The lady was a jock. She was a jock with a Hall of Fame career that left footprints in four decades. She began by beating Kathy Whitworth and finished competing against Lydia Ko, who were born fifty-eight years apart. In between she crossed five-irons with all the great ones just because she loved doing it.
Juli Inkster, née Juli Roy Simpson, was born in Santa Cruz, California, and after the age of three grew up in a home on the fourteenth hole of Pasatiempo Golf Club, the Alistair Mackenzie–designed course built by Marion Hollins, a daughter of wealth and privilege from Long Island, New York, and one of the finest woman golfers of the Jazz Age. Hollins began her association with Mackenzie, who would eventually live on the sixth hole of Pasatiempo himself, when they partnered in building the Cypress Point Club on the Monterey Peninsula. At the request of Hollins and Samuel F. B. Morse, the developer of Pebble Beach, Mackenzie took over the Cypress Point project after Seth Raynor died suddenly of pneumonia in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1926 at the age of fifty-one. In 1929, still a year away from both the Grand Slam and retirement, Bobby Jones came west to play in the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. Mackenzie was, of course, aware of Jones. Who wasn’t? They’d probably met. He’d seen Jones play at St. Andrews in the Walker Cup and in Jones’s Open Championship victories both at Royal Lytham and St. Annes and his successful defense at St. Andrews after which Jones got the first of his two ticker-tape parades in New York City. But it wasn’t until Jones lost to Johnny Goodman, a Nebraska boy who traveled to California by cattle train, in the opening round of match play at Pebble Beach in 1929 that the greatest golfer of the Gatsby era (already smitten with Cypress) would have engaged in his first serious conversation leading to Mackenzie designing his Augusta National Golf Club. After the U.S. Amateur Jones played an exhibition alongside Hollins at the opening of Pasatiempo, losing to Cyril Tolley and Glenna Collett. The match would have been arranged months in advance, but it wouldn’t have been the least bit surprising to have Emperor Jones, one of the sporting gods of the day, there. Swimming in a vat full of Vanderbilts and Rothschilds, with the occasional Will Rogers or Mary Pickford floating by, was standard operating procedure for the affluent and well-connected Hollins.
Inkster was neither wealthy nor well connected. Her father, Jack, drafted as a shortstop by the Cincinnati Reds organization, played two years in the Carolina League before moving back to California, where he worked for the Santa Cruz Fire Department for three decades. Her mother, Carole, was a housewife. She had two older brothers, Danny and Mike, and if Juli wasn’t one of the boys, she was at least one of the guys. She played basketball and golf and worked at Pasatiempo in the cart barn, picking up range balls and selling sandwiches and drinks at the turn in Hattie’s Snack Shack. She took golf lessons from one of Pasatiempo’s assistant pros, Brian Inkster. They were married just weeks before she won the first of her three straight U.S. Amateur Championships in 1980.
One of Inkster’s charms, and one of the reasons she became the player she did, is that she never really knew how good she was. Margaret Leonard, a neighbor and later a lawyer, is the person who pushed Inkster into qualifying for the 1978 U.S. Women’s Open in Indianapolis. “I didn’t expect to make it in the qualifying round,” she said. “I ended up being medalist and my parents looked at each other and said, ‘Now what do we do?’ What they did was send me to Indianapolis for the Open and I shot 80-72-72-75.” That was ten shots behind the winner, Hollis Stacy.
Inkster was a three-time All-American at San Jose State. One of her teammates, for a year, was Patty Sheehan, another all-around athlete who would become a friend, mentor, and the person who dealt Inkster the most devastating defeat of her career in the 1992 U.S. Open at Oakmont. In 1980 Inkster won the first of her U.S. Amateur titles at Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, Kansas, a relatively short golf course designed by Perry Maxwell and built with equipment drawn by horse and mule. It was fashioned out of a gnarly landscape of sand hills, a rolling remnant of North America’s inland sea that existed along with the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period. If that amateur was her first major victory, her last came at the same place twenty-two years later, a U.S. Open bookend she was able to snatch away from Annika Sorenstam on as dramatic a final day as that championship has ever seen. “I’ve been there three times in my life,” Inkster says of Prairie Dunes. “I’m sure I wasn’t the best golfer for the U.S. Amateur but I got a little better each day and I’m sure I wasn’t the best golfer with the U.S. Open but I made the shots when I had to make them. Then, a couple of years ago I was in Wichita with a friend of mine and he goes, ‘Let’s go play Prairie Dunes,’ and that’s the other time I’ve been there. I’ve only been there three times in my life and I’ve won two majors so, yeah, it’s an amazing place.”
Inkster won the second of her U.S. Amateurs at Waverley CC in Portland, Oregon, on a golf course built on the site of an orchard once owned by Seth Lewelling, a horticulturist who along with his Manchurian laborer Ah Bing crossbred the cherry that would forever bear the name of the Chinese foreman. Inkster trailed Australian Lindy Goggin, one down with two to play in the final, and birdied the last two holes along the Willamette River for a one-up victory, becoming the first back-to-back winner of the championship in forty-one years. The next year on what was then called the South Course at the plush Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Inkster won a third consecutive amateur title when she beat Cathy Hanlon 4 and 3 in the finals. It was Inkster’s eighteenth straight match victory in the championship and the first time any woman had won three in a row since Virginia Van Wie’s hat trick from 1932 through 1934. In the championship match in ’32, Van Wie beat Glenna Collett, the woman who would help Marion Hollins christen Pasatiempo. After Van Wie’s third straight crown she was named the Associated Press’s female athlete of the year. While the reputation of amateur golf wasn’t nearly as robust in the early ’80s as it was in the ’30s, there was no disputing Juli Inkster was a phenom.
In her rookie season on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) (in those days it was calculated based on the anniversary of joining the tour rather than a simple calendar year), she won once and nine months into her professional career tacked on her first major championship, the Nabisco Dinah Shore in Palm Springs, the first of seven career majors. Inkster won on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff, beating Pat Bradley. Inkster shot a hard-charging 68, including a birdie on the eighteenth when she wedged the ball to three feet on the par five, to go with birdies on the thirteenth and fifteenth—a hole that would prove pivotal for several reasons. Playing a group behind, Bradley was iced on the fifteenth tee for somewhere between five and ten minutes by NBC-TV because the producers thought they were playing too fast and the tournament would end before the telecast. Bradley never hit another good tee shot. She managed to save par at the fifteenth, bogeyed the sixteenth after driving into a stand of trees, and had to salvage another par on the eighteenth after hitting a screaming hook off the tee. When the twosome of Bradley and Inkster returned to the scene of the slowdown, the fifteenth, for the playoff, Bradley nearly drove it out-of-bounds and took four just to get to the green. Inkster’s par from the fringe was an easy winner. After it was all over Bradley exchanged a few choice words with NBC producers Don Ohlmeyer and Larry Cirillo. Whether the yellow flag television pulled out for Bradley’s group was a contributing factor or not, Inkster’s final-round 68 had been a thing of beauty, if something of a shock to her playing partners, Sally Little and Beth Daniel. “Man, those two were tough,” Inkster says now with her customary laugh. “It was my rookie year and I was making putts from everywhere and it was just pissing them off. I ended up winning the tournament and they were not happy. Beth and I are great friends now and she says, ‘No, I didn’t do that,’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, you did.’”
In July ’84 Inkster added her second major title, the du Maurier Classic in Toronto. Over the years the women’s professional game has struggled off and on with figuring out which tournaments would serve as the barometer for career success the way the Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship do for the men. In fairness it wasn’t always exactly cut-and-dried among the men, either. The Western Open was held in the highest esteem in the early years of its existence but was gradually supplanted by the now standard four, though from time to time it seems like the PGA is hanging on to its status like Indiana Jones walking on a rope bridge. With the notable exception of the U.S. Women’s Open, which has always been the queen jewel, the shuttling in and out of majorhood among the women has most often relied on the appearance of deep-pocketed strangers. Money talked and majors walked. The du Maurier got its title from the cigarette brand named for a British actor who died in 1934 and whose most prominent theater role was his original portrayal of Captain Hook in Peter Pan. In fact, Gerald du Maurier’s nephews were the inspiration for Peter and others among the lost boys in J. M. Barrie’s story. The tournament had a prestigious run until tobacco became socially unacceptable, and it was stubbed out in 2000. On the flight to her second major, Inkster built a four-shot lead after opening rounds of 69-68 but surrendered it in the third round, largely over a three-hole stretch with bogeys at the fourteenth and fifteenth and a double bogey at the sixteenth after shanking a four-iron. Her 75 put her a shot behind Betsy King, who turned out not to be the ticking crocodile in this particular interpretation. Inkster gave yet another virtuoso Sunday performance with a bogey-free 67 to finish one shot better than the Japanese star Ayako Okamoto. The victory, still within her allotted first twelve months on tour, swamped all competition for rookie-of-the-year honors.
Inkster didn’t exactly disappear after her rookie season, but she wasn’t the force her explosive beginning advertised. She won eight more times before her next major victory, a second Dinah Shore title in 1989. Not even TV could slow her down. Prior to arriving in Palm Springs, she hadn’t played well, but you couldn’t tell it from her opening round of 66, and Inkster never looked back. “One week out there you are God, next time you’re the devil,” she said. Inkster took a five-shot lead into the final day, the eventual winning margin, and the closest anyone got to her was three. Presaging something very similar to what would happen to Inkster herself at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2014 at the age of fifty-three, the closest pursuer in the Dinah Shore was JoAnne Carner, two weeks removed from her fiftieth birthday. After it was over Inkster joked, “JoAnne played very well, for an older lady.”
The next years were among the best and worst of Inkster’s career. On the plus side she gave birth to her two daughters, Hayley in 1990 and Cori in 1994. In between she suffered a tearful defeat at the hands of her former college teammate Patty Sheehan in the U.S. Women’s Open at Oakmont CC in 1992. With just two holes to play, rain and lightning forced a two-hour delay with Inkster two shots ahead after Sheehan’s three-putt on the sixteenth. When play resumed Sheehan birdied the short seventeenth, the tiny uphill par four, after Inkster had lipped out her try to close to within a shot. It’s the eighteenth, however, that still bothers Inkster. Sheehan drove into the right rough, drawing a thick downhill, sidehill lie from which she never would have been able to reach the green. Taking her stance in a wet area, Sheehan was given relief from casual water. The nearest drop was back in the fairway. Playing from a pristine lie, Sheehan’s five-iron settled inside twenty feet below the hole, and she made the putt to force an eighteen-hole playoff that she won the following day by three shots. Inkster had hit seventeen greens and missed just one fairway the last day, and it hadn’t been good enough. Sheehan and Inkster were friends, sure, but friendship ceases at the edge of a U.S. Open. Sheehan’s victory soothed a gaping wound she carried after losing a seven-shot lead in the Open two years previously. Inkster, to this day, refers to the relief Sheehan got on the seventy-second hole as the worst ruling in the history of golf. It probably isn’t even the worst ruling in the history of Oakmont. That distinction likely belongs to the line-of-sight relief granted Ernie Els on the first hole of the final round in 1994 when the television camera that was blocking his shot could easily have been moved. He also went on to win in a playoff. Either way, it was a devastating defeat for the übercompetitive Inkster, and she took it hard. “You never really know if you’re going to get back there again,” she said.
With her time divided between children and golf, it was unclear whether she ever would. When she did, at Old Waverly in Mississippi in 1999, she won her first U.S. Open in a satisfying walk. Her career broke into halves, before the birth of her daughters and after she realized she could, as she once put it, “have a professional golf career and raise two normal kids.” That was sometime around 1997. “I was kind of straddling the fence,” Inkster said of her duel roles as basketball coach to her young starlets and three-time major champion. “Do I quit? Do I play? Do I quit? And, if I’m going to do this, I’ve got to start working on my game,” she has said. Her husband, Brian, the professional at their club in Los Altos, had been her coach since her teenage days. She began working with Mike McGetrick instead. “Pre-children she was a wonderful golfer,” her husband said, “but I think she’s a better player today.”
Old Waverly was there for the taking. A cool spring held back the growth of the Bermuda rough, rains softened the course, and Inkster took full advantage of it. She won by five, set the record for the lowest fifty-four-hole score, and broke the U.S. Open seventy-two-hole scoring record, against par, by six. She shot 65-69-67 to open a four-shot lead on her way to claiming the title that brought tears to her eyes after the muck and mire of Oakmont. Then, just a few weeks later, she added her fifth major championship, the McDonald’s LPGA Championship, winning at the DuPont CC by four with another textbook final round, this time a 65. Inkster took the lead with birdies on the eighth and ninth holes Sunday, but it was her finishing kick that blew everyone away. She was paired with her close friend Meg Mallon. “It was her destiny to win,” Mallon said. “I mean, who else plays the last three holes four under to win a major championship? After she made the eagle putt on 16, I had chills.” The victory meant that Inkster had collected all of the major championships the LPGA currently had on offer. The only players to have done it before her were Mickey Wright, Louise Suggs, and Pat Bradley. When she saw Brian, Hayley, and Cori in the gallery at the last hole, she hugged the girls and said, “Can you believe this?” At the presentation she pointed to them and said, “These guys are my Hall of Fame.” The once and future phenom had turned thirty-nine the day of the first round, and it looked like she was just getting started.
A year later, on her fortieth birthday, Inkster shot a six-under-par 65 on a remarkably different DuPont CC on the way to back-to-back LPGA Championships. That night she had a party. Hayley gave her a handmade piece of pottery with clouds and the sun painted on it, and Cori made her a multicolored stuffed bear. The next day DuPont CC was less festive. Unlike the previous year the rough was up and the greens hard. “It’s two different courses,” she said after beating Italy’s Stefania Croce on the second hole of sudden death. “It was like an Open out there. I never thought I could shoot four over and win this tournament.” Inkster’s final-round 75 was just one of twenty-nine rounds of 75 or worse. She came to the last hole with a one-shot lead but, after gouging a five-iron out of the rough into the greenside bunker, missed a six-foot par putt that would have won it outright. On the second playoff hole, the tenth, Croce’s approach carried over the green, “which is jail,” Inkster said, and her two-putt par proved good for a sixth major championship.
It’s a lot more stressful having a one-shot lead and bogeying the last hole. That’s the stuff you have nightmares about. I told Hayley, “I’m getting too old to do this stuff.” It means a lot to me, personally, just to prove to myself I can still play with these girls and I’m still one of the top players. I work hard at my game and I love the game of golf. I love competing and sometimes it’s not easy. You know, you bogey the last couple holes and you lose a tournament and you fret the whole week. Why am I doing this? I don’t need to do this. But, you know, next week you tee it up and you’re right back at ’em. It’s in my blood. I love to compete.
The exclamation point came two years later, back where it all started, at Prairie Dunes. For three days Inkster spent most of her time in the yucca plants, plum thickets, and soap weeds. Her game was a shambles. “I was hanging on by my fingertips,” she said. She was making five-, six-, eight-footers for par, getting up and down from parts of the golf course other players didn’t know existed. It left her two shots behind the best player in the world, Annika Sorenstam, who had won six of her last thirteen events and fourteen of her last thirty-six on the LPGA. Sorenstam hadn’t won a U.S. Open since her back-to-back victories in ’95 and ’96, but to say she was anything less than the prohibitive favorite would have been like betting against Tiger Woods in 2000. Forget about it.
After her third round Inkster looked utterly dispirited. She knew she had to find an answer for her undependable ball striking or she’d have no chance whatsoever. Annika wasn’t going to make mistakes. Mike McGetrick recorded the third round and studied his pupil’s swing from the TV angles. He told her to get her weight a little bit more on her heels and make a better turn away from the ball. “I didn’t sleep all that night trying to figure out what the hell I was doing out there,” Inkster said. Never has anyone looked so lost one day and so found the next.
“It’s like 15 minutes before I had to go, Brian just said, ‘You need to make a better turn.’ We have a drill that we do to help me turn back to the ball and I did a few of those and finally started to feel like I was behind the ball and could drop my arms down,” she said. She hit a half dozen solid shots and was ready to go.
Inkster birdied the second, chipped in from sixty-five feet on the sixth, and birdied the seventh from the fringe to take a two-shot lead by the turn. The decisive swing happened at the fifteenth and sixteenth holes. Sorenstam, playing the group behind Inkster, had birdied the fourteenth to pull within a shot. Inkster missed the par-three fifteenth green to the left and chipped fifteen feet past the hole. As Sorenstam ate a banana on the tee and watched, Inkster drained the putt for par. Sorenstam missed the green short and right, nearly chipped in, but then missed the five-footer coming back. The lead was back at two. When Inkster rolled in her birdie putt on the sixteenth and punched the air, the pro-Juli, pro-USA Fourth of July crowd erupted. Sorenstam bogeyed right behind her, and it was, effectively, over.
“Every time I win a tournament I surprise myself,” said Inkster afterward. “You know, everybody asks me why I play. I play because I love to play and how can you not love to do what I did today? I mean, the crowds were great. When I made that putt on 16, my heart was pumping so hard. It was fantastic.” Was it the best round of her career, given the pressure, the opponent, the size of the prize? “It is right now,” she said. As Walter Hagen once said, “Anyone can win one Open. It takes a hell of a player to win two.” In the television booth NBC’s Johnny Miller called it the best putting round in a major championship, man or woman, he’d ever seen.
After reaching the grand age of fifty-three, Inkster decided she’d had enough of the nerve-fraying grind of U.S. Opens. She announced that Pinehurst in 2014 would be her last. It would be her thirty-fifth, contested in twenty-two different states. At that point she had played in more than half of the U.S. Women’s Opens ever held. “It’s still the coveted trophy that everybody tries to win,” she says. “Two for 35? I would be sitting on the bench if I was a baseball player.”
Then, on the No. 2 Course on Saturday in North Carolina’s summer swelter, a mere seventy-two hours shy of her fifty-fourth birthday, she shot a remarkable 66, the lowest round of the tournament so far. She was tied for third, four off the lead. Hogan had done the same thing at the age of fifty-four at Augusta National in 1967. Both plummeted back to reality with final rounds of five over par. On the way to her 66 Inkster missed one fairway and one green. On Sunday she hit more bunkers than greens. There is no burden quite like the end of time. She felt it before she even got to the tee Sunday. “You can think and you can dream all you want but, the bottom line is, you’ve got to come out and make the shots,” she said. It was a curtain call full of sweat and grit and sandy bogeys.
“I was disappointed in the way I played today, as a golfer,” said Inkster. “But, as a person, I just felt a lot of pride that people root for me like that. Especially the reception on No. 1 tee and the reception on 18 and all around the golf course. It was great. Very, very, very honored.”
In September 2015 Captain Inkster took her Solheim Cup team to Germany to play the Europeans. The same woman who sang “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” over the bus public address system when she was a player was now in charge. The American team fell behind by a staggering four points after the foursomes and four-ball matches. Early in the week Inkster had given her twelve players gifts—a red, white, and blue lunch pail. They showed up for the opening ceremony wearing Chuck Taylor sneakers. Having lost two cups in a row, it was time to go to work. Aided by a controversy over the nonconcession of a putt, Inkster rallied her team to the biggest comeback in the history of the Solheim Cup, equaling what the U.S. men had done at The Country Club in ’99 and what the Europeans pulled off at Medinah in 2012.
One of Inkster’s memories from her very first U.S. Open in 1978 at The Country Club of Indianapolis was being impressed by the quality of the new Titleist range balls. The fifteen-year-old stuffed her golf bag full of them for the trip home. By the age of fifty-three, she’d given it all back, with interest. Few players ever squeezed as much out of a golf game, and fewer still ever made the game of golf so much better for it.
After four decades of championship golf, what follows are just a few of Inkster’s reflections on some of the players she competed against. For the sake of simplicity, the Dinah is referred to throughout as the Dinah, rather than Nabisco or its current ANA Inspiration, and of course, career highlights run through 2015. Some have a lot of golf left to play:
JoAnne Carner, born 1939; the Great Gundy; five U.S. Women’s Amateur Championships; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships; three times LPGA Player of the Year; five-time winner of the Vare Trophy for low stroke average.
She’s probably one of the people I loved playing with the most. It didn’t matter where she was, you knew the ball was going to get somewhere on the green. She just had the greatest shot imagination and hands to play the game. She’s gruff but what a nice lady. She got up there and let it fly. She didn’t care where it went; she would just go get it. She’s still that way. She’s still playing. She’s a lot like me. She just loves the game of golf. She loves playing. Her sand game and her game around green was just amazing. You might be thinking there’s no way she’s going to get this up and down, then she gets it up and down and she gives you that little smirk, you know? I remember her giving me a sand lesson, “You gotta get low in there. You gotta get really low.” Just stuff like that. What a great lady. And great for the game.
Kathy Whitworth, born 1939; pupil of Harvey Penick; two Titleholders Championships; three LPGA Championships; one Women’s Western; eighty-eight career victories, most of any man or woman; seven times LPGA Player of the Year; seven-time winner of the Vare Trophy.
Whit was a little more standoffish. She was always kind of Negative Nellie. Always kind of, “I can’t believe I hit that shot. I can’t believe they let me have my card out here. I suck. I’m not that good.” She won eighty-eight times! She was old school. She just kind of went about her business. The first tournament I ever won I beat her. It was in Kent, Washington and it was a horrible day. I think I was five or six shots back, and I think I shot 70 and ended up winning. She just made me laugh. She’d hit a shot and she’d be like, “Gawd,” and you’d get up there it was like, this far [Inkster puts her hands two feet apart].
Donna Caponi, born 1945; two LPGA Championship; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships, back to back.
They called her the General. She took charge of the group out there. Went by the book. I was chipping one day with range balls or something and she goes, “Juli, always chip with your golf balls; never chip with range balls.” I still do that. She was always very helpful. One time I was struggling with my putting, and she’d come up and help me out a little bit. I’ve gotten to know her pretty well. She had kind of a different swing, real slow backswing and through the ball.
Judy Rankin, born 1945; twice LPGA Player of the Year; three-time winner of the Vare Trophy.
She’s the best. I love Judy Rankin, but I didn’t really know Judy Rankin. I never really played against her. It took me a long time to get to know Judy. Judy’s really quiet, reserved. I kind of got to know her in 1992–93–94 and really in 1998 when she was my captain for Solheim Cup. I really got to know her then. We’ve been great friends ever since. I talk to her a lot. She’s kind of my go-to person. She’s the one that kind of pushed me to try television. She knew I was kind of cutting back, and she wanted to kind of cut back. And she decided I’d be good at it. I did five Golf Channel telecasts with her. She is the nicest lady. She was a phenomenal golfer, but she’s been a phenomenal broadcaster, too. Afraid of heights. Yeah. She’s just a good-hearted Texan lady. I really admire her.
Pat Bradley, born 1951; three du Maurier Championships; one U.S. Open; one LPGA Championship; one Dinah Shore; twice LPGA Player of the Year; twice the Vare Trophy winner.
Pro? Pat Bradley, she was tough. She was the epitome of a pit bull. She never knew anybody’s name. You ask her—she didn’t want to get close to anybody. Her job was to beat you. She didn’t want to have any of that connection of friendship or anything like that. I think she regrets that today. Now, she’s just the opposite. She’s the best. She even told Keegan [Bradley, her nephew], “Don’t do what I did.” Pat Bradley, she probably was the best course-management person I ever played against and probably the best putter from 20 feet I’ve ever played against. She was a phenomenal lag putter. She would just go for the middle of the greens, take her par or whatever. If she made it, fine. And she’d attack the holes that set up perfect for her. But, Pat, she was tough.
Ayako Okamoto, born 1951; forty-four victories on the Japan LPGA Tour; seventeen U.S. victories; one LPGA Player of the Year.
Ayako probably could play a golf course without a yardage book. She totally felt everything. She had the best wedge play I’ve ever seen. Her demeanor out there, she was probably my favorite person to play with. She was just kind of carefree, she would just kind of get up there and hit it, but from 150 yards in, she was money.
Hollis Stacy, born 1954; one du Maurier Championship; three U.S. Women’s Open Championships.
Hollis was tough. I always felt there was an agenda with Hollis. There was some gamesmanship out there, but I never had a problem with her. I remember my first Open as the amateur champ, I got paired with Hollis and Pat Bradley at Del Paso, the year Janet Anderson won. I was really looking forward to it. Those two hated each other. Maybe not “hated” each other, but they just didn’t get along. Two days of just them [bitching] . . . I’m like, “Oh, my God, is this what I want to do?” Some people just cannot talk on the golf course. They have to focus. Hollis couldn’t shut up. The better she played, the more she was in your ear. You couldn’t get anything out of Pat Bradley. Back then, it was just a little more . . . not competitive, but I think there was just a smaller group that could really win out there, and they were really competitive with each other. Everybody had to have the upper hand—at least everybody had to feel like they had the upper hand. It’s so different out here now. There’s so many people that can win and so many diverse nationalities. Then it was just more intense in that small group. Hollis could work the ball. Shape the ball. Amy the same way. They enjoyed that part of the golf, working the ball, shaping the ball. Patty Sheehan, too.
Betsy King, born 1955; one LPGA Championship; three Dinah Shore Championships; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships; three-time LPGA Player of the Year; twice the Vare Trophy winner.
There’s someone that struggled at the start, didn’t really have much success at all but was a hard worker, a grinder, and just ended up having a phenomenal career. She went to Furman—smart. She did everything good but was kind of unorthodox. She used to put the putter behind it and take her practice swings. Stuff that you never see today. She just plodded. That’s another one you couldn’t tell if she was shooting 66 or 76. I thought she was a good ball striker. She probably didn’t do anything great, but she did everything really, really good. Consistent and very kind of straitlaced.
Amy Alcott, born 1956; three Dinah Shore titles; one U.S. Women’s Open Championship; one du Maurier Championship; one Vare Trophy.
Amy Alcott, just out there. I didn’t play a lot with her. Amy’s iron play was probably one of the best. She just hit it straight, on a line. Not real high, just a bullet. I don’t think she went to college. I think she just came right out when she was eighteen. She was kind of from the school of hard knocks, man. A little airy. Some of the things that came out of her mouth were like, okay, are you messing with me or is it just you? I never knew where she was coming from. Total LA. Loves the Hollywood scene. Loves name-dropping. She’s Amy. You never know what’s going to come out of her mouth, but golf-wise, she could hit it.
Beth Daniel, born 1956; one LPGA Championship; three-time LPGA Player of the Year; three-time Vare Trophy winner.
Oh, my gosh. One of the all-time-best golf swings. Great ball striker. There wasn’t anybody who was harder on herself than Beth Daniel. She was a perfectionist. Not the easiest person to play with. She would kind of give everybody the wrath out there. Off the golf course, she’s great. On the golf course, it’s just like another person. She has to hit every shot perfect. If she doesn’t, she’s pissed. That’s what made her tick. As far as pure ball striking, she’s probably one of the best I’ve ever seen. Now, I never played with Mickey Wright. Beth was . . . I hated playing with her. You knew it was just going be a grind. You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know when to say it. And Beth’s a good friend of mine. We’re great friends now, but she was tough when I was coming out.
Patty Sheehan, born 1956; one Dinah Shore; three LPGA Championships; two U.S. Women’s Open Championship; one LPGA Player of the Year; one Vare Trophy.
Inch for inch, one of the best. Grew up with three older brothers. I had two older brothers. She could do everything. She was just athletic. She was a great skier. She had great hands. Good ball striker, great putter. Huge heart. If you wanted somebody to make a five- or ten-footer to win, she was the one you wanted to do it. A good friend. I played a year with her in college, and I learned a lot from her. I really picked her brain when I first came out—what tournaments to play, how to go about it. She was a good mentor for me. She was a great golfer, and she had a lot of outside stuff that she liked to do. Golf wasn’t her number-one thing. She loved to ski. She loved to hang out with her family. She was kind of an outdoorsy woman. Patty always told me, “You gotta learn to cut the ball on the LPGA Tour,” because Patty Berg always told her that. So, that was kind of our big thing.
Nancy Lopez, born 1957; three LPGA Championships; four-time LPGA Player of the Year; three-time Vare Trophy winner; heartbreakingly four-time U.S. Women’s Open runner-up; won five straight tournaments as a rookie.
There are a few people who have “it.” Nancy has “it.” [Arnold] Palmer has “it.” They have a charisma. They’re just kind to people whether they’re in the gallery or in the locker room. Nancy’s just a great lady, very motherly, very warm and fuzzy, great with hugs, would do anything to help you. I didn’t really play with Nancy in her prime, but I know she was just a phenomenal putter. I played with her kind of at the end of her career. She would just stop and say hi to the most random people. I learned a lot from her. How to treat people. How to balance the golf and do the other side of it. When you shoot 76, you don’t really feel like signing autographs. She always did. No matter if she shot 76 or 66, she would sit there and smile that amazing smile.
Dame Laura Davies, born 1963; two LPGA Championships; one U.S. Women’s Open Championship; one du Maurier Championship; seven-time Ladies European Tour Order of Merit winner; one LPGA Player of the Year; twice Ladies European Player of the Year.
Laura is the same now as she was when she came on the scene. Doesn’t like to practice. Kind of a free spirit. Loves Vegas. Loves her soccer. She’s well deserving to be in the Hall of Fame, if anybody deserves to be in a Hall of Fame. She supported the European Tour when it was nothing. Loves to play golf. Hates slow play. She just doesn’t get the whole slow-play thing. First person I ever saw that tees the ball up without a tee, just kind of knocks a seven-iron in the ground, builds a little tee, puts the ball on it and boom. She doesn’t leave anything back, and when she hits it, she just goes and gets it. She’s got really great hands. Very, very coordinated. Great Ping-Pong player, great tennis player. She’s an athlete. You look at her, and you’re kind of saying, no, but she is.
Meg Mallon, born 1963; one LPGA Championship; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships; one du Maurier Championship.
Voted the nicest player on tour back in the early ’90s. She didn’t have the big credentials coming out of college and really worked hard. Kind of like a Jay Haas. Very steady. Good iron player, great putter, good thinker. Very good course management. Great Solheim Cup partner and player. Really loves the history of the game and people that came before her. Has a tremendous respect for the founders. Just a good egg.
Annika Sorenstam, born 1970; three Dinah Shore titles; three LPGA Championships; three U.S. Women’s Open Championships; one Women’s British Open Championship; eight-time LPGA Player of the Year; six-time Vare Trophy winner.
As far as Annika goes, she was the best player I ever played against, day in and day out. Her ball striking was unbelievable. It didn’t move one way or the other. It was just a straight ball. When she was on—and she was on a lot—the only thing that would hold her back was her putting. If she putted halfway decent, she won. If she didn’t putt very good, she didn’t win. But her ball striking, she would hit sixteen, seventeen greens a round like it was nothing. And she was long. Her focus was golf. She always told me, “When I have kids I’m quitting. I don’t know how you do it, having kids and playing golf. I can’t play unless I’m number one.” That’s just the way she is. She couldn’t be warm and fuzzy and hang out with you. It just wasn’t in her DNA. Some people just have to play golf that way. It takes all different types of people. They have to do what they have to do to get ready. She could not handle being less than number one. I never played with Mickey Wright, but as far as the full game, Annika was it. Every time I played with her, I was like, are you freakin’ kidding me? Do you ever miss a shot?
Karrie Webb, born 1974; two Dinah Shore titles; one LPGA Championship; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships; one du Maurier Championship; one Women’s British Open; two-time LPGA Player of the Year; three-time Vare Trophy winner.
Karrie burst on the scene young. One of the best golf swings I ever saw. A lot of power. She played it kind of close to the chest, didn’t really give you much. Karrie was hard to get to know at the start. She said I treated her like shit when she first came out. I said, “Come on, that’s a rookie. You can’t give a rookie that much.” I think she likes the game. I’m not sure she loves the game. She’s really good at it, and she likes being good at something. She’s kind of like a mini–Beth Daniel. She’s a perfectionist. She wants to hit the ball good on the range. She wants to hit the ball good on the golf course. She takes her game very seriously. She works very hard at it, but I don’t think she enjoys it like I enjoy it. Off the golf course, totally different person, carefree and a lot of fun. But on the golf course, she’s all business.
Se Ri Pak, born 1977; three LPGA Championships; one U.S. Women’s Open Championship; one Women’s British Open Championship; one Vare Trophy.
Se Ri kind of busted out. She was kind of the first Korean to get out here. She was the lightning rod for everybody else to come over, with the success she had. After every round of golf, she had to talk to the press, and after every practice round she had to talk to the press. It was amazing what she had to go through. She had tons of power. Sturdy legs. I don’t even think she knew what she had back then. I remember when I played with her in her rookie year, I was like, “Whoa, this girl’s good.” Powerful, powerful swing. Just kind of did everything great. The first year she probably would have won three or four more times if she’d had a really good caddie. I couldn’t believe some of the yardages he would give her. You could just tell she was going to be really good, and she still is. We never really saw anything like Se Ri and her caddie. When we got off the golf course, our caddie went one way and we went the other way. Her caddie did everything. Took her clothes to the dry cleaners. Picked her up at the airport. It was the changing of the guard in what the caddie’s responsibilities are. Now, a lot of them do all that stuff.
Lorena Ochoa, born 1981; one Dinah Shore title; one Women’s British Open; four-time LPGA Player of the Year; four-time Vare Trophy winner.
Lorena Ochoa was probably the most spiritually sound person I’ve ever met. Golf was her way to make a difference in the world, and that was her main goal, to make a difference in the world in Mexico. She was kind of like a Lopez: you couldn’t tell if she was shooting 66 or 76, very nice to everybody, just a warm, genuine person. She was one of my all-time favorites, is one of my all-time favorite people, ever. I just thought she was the greatest ambassador for women’s golf that there was. As far as game-wise, she just could friggin’ bomb the ball off the tee. She was like Gumby, just a rail, limber as hell, and just bomb the ball. Her putting was probably the weakest part of her game. She just had a feel for winning. But her goal in life was to make a difference, and she has. That’s still her passion.
Inbee Park, born 1988; three LPGA Championships; two U.S. Women’s Open Championships; one Women’s British Open Championship; one Dinah Shore title; one LPGA Player of the Year; one Vare Trophy.
If you were to look at her, you’d just think there’s no way she could be number one. Pretty good distance, very underrated iron player, and just a phenomenal putter. If you watch her, she never really lines anything up. Kind of gets up there, and her caddie sort of tells her generally where to hit it, and they go in. It’s amazing. She might walk around and look at it, but she never gets down in a stance and lines it up. It’s weird. She’s just very consistent. Doesn’t get too high, doesn’t get too low. Very calm.
Yani Tseng, born 1989; one Dinah Shore Championship; two LPGA Championships; two Women’s British Open Championships; two-time LPGA Player of the Year; one Vare Trophy.
Yani just crushes the ball. Probably became number one when she wasn’t really ready to be number one, for her game. She came out early, and it was really easy for her. Then she just kind of struggled, and she’s still struggling. I’ve played a lot with her. She’s putting the ball good. She hits some good irons, but she hits her driver just off the world. She hits the ball so far, hits it like a guy. When you hear it, it sounds like a guy, the speed and the force.
Michelle Wie, born 1989; one U.S. Women’s Open Championship.
Michelle can’t seem to stay healthy. She hits the ball a long way. Her one fault, and this isn’t any news to anybody, is her putting. She doesn’t think it was a mistake, but looking back on it, I just think playing all those men’s tour events, it would have done her good to just crush the juniors, then crush the amateurs, then crush the collegians, and then come out.
Lydia Ko, born 1997; one Evian Championship.
The jury’s still out. She’s young. She’s had a lot of success early, but I think the hard part when you have success early is how do you handle it when things aren’t going well? Hopefully, that will never happen, but you never know. She’s been playing professional golf for a long time. She’s out here all day long. She’ll practice until dark. I’d play with her and think, okay, she probably shot a couple under, and I look up and it’s, like, five under. I don’t think she does anything great, but she does everything really good. She’s a good putter, very good course management, solid ball striker, sneaky long, and a great swing.
Inkster’s Best? (1) Sorenstam, (2) Ochoa, (3) Webb, (4) Daniel, (5) Sheehan. “That would be my top five,” she said, “but I didn’t play with Nancy in her prime, so we might need an asterisk.”
One for the lady, too.