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Love, Woosnam, Ochoa, Mallon head 2017 World Golf Hall of Fame class

Davis Love III will enter the World Golf Hall of Fame. (Getty Images)
Davis Love III will enter the World Golf Hall of Fame. (Getty Images)

The World Golf Hall of Fame has announced its 2017 class, which includes 1997 PGA champion Davis Love III, 1991 Masters winner Ian Woosnam, multi-time LPGA major winners Lorena Ochoa and Meg Mallon, as well Henry Longhurst.

Love, the winning 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, has won 21 times on the PGA Tour, including the 2015 Wyndham Championship at the age of 51. His lone major came in the 1997 PGA Championship at Winged Foot in New York. He also twice won The Players, including with a closing 64 in 2003.

The Englishman Woosnam, now 58, won the 1991 Masters amid 29 European Tour titles. Woosnam was a two-time European Tour Player of the Year, in 1987 and ’90, and he was the winning Ryder Cup captain in 2006.

The Mexican-born Ochoa dominated the LPGA in the mid-2000s before shocking the golf world with her retirement from the tour in 2010 at the age of 28, with plans to start a family. In her career, she won 27 times on the LPGA, including a pair of major championship titles. Ochoa earns induction in the first year she was eligible, now five years removed from being an active LPGA member.

Meg Mallon won four major championship, with her last coming in the 2004 U.S. Women’s Open, and made eight Solheim Cup appearances. Now 53, she walked away from competition in the same year as Ochoa, in 2010. She was the U.S. Solheim Cup captain in 2013.

Longhurst was a British golf writer and commentator for the Sunday Times in England. He died in 1978 at the age of 69.

These inductees were elected by an 18-person selection committee that includes the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam. Nominees must get at least 75 percent of the vote (14 members) to earn induction.

The 2017 World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held Sept. 26 in New York City, on the other side of the Hudson from Liberty National Golf Club, site of the 2017 Presidents Cup matches.


Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.