Grace DeMoss-Zwahlen - Golf

Grace DeMoss Zwahlen graduated from Oregon State, and then consistently topped the amateur ranks in the Northwest for a decade beginning in the late ‘40s.

Born in Corvallis in 1927, DeMoss took to golf as a teenager and entered her first tournament in 1945, finishing last in the Portland Open. The following year, though, she reached the final of the Oregon Women’s Amateur, and won the Portland City Amateur in 1947. In 1949, she won the Canadian Women’s Amateur, and won the Pacific Northwest Golf Association women’s title in 1950.

She was selected for the Curtis Cup, a Ryder Cup-style tournament pitting amateurs from the U.S. against those from Britain, in 1952 and again in ’54. DeMoss won three Florida Amateur women’s titles from 1955-58, and three straight Oregon amateur titles, ’56-58. Her second husband, Fred C. Zwhalen, Jr., founded the Journalism Department at Oregon State. After retiring in the early 70s, Demoss Zwahlen coached the program at Crescent Valley High School. She was inducted to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Oregon State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991.