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DURHAM, N.C. -- Maureen Esther Orcutt, a champion amateur golfer who became a sportswriter for The New York Times, has died. She was 99.

Orcutt, born in New York City in 1907, won 65 major amateur events and was runner-up in the U.S. Women's Amateur title in 1927 and 1936. She won the Canadian Women's Amateur title twice and also won the U.S. Golf Association's senior championships in 1962 and 1966. From 1932 to 1938, she played on the first four U.S. Curtis Cup teams against British amateurs.

There was no women's professional tour when she was at her peak, but she often played high-profile exhibitions against both men and women. She once beat Babe Didriksen Zaharias in an exhibition, and the defeat upset Zaharias so much that she left without paying off a $10 bet.

Orcutt also played an exhibition as a partner with Walter Hagen, the first great American professional golfer, in Augusta, Ga. Hagen was notably disappointed to be paired with a woman, but Orcutt proved she belonged.

"I didn't say anything," she later recalled. "But the next day, I carried Hagen for nine holes and we won."

Orcutt was born April 1, 1907, in New York City. Her father, Benjamin Sinclair Orcutt, was the assistant Sunday editor of The New York Times, and her mother, Elizabeth Kelly Orcutt, was a prominent golfer.

Orcutt received a cut-down mashie niblick (7-iron) for her seventh birthday, and at age 12 brashly told her mother that she would win their local club championship. If she won, her mother replied, she would give her daughter her golf clubs and her club membership. Orcutt borrowed her dad's clubs and won the tournament; her mother never played golf again.

In 1937, Orcutt began writing a column called "Women in Sports" and covering golf for The New York Times and, for many years, she was the only woman in the sports department. During her career, she also covered golf for such publications as The New York Evening World, Golf Illustrated and The National Golf Review.

She had no immediate survivors.

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