professional of the Year in 2010, 2017, and 2021. That same year, she was named the National LPGA Professional of the Year and received the MAPGA’s Bill Strausbaugh Award for her work with fellow PGA Professionals.
In late 2023, she was elected the MAPGA’s 51st President, the first woman to hold that role in the Section’s nearly 100-year history. She served a full two-year term and now serves as Honorary President.
In 2025, she was named the MAPGA Golf Professional of the Year.
These three women represent different eras of MAPGA history and different kinds of firsts. Mary Alice Canney was first through the door. Troy Beck spent a career building something that would outlast her. Lynne Hunter went all the way to the top.
The Middle Atlantic PGA is a better organization because of each of them.