JoAnne Carner on the U.S. Senior Girls’s Open earlier this week.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“Huge Mama” isn’t a nickname that may fly in 2024. However when JoAnne Carner was zooming up the LPGA ranks within the Seventies, the moniker caught to her like a wedge shot to a rain-soaked inexperienced. It completely captured her construct, her colourful persona, her booming tee photographs. The whole lot concerning the Marlboro-loving Carner loomed bigger than life, together with her achievements. They’re all there on her head-spinning Wikipedia web page, however listed below are some highlights:
—1956 U.S. Women’ Junior champion
—5 U.S Girls’s Beginner titles (1957, ’60, ’62, ’66, ’68)
—two U.S. Girls’s Open titles (1971, ’76)
—Solely participant to have received the U.S. Women’ Junior, U.S. Girls’s Beginner and U.S. Girls’s Open
—43 LPGA wins, together with one as an beginner (in 1961)
—32 top-10s within the majors
—World Golf Corridor of Fame inductee (1982)
—oldest participant to make the reduce in an LPGA main (63) and LPGA occasion (64)
—second-oldest competitor in U.S. Senior Girls’s Open historical past (85 years, 3 months, 28 days)
OK, that final bullet isn’t on Carner’s Wiki web page (but), however it’s well timed given she achieved the feat simply this week within the sixth enjoying of the USGA championship designated for feminine gamers 50 years and older. Eight entrants within the 156-player subject at Fox Chapel Golf Membership in Pittsburgh turned 50 inside the final 12 months, and the common age of the sphere is 57.23, which means Carner is essentially competing in opposition to opponents three a long time her junior. (Annika Sorenstam, a former winner of the occasion, is also within the subject. As are a handful of different former main champions, together with Julie Inkster and Catriona Matthew.)
The U.S. Senior Girls’s Open isn’t a brand new check for Carner; she’s been a daily. On the inaugural version, at Chicago Golf Membership, Carner, then 79, matched her age within the opening spherical. In 2021, she shot 82 at 82. Final 12 months, at 84, she shot 80.
And at 85?! This week, we came upon.
However first a phrase about greatness. When you’ve achieved it, you don’t simply crave extra of it, you count on extra of it. At 50. At 60. At 70. And…sure, even at 85. After nearly all of Carner’s age-beating rounds in prior Senior Girls’s Opens, she was unmoved. Coulda, shoulda completed higher, she’d say. Beginning date be damned. “In a sport that steadily however inexorably grinds to the psychic nub those that play it for a dwelling,” golf author Jaime Diaz as soon as typed for the New York Occasions, “no champion has confirmed extra immune to erosion than JoAnne Carner.”
Diaz wrote that…in 1993.
Greater than three a long time later, Carner remains to be going robust, changing into a fixture at a big-time occasion stacked with one of the best feminine seniors within the land. Can she win it? She can’t. (Kaori Yamamoto of Japan is eight below by two rounds at Fox Chapel, 4 away from the chase pack.) Can she nonetheless play? Can she ever, partially aided by a cart she’s permitted to make use of on account of her persistent obstructive pulmonary illness. Can she and can she offer you an trustworthy evaluation of your efficiency? That reply arrived Thursday quickly after Carner had signed for a gap 14-over 85 that included 4 double-bogeys.
“It was horrible,” Carner stated when requested if she was completely satisfied to have shot her age, an accomplishment that was heralded in headlines within the golf media and past. “I performed actually dangerous on the again. I didn’t putt effectively. Then I misplaced my swing briefly. I hit a pair photographs that I assumed had been good, however not having performed the course however one time, I ended up in hassle, in a kind of bunkers, and also you simply must hit it out.”
Right here, we should always point out Carner’s common driving distance is someplace within the 170-yard vary, or at the very least it was this week at Fox Chapel, which within the first spherical performed almost 5,700 yards. Taking pictures 85 at 85 is one factor. Taking pictures 85 at 85 while you’re left with 160 or 170 yards into a lot of the par-4s is kind of one other. And capturing 85 at 85 while you’re left with 160 or 170 yards into a lot of the par-4s on a Seth Raynor design with fire-breathing, rollercoaster greens? Which may put Carner in a category of 1.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“The greens I simply was having hassle,” Carner stated Thursday, her voice graveled from a long time of smoking. “I’ve been placing effectively however down in Florida the place they’re flat greens. You’re not enjoying the rolls right here. Completely completely different. I’d under-read after which over-read. One I had a couple of 20-foot downhill facet hill on a par-3 and hit it — barely touched it and it went off the inexperienced.”
Briefly, you may been impressed by Carner’s spherical however she was not.
Earlier than shutting her eyes in her Pittsburgh motel room Thursday evening, Carner set her alarm for six:15 a.m., leaving her loads of time to prep for her 8:54 tee time. However her wakeup name got here even earlier, by means of a textual content from match organizers that arrived simply after 5:15. The message: beginning instances had been delayed on account of inclement climate.
With time to kill, Carner eased over to the course later within the morning, had some breakfast and received free. “I did some stretching with the therapist up there and people boots they put in your legs,” she stated. “That’s the primary time I’ve completed that. Felt nice. They therapeutic massage your blood move again up your legs.”
Carner opened with a par on the par-4 ninth (teams went off 1 and 9 within the first two rounds), then performed the subsequent 4 holes in a single over. It was an outstanding begin however it wouldn’t final. Bogeys adopted at 14 and 15. Then a double at 16 and one other double at 18. Opening 42. Carner’s spherical may have simply skidded off the rails if she wasn’t…effectively, JoAnne Carner. After a par on the 350-yard par-4 1st, Carner caught a wedge on the par-5 2nd to six ft and holed the putt for her first birdie of the spherical.
Then got here the third, a par-3 that was enjoying 165.
“I hit my 5-wood two inches from the outlet,” Carner stated. “It was going proper at it. If it had had another flip, I’d have had a hole-in-one. However I used to be very completely satisfied as a result of the day earlier than I hit the inexperienced and four-putted. It was revenge.”
Golf has a method of biting again, although, and chunk again it did. Carner bogeyed 4 and 5 earlier than closing with a double on the par-4 eighth.
However her 18-hole tally nonetheless was outstanding: a nine-over 80.
“Lots higher,” she stated of her play after the spherical. “I performed plenty of superb photographs, after which I performed some simply atrocious photographs. However general, it wasn’t too dangerous.”
The damper, slower greens had tripped her up — “If I had been placing midway first rate, I’d have made three, possibly 4 extra birdies,” she stated — and so had her inconsistent ball-striking. “I attempted to stick with my routine, to hit the ball higher, after which I’d go haywire and take it straight up after which drop-kick it,” she stated. “The love-hate with that 5-wood: I both hit it superb, up for birdies, or I chunked it 30 yards, 50 yards, no matter.”
Carner’s not one to pat herself on the again so we’ll do it for her. Of the gamers who completed their rounds Friday, Carner tied or beat 13 of them. And regardless of her gripes about her placing, she averaged simply 1.75 strokes per inexperienced, which ranked tenth within the subject. And, sure, she beat her age by a whopping 5 photographs.
How’d that make her really feel?
“I’d have been happier with a spherical within the 70s,” she stated. “Might have completed it straightforward.”
