Another cover story promoting another golf tournament. But not just another golfer. From September 9, 1992. – JDW
Golfers are special.
Pro golfers especially. Something about chasing after a diminutive dimpled ball makes a person wiser somehow. It’s so.
When a six-foot putt means the difference between picking up a paycheck or packing up early, you’re bound to discover some of the more important lessons of life. We can learn much from such people.
Juli Inkster is a special golfer. “I’ve got a great personality,” she offers with a laugh. But there’s more than just refreshing candor and good humor to her. She has RESILIENCE.
Inkster joined the LPGA professional circuit nine years ago. This will be her tenth (10) visit to the PING-Cellular One Golf Championship. She’s never finished higher than a tie for twelfth (12) in her rookie year. She’s never won more than $3,218 here. About the best thing you can say is, Juli Inkster has never missed the cut at Columbia-Edgewater. Not yet.
Golf teaches resilience.
“I’m playing really well this year. I feel like I have a good chance to win Portland,” says the 32-year-old Californian. “It’s a good golf course, a good driving golf course, and I’m really driving the ball well right now. If I get my putter going, my chances there are the best they’ve been.”
Do you ever tee the ball up to start a tournament, we wondered, and think you CAN’T win? “No,” was all she said. There is an intense solemnity to her voice when she says this.
What makes Inkster a great golfer? Besides her personality. “Ahh, I don’t know,” she stalls a moment. “I work hard at my game. That’s a good question.” More stalling. “What makes anybody a good golfer? I hate to lose. I’m pretty competitive, that helps a lot. And I don’t like to play bad. So, I think I have good ingredients to play well.”
Inkster started playing as a teenager.
“We lived on a golf course. In Santa Cruz. Pasatiempo. I got a job up there. Parking carts. Picking up balls. I was fifteen (15).”
Right away she saw the great challenge of the game, the vast opportunities offered by eighteen (18) holes cut a few inches into the grass. “I liked the way you could do it by yourself, you didn’t need anybody to play with. You could get as good as you wanted without somebody to do it with.”
She doesn’t remember her first round. “I think those you just want to block out of your mind.”
PUT THE PAST HOLES BEHIND YOU.
You will not likely meet a more competitive woman – or man – than Juli Inkster. She’ll do whatever it takes to win. Except cheat, of course. In golf we learn someone is always watching. Even if it is only ourselves.
Inkster has an explanation about her desire to win. “Two older brothers.” It’s that simple, she claims.
“I’m the youngest of three kids. They were really into the baseball-football thing, and I tagged along all my life. I just picked up a competitive edge.”
Golf teaches the importance of sharp tools. And blunt instruments.
“I like to compete against the best for the chance to win a tournament,” says the winner of fifteen (15) tour titles, including two majors. “I don’t like to travel. I don’t like the practice rounds, and all the stuff before, but I LOVE being able to tee it up on Thursday and to have a chance to win a tournament. That’s why I play.”
PLAY TO WIN.
There’s a new hole in town. Saw a picture in the daily’s sports section. Seems you have to tee off over a 150-yard lake. The hole looks like it’s sitting on the edge of a floating dock, for goodness sake. Another reason not to ante up the greens fee.
Maybe I’ll just take a penalty stroke and drop the ball on the other side, the duffer strategizes.
“Tee it high and let it fly,” is Inkster’s chuckling advice. “The main thing is, you’ve got to pretend there’s no lake there.”
There’s no lake there. There’s no lake there. There’s no lake there.
Wow. Such crystalline thinking. The problem is NOT the water, the problem is hitting the sucker 160-yards.
Pretend there is no lake. Wow.
“You can really psych yourself out, when you get there and there’s a whole bunch of water. Put the same swing on it. Maybe emphasize swing slower. Most people have a tendency to get quick, hurrying to hit the ball. Relax the hands a little, take a bit more time.”
How about a putting tip to win a $2 Nassau? “Try to focus on the ball. Keep your head still. Don’t move your head up, especially on those short putts. People tend to look up at their putts. Keep your head over the ball, focus on the ball, and follow through.”
Inkster’s greatest weakness is “probably” putting. “If I putt good… or average… above-average… I’m going to win my share.” The woman does not mince words.
What’s so tough about making a putt anyway?
“You hit a lot of greens, and you have a lot of ten- or fifteen-footers, and sometimes you make them and sometimes you don’t,” Inkster says. “I probably try too hard on the green.
“It seems like it should be a simple thing to do,” she talks on, “to hit the ball in the hole. Sometimes you try too hard. You try to make’em instead of just stroking it.”
JUST STROKE IT.
Inkster is a streaky player. “I am,” she admits, proudly pointing to her slew of recent high finishes. A win, a second-place finish at The Open, and a couple of top-fives.. Take that streak and love, she seems to say.
“I play very much on momentum. I think the reason why is because momentum builds confidence. Once you start playing with a lot of confidence, your bad days aren’t going to be that bad, and your good days are going to be good.”
She learned that playing golf. It applies elsewhere.
What breaks a streak? “I take a couple of weeks off. It’s like anything,” Inkster says. We know just what she means. “You get a hot putter for a few weeks, or you hit the irons good for a few weeks. tempo. Momentum. Anything can happen.”
ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Golf teaches that.
Take a break. That was the biggest lesson of Inkster’s first year as a pro. She won more money than any other rookie, before or since. She took nearly a quarter million to the bank and what did she come away with?
“Take time off. Enjoy yourself,” she offers. “Get away from the game. Don’t get too hyped up about it.”
TAKE A BREAK. Even if you’re on a hot streak.
Travel was her biggest surprise. “Definitely the travel,” she says, the victim of a terminal disease. Airline terminals.
“I just didn’t think it would be that tough. It wears and tears on you. Catching planes. Missing flights. Overbooked and all that stuff. It boggles the mind.”
Juli Inkster does not play golf for the money. You read it here first.
“That’s not my number one goal. That’s not why I play” the sport’s fourteenth (14) millionairess explains. “I play because I like the game and I play because I like the competition. Sure, I make a nice living, but if I wanted to make a lot more, I could. My husband – a golf pro himself – has a job. My income is not life or death, which is a nice situation to be in.”
Golf teaches an appreciation for the fluffy lies and the lucky bounces.
Inkster seems to be one of those infuriating people who appear to have all their irons polished and their balls cleaned.
FOCUS ON TODAY’S ROUND.
“I enjoy playing more now than when I was a rookie,” Inkster notes. “I appreciate the game a little bit more. Having the opportunity to play, I appreciate that a little bit more. I’m enjoying myself.
“I travel with my little girl, Hayley, who’s two-and-a-half. Brian, my husband, gets out often enough to see us. I try to get home as much as possible. I feel like I’ve got it made. I’ve got a great family and I am also able to do what I like to do.”
Asked what changes she’d make on the tour, Inkster is quick to promote family values. “I’d like to see the LPGA do more with child care. There are so many girls out thee ho are married now and have kids. Not everybody can afford to have a nanny,” says Inkster, who frequently travels with an assistant caregiver.
“Being a women’s organization, we need to do something. We need day-care facilities.”
Motherhood is not a game.
“We need to do something to have stability for the kids,” says Inkster, who hopes for a second child as sweet as the first. “Not one week here and one week there. We need an on-site situation and we need to have the same two or three people week in and week out running it. So the kids know who’s going to be there every week for them.”
Touring day care? “Yeah,” Inkster argues. “Why not? The PGA – the men’s tour – has it. The Seniors – the old men’s tour – even have it. Being a women’s organization, child care should be a high priority.”
Family values partially explains Inkster’s affection for the PING-Cellular One. “I have a lot of good friends in Portland,” Inkster explains. And Brian’s grandfather was born and raised in Portland., He built all those bridges up there. He was a bridge man. And Brian’s aunt lives up there, his uncle, so he’s got a bunch of cousins up there.
“I have to give them all tickets.”
She doesn’t really need to do that. Inkster’s own relatives would pay good money to watch her compete.
The woman is a clinic on how to shoot a winning score in the game of life.
Work hard at your game. Bounce back. Take it one hole at a time. Keep your head still. Anything can happen. Loosen your grip. Just stroke it.
Something else before I go.
There’s no lake between you and the flag.
Tee it high.
[Actual editor’s note at end of piece.]
For a year, writer Jack D. Welch saw America coast-to-coast from the confines of a van called Merry Miler.
He has returned to Oregon, a better man for having made the trip.
Epilogue. I haven’t read this article myself in decades. But I have never been far from the memory of that conversation.
Like climbing a giant mountain and finding her on the top.
Can’t imagine it’s not in the article.
This actual true real spontaneous dialogue.
Me: “That lake is so damn scary. I just want to walk from the tee to the edge of the lake and toss the ball in. Spare myself the suspense.”
Juli: “Jack, the lake’s not there.”
That scary obstacle, honey, that scary obstacle’s got nothing to do with you.