He's 85, drives 170 yards and still has the full attention of the golf world
JoAnne Carner at the US Senior Women's Open earlier this week.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“Big Mama” is not a nickname that will fly in 2024. But when JoAnne Carner soared up the LPGA ranks in the 1970s, the moniker stuck to her like a bullet on a rain-soaked green. It captures her makeup, her colorful personality, her vibrant shorts. Everything about the Marlboro-loving Carner seemed larger than life, including his achievements. They're all on his head-spinning Wikipedia page, but here are the highlights:
— 1956 US Girls Champion
-five US Women's Amateur titles (1957, '60, '62, '66, '68)
-two US Women's Open titles (1971, '76)
-Only player to win US Girls' Junior, US Women's Amateur and US Women's Open
-43 LPGA wins, including one as an amateur (1961)
-32 top-10 in majo
-World Golf Hall of Fame inductee (1982)
-Oldest player to make the cut in a major LPGA event (63) and LPGA (64)
—second oldest player in US Senior Women's Open history (85 years, 3 months, 28 days)
OK, that last bullet isn't on Carner's Wiki page (yet), but it was timed for her to achieve success this week in the sixth round of the USGA's 50-and-over tournament. Eight entrants in the 156-player field at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh turned 50 last year, and the average age of the field is 57.23, meaning Carner is competing against opponents thirty years his junior. (Annika Sorenstam, a former winner of the event, is also in the field. As are several other former major champions, including Julie Inkster and Catriona Matthew.)
The US Senior Women's Open is not a new test for Carner; he was a normal person. In the first event, at the Chicago Golf Club, Carner, then 79, matched his age in the opening round. In 2021, he shot 82 for 82. Last year, at age 84, he shot 80.
and 85! This week, we found out.
But first a word about size. Once you've earned it, you don't just crave more, you wait most of it. At 50. At 60. At 70. And…yes, even at 85 years old. After almost all of Carner's losing rounds in the years leading up to the Senior Women's Opens, she didn't budge. If, he could have done better, he would say. The date of birth can be discarded. “In a game that is slowly but inexorably grinding away at those who play it for a living,” golf writer Jaime Diaz once typed. New York Times“no champion has been able to resist erosion like JoAnne Carner.”
Diaz wrote that…in 1993.
More than three decades later, Carner is still thriving, still a team player in a major event filled with the best senior women in the world. Can he win? He can't. (Japan's Kaori Yamamoto is eight under in two rounds at Fox Chapel, four out of the chasing pack.) Can he still play? Can he, partially assisted by the wheelchair he is allowed to use due to his chronic lung disease. Can and will you give an honest assessment of your performance? That answer came Thursday shortly after Carner carded an opening 14-over 85 that included four double-bogeys.
“It was bad,” Carner said when asked if he was happy about shooting his age, a feat that made headlines in golf and beyond. “I played really badly at the back. I didn't put it right. Then I lost my swing for a while. I hit a couple of shots that I thought were good, but I haven't played the course but one time, I ended up in trouble, on one of those layups, and you just have to hit it.”
Here, we should mention Carner's average driving distance is somewhere in the 170 yard range, or at least it was this week at Fox Chapel, in the first round he played about 5,700 yards. Shooting 85 out of 85 is one thing. Shooting 85 out of 85 with 160 or 170 yards between par-4s is another thing. And shooting 85 of 85 from 160 or 170 yards on most of the par-4s on Seth Raynor's fire-breathing, rollercoaster greens? That might put Carner in a class of his own.
Jeff Haynes/USGA
“The vegetables I had were the only ones I had trouble with,” Carner said Thursday, his voice clouded by decades of smoking. “I've been putting well but down in Florida where it's green. You don't play rolls here. Totally different. I read a little and then I read too much. One I had a 20-foot hill downhill on a par-3 and I hit it – I didn't touch it and it went off the green. “
In short, you might be impressed by Carner's cycle but he wasn't.
Before closing his eyes in his Pittsburgh motel room Thursday night, Carner set his alarm for 6:15 a.m., leaving him plenty of time to prepare for his 8:54 tee time. But his wake-up call came even earlier, with a text from tournament organizers that arrived just after 5:15. Message: start times are delayed due to inclement weather.
After the killing time, Carner recovered and went to class later in the morning, ate breakfast and relaxed. “I stretched with the therapist up there with those boots they put on your legs,” she said. “It's the first time I've done that. I felt beautiful. They rub your blood back into your legs.”
Carner opened with the par-4 9th (the teams went 1 and 9 in the first two rounds), then played the next four holes in one over. It was a good start but it didn't last. Bogeys followed on 14 and 15. Then comes 16 and doubles with 18. Opening 42. Carner's round could have easily gone off the rails if it weren't for…well, JoAnne Carner. After a par on the 350-yard par-4 1st, Carner held a wedge on the par-5 2nd to 6 feet and covered the putt for his first birdie of the round.
Then came the 3rd, a par-3 that played 165.
“I hit my 5-wood two inches from the hole,” Carner said. “It was going on there. If it had another chance, I would have a hole in the middle. But I was very happy because the day before yesterday I hit the green and put four. It was revenge.”
Golf has a way of giving back, however, and it bit back. Carner bogeyed 4 and 5 before closing with a double on the par-4 8th.
But his 18-hole score was remarkable: a 9-over 80.
“It's a lot better,” he said of his game after the round. “I played some really good shots, then I played some bad shots. But overall, it wasn't too bad.”
The wet, slow greens had tripped him up – “If I'd putted well, I'd have made three birdies, maybe four,” he said – and so had his consistent ball-striking. “I tried to continue my process, to hit the ball better, then I went to the haywire and took it straight up and threw it down,” he said. “Love-hate that 5-wood: I hit it really well, I took it for birdie, or I put it together 30 yards, 50 yards, whatever.”
Carner is not one to pat himself on the back so we will do it for him. Of the players who finished their rounds on Friday, Carner tied for 13 hits. And despite his doubts about his putting, he averaged just 1.75 strokes per green, which ranked 10th in the field. And, yes, he beat his age by five major shots.
How did that make him feel?
“I would have been very happy with a round in the 70s,” he said. “I could easily do it.”
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