Perhaps Judy Rankin said it best: Anyone who has played golf competitively views winning the U.S. Open three times as an eye-popping feat, whether male or female.
“We know the difficultly of that,” said Rankin, “and there are so few people who have done it.”
A dozen players, in fact, have won three or more U.S. Opens: Mickey Wright (4), Jack Nicklaus (4), Betsy Rawls (4), Ben Hogan (4), Willie Anderson (4), Bobby Jones (4), Babe Zaharias (3), Tiger Woods (3), Annika Sorenstam (3), Hollis Stacy (3), Hale Irwin (3) and Susie Maxwell Berning (3).
As of Wednesday evening, all 12 will be members of the World Golf Hall of Fame as both Woods and Maxwell Berning will be inducted into the class of 2021. They’ll be joined by pioneering architect Marion Hollins and former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem.
Maxwell Berning might be the most underrated inductee in quite some time. A four-time major winner and mother of two, Maxwell Berning won four of her 11 LPGA titles, including two U.S. Opens, after giving birth to her first child in 1970.
This was decades before the LPGA began providing daycare for its members.
“I withdrew from a tournament in San Diego because I couldn’t find a babysitter,” said Maxwell Berning, who began playing the tour part-time after 1977 once eldest daughter Robin reached school age.
It was a horse that got Maxwell Berning started in golf. While out walking nine-month-old Joker around a bridal path in Oklahoma City, the colt suddenly got loose and bolted across the fairways and greens of Lincoln Park Golf Course in Oklahoma City.
Maintenance workers threatened to call the cops on 13-year-old Maxwell Berning, but ultimately the head pro said if she’d teach his two young children to ride, they’d forget the whole thing ever happened.
And so it began, Maxwell Berning picked up U.C. Ferguson’s kids every Saturday to teach them to ride. One day, Ferguson convinced Maxwell Berning to tie up her horse behind the pro shop and take a walk down the hill to where a group of golfers stood in a semi-circle having a grand old time.
“It was Patty Berg giving a clinic,” she recalled. “They were having so much fun.”
That did it. Maxwell Berning was 14 ½ when she first picked up a golf club. Ferguson, who in 2012 was inducted into the Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame, would walk by on the range every once in a while and give her a five-minute tip.
In 1954, a 16-year-old Maxwell Berning sold her two horses for $150 to buy a car so that she could drive to the golf course.
A three-time Oklahoma City Women’s Amateur champ, Maxwell Berning became the first woman to earn a golf scholarship at Oklahoma City University, where she played on the men’s team.
When an opposing coach asked Abe Lemons about S. Maxwell, “Is it Steve or Sam?” Lemons said, “Sam will do.”
“I played under Sam Maxwell during my college days,” said Susie, who looking back feels a bit sorry for the young boys she played against, even though she didn’t win many matches.
Maxwell Berning wasn’t sure about her plans after college, but after seeing Betsy Cullan and Betsy Rawls enjoy success on the LPGA, Maxwell Berning figured she should give a shot because she’d beaten both players in state amateur tournaments.
“I don’t know what you did in 1964 to turn pro,” she said. “How did you even know who to call?”
She figured it out somehow, earning $450 in her first LPGA event, the Muskogee Civitan Open, in her home state.
A petite player at 5-foot-2, Maxwell Berning took pride in making pars, winning four majors on the strength of her short game and tenacity.
“There’s something to be said for the people who you put in the category of played many very difficult courses well,” said Rankin, who will introduce her friend at the World Golf Hall of Fame ceremony on Wednesday night. “I always have a special regard for those people.”
Maxwell Berning’s first major title came at the 1965 Women’s Western Open, where she edged out Marlene Hagge at Beverly Country Club in Chicago.
Her second major title came in 1968 at the Moselem Spring Golf Club, where she defeated Mickey Wright by three strokes. Maxwell Berning said she overslept the first time she was scheduled to play with Wright and nearly missed her tee time.
When she won the 1973 USWO at the Country Club of Rochester, her husband had to wake her up at noon on Sunday. Not much seemed to rattle her.
“I was raised on a public golf course,” said Maxwell Berning, “and when I entered the Open and they said ‘Play away, please’ in their fancy blazers, it gave me a sense of formality, and for some reason, I took every shot a little more seriously. I wish I could’ve taken that attitude into every tournament I played in.”
Rankin, whose son Tuey grew up with Robin on the LPGA circuit, said the most difficult thing about raising a family on tour back then was finding reliable childcare. Players would call ahead to tournaments and hope that someone could help.
“I’m sure at the time it probably kept some people from playing professional golf,” said Rankin, “but as time went on, it’s become so great for players. … I’m not saying that we walked to the golf course in snow barefoot, but it was very different.”
Maxwell Berning gave birth to daughter Cindy seven years after Robin and during the summers, Tuesday afternoons and Wednesdays became the days they’d do something together as a family unit. The chocolate factory tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the Smithsonian museums in D.C. were among their favorite stops.
One of the great family travel snafus was the time a 12-year-old Robin and 5-year-old Cindy, flying alone, got on a plane to Columbus, Ohio, rather than Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Once everyone was finally together in Tulsa, Maxwell Berning joked that the next time the sisters get on the wrong plane, they should travel to London or somewhere more exciting.
“I tell you what,” said Maxwell Berning of life on the road, “they grow up fast.”
Robin took up golf at age 14 and played on the boys team in high school on the Big Island in Hawaii before starting her college career at San Jose State. The competition was so stiff there, however, that she transferred to Ohio State to play for former LPGA player Therese Hession.
In 1989, Susie and Robin became the first mother-daughter duo to play the same LPGA event at the Konica San Jose Classic.
After Robin later Monday-qualified for the Rochester Invitational, where Cindy caddied for her, she wasn’t prepared for the amount of press that followed her and her mother that week.
“That was my jumping off point to try and figure out something else to do,” said Robin.
For the past 20 years, Maxwell Berning has worked as an instructor at The Reserve Club in Palm Springs, California, and about 10 members are making the cross-country trip to Ponte Vedra for the induction ceremony, along with her two daughters and two grandkids.
At first, Robin wasn’t quite sure what to make of her mother being in the same Hall of Fame class as Tiger Woods.
“In all honesty, I think it is an honor,” said Robin. “That people outside of the family and outside of our small circle of friends feel that what she’s accomplished in her life, that it validates, it stands tall enough in the eyes of others that she belongs standing next to Tiger.”
