Memorial Tournament honoree Juli Inkster sees what men on the PGA Tour go through when their significant others are pregnant. Stressing over what having kids might do to their careers. Worrying about the baby’s arrival means having to withdraw from a tournament. Complaining about rising for early tee times after getting only three hours of sleep.
Inkster observes it all – the wondering, whining and whimpering – and here is her takeaway: Cry me a river.
You want stress? You want sleep deprivation? You want career risk? Try being the one who births the baby, then takes only six weeks off before teeing it up again on the LPGA Tour. Try winning tournaments as a mother, you poor Mr. Professional Golfer. Then we can talk.
“The wives are actually having the kids and having to take six or seven months off. Guys take the week off and come back as heroes because their wife had to give birth,” Inkster said last week before traveling to Muirfield Village Golf Club, where she will be celebrated Wednesday as one of two player honorees. (Tom Weiskopf is being honored posthumously.)
Inkster, a queen of sarcasm, is not taking shots at male golfers so much as wanting everyone to know how hard it was, and is, for LPGA players to juggle motherhood and life on tour. So hard, in fact, that the 63-year-old Californian who won 31 tour events, including seven major championships, said that successfully balancing the roles of super mom and championship golfer is the crown jewel of her 29-year career.
“Winning the U.S. Open would be my No. 1 highlight,” she said. “It’s our national championship. Winning three U.S. Amateurs in a row (1980-82) is pretty good. Solheim Cup captain three times. Awesome. Winning the Bobby Jones Award is pretty impressive. But my most impressive (accomplishment) is traveling the tour with two kids and winning tournaments.”
Salute.
Inkster’s incredible career – she is the only woman to win two majors in each of three different decades and one of only seven to have completed the LPGA grand slam – reminds me of the line about Ginger Rogers being able to do everything her dance partner, Fred Astaire did. Except she did it backward and in high heels.
“When I had kids, we didn’t have maternity leave and daycare,” Inkster said. “So six weeks after I had Hayley (in 1990) I was out playing. It was hard adjusting from being a single person to all the sudden having a kid and bringing all the stuff with you to every tournament, with a 6-week-old, and breastfeeding, and we didn’t have videos and GPS and a lot of the stuff that gets you from A to B.”
Inkster didn’t play her best golf when her kids were little; second daughter Cori was born in 1994.
“I was trying to figure it out,” she said.
Juli Inkster won more as a mother than before having kids
Eventually she did, winning five times in 1999, including two majors, and qualifying for the World Golf Hall of Fame.
“When I kinda figured it out my game got back going. I won more tournaments being a mom than not being a mom,” she said.
That’s not to suggest Inkster was a great golfer because she was a mom. But motherhood did not slow her down, as if that were even possible. Growing up with two older brothers in Santa Cruz, California, Inkster learned quickly “how to hold my own.”
“I enjoyed the competition, which is why I love match play,” she said. “Mano a mano.”
Apparently so. Her 6-1-2 record in the Solheim Cup underscores her ability to stare down opponents and come out on top. A grinder, she claims she was never the best ball striker, putter or chipper.
“But I could grind for 72 holes. I was going to get that ball in the hole,” she said.
And if you tried to get in her way? Put it this way: Inkster could rip out your heart on the golf course, then give you hers when the round was over.
Former Ohio State golfer Cathy Gerring got to know Inkster when the two were young mothers on tour in the early 1990s. Gerring’s husband, Jim, was the head pro at Muirfield Village from 1984 to 1998, and Inkster would sometimes stay with the Gerrings when traveling from the East to West coasts.
“She was the best friend ever,” Gerring said. “Our lives took different paths, but to this day if I called Jules and asked, ‘Can you help me out?’ She would do anything for me.”
Showing compassion to a friend in need
When Gerring suffered serious burns over her face and arms in an accident involving a liquid burner at an LPGA tournament in Nashville in 1992, Inkster was the first player to visit the hospital.
“I had layers and layers of skin burned off my hands and face,” Gerring said. “My mom and Juli were there and she said it looked like my head was a basketball with two slits in it for eyes.”
The wisecracking Inkster then proceeded to call Gerring every day – for two years – to make sure her friend was healing.
“It’s amazing what she has been able to accomplish,” Gerring said. “To be as successful as she was at golf? To juggle all that and still have time for others? She’s a great person and role model.”
Inkster returns this week to Muirfield, where she is a member of the captains club. It is her favorite course in the world.
“Because of the history I have with it,” she said, estimating she has played the golf course more than 20 times.
Inkster still enjoys playing golf, but retired from competition she is able to reflect on what mattered most to her. And what she would like to be remembered for.
“When you’re going through all that, golf is your identity,” she said of grinding on tour. “It took me a while to know golf is what I did, not who I am. Being a mom really helped me with that.”
Mothers must be both tender and tough. Inkster nailed the landing on both counts.
“She just refused to lose,” Gerring said. “I never saw a better competitor. She and Jack (Nicklaus) were similar that way. It’s what separated them from everyone else. When Jack would step on that tee, not only did he know he was going to beat you, but he knew you knew he was going to beat you. Same thing with Jules.
“Yet if you asked her, she would give every single trophy to be a mom. Her kids are it to her.”
Fortunately, Inkster need not choose between trophies and children. She raised both equally well.
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