JoAnne Carner on the U.S. Senior Girls’s Open earlier this week.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“Huge Mama” isn’t a nickname that might 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. All the things in regards to 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 Novice 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 Novice and U.S. Girls’s Open
—43 LPGA wins, together with one as an novice (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 yr, and the common age of the sector is 57.23, which means Carner is essentially competing towards 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 take a look at for Carner; she’s been an everyday. 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 yr, at 84, she shot 80.
And at 85?! This week, we discovered.
However first a phrase about greatness. When you’ve achieved it, you don’t simply crave extra of it, you anticipate extra of it. At 50. At 60. At 70. And…sure, even at 85. After just about all of Carner’s age-beating rounds in prior Senior Girls’s Opens, she was unmoved. Coulda, shoulda accomplished higher, she’d say. Beginning date be damned. “In a sport that progressively 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 proof against erosion than JoAnne Carner.”
Diaz wrote that…in 1993.
Greater than three a long time later, Carner remains to be going sturdy, changing into a fixture at a big-time occasion stacked with the most effective feminine seniors within the land. Can she win it? She can’t. (Kaori Yamamoto of Japan is eight underneath by way of two rounds at Fox Chapel, 4 away from the chase pack.) Can she nonetheless play? Can she ever, partly aided by a cart she’s permitted to make use of on account of her persistent obstructive pulmonary illness. Can she and can she provide you with an sincere 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 mentioned 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 unhealthy on the again. I didn’t putt properly. Then I misplaced my swing briefly. I hit a pair photographs that I believed 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 practically 5,700 yards. Capturing 85 at 85 is one factor. Capturing 85 at 85 if you’re left with 160 or 170 yards into many of the par-4s is sort of one other. And capturing 85 at 85 if you’re left with 160 or 170 yards into many of the par-4s on a Seth Raynor design with fire-breathing, rollercoaster greens? That may put Carner in a category of 1.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“The greens I simply was having hassle,” Carner mentioned Thursday, her voice graveled from a long time of smoking. “I’ve been placing properly 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 few 20-foot downhill facet hill on a par-3 and hit it — barely touched it and it went off the inexperienced.”
In brief, 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 the use of a textual content from event 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 bought unfastened. “I did some stretching with the therapist up there and people boots they put in your legs,” she mentioned. “That’s the primary time I’ve accomplished 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 following 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…properly, 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 opening,” Carner mentioned. “It was going proper at it. If it had had yet 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 exceptional: a nine-over 80.
“So much higher,” she mentioned of her play after the spherical. “I performed a variety of superb photographs, after which I performed some simply atrocious photographs. However general, it wasn’t too unhealthy.”
The damper, slower greens had tripped her up — “If I had been placing midway respectable, I’d have made three, possibly 4 extra birdies,” she mentioned — 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 mentioned. “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 mentioned. “Might have accomplished it straightforward.”
