PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Susie Maxwell Berning, the three-time U.S. Ladies’s Open winner who was a pioneer as a mom whereas competing on the LPGA Tour, died Wednesday after a two-year battle with lung most cancers. She was 83.
The LPGA stated Berning, inducted into the World Golf Corridor of Fame in 2022, died at her dwelling in Palm Springs.
“We’re saddened by the passing of one in every of our greats,” LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan stated in a press release. “Susie Maxwell Berning was not only a improbable participant and a member of the World Golf Corridor of Fame, but additionally an exquisite ambassador for the LPGA and girls’s sports activities general.
“We’ll at all times level to her as a job mannequin for balancing homelife and profession, successful main championships whereas additionally elevating a household. Susie was a powerful, pioneering athlete who I’ve personally admired and whose legacy will proceed to encourage future generations of athletes.”
Inducted into the World Gold Corridor of Fame in a category that featured Tiger Woods, Berning received the U.S. Ladies’s Open in 1968, 1972 and 1973 and the then-major Western Open in 1965. She had 11 profession LPGA Tour titles and was the 1964 rookie if the yr.
Susie Maxwell was born in Pasadena, California, and her household moved to Oklahoma Metropolis when she was 13. She was launched to golf in a most uncommon manner.
She was strolling her colt on a bridle path when it bought spooked and broke free, and the younger lady chased after it down fairways and throughout greens at Lincoln Park Golf Course. The pinnacle professional stated he would neglect the incident if she taught his children how one can journey, and the professional finally invited her to the course the place Patty Berg was giving a clinic.
“I stated to myself: ‘Oh, boy, she’s having lots of enjoyable. If that is what golf is about, I believe I wish to strive it,'” Berning stated.
She received received three straight state highschool titles and have become the primary feminine participant to obtain a golf scholarship to Oklahoma Metropolis College, the place she performed on the lads’s crew.
“Golf has been nice to me,” Berning stated in 2021 when she was elected to the Corridor. “All through my golf profession, I used to be in a position to increase a household, which was icing on the cake. That is one purpose I did not play as a few years or as many occasions. However once I did play, I loved it.”
Household, together with her two daughters, got here first.
She performed solely 9 occasions in 1968 as a result of she took day without work for a honeymoon after marrying Dale Berning. She received the primary of her three U.S. Ladies’s Open titles that yr.
She performed simply seven tournaments in 1970 when she was pregnant along with her daughter, Robin, returning to win the Ladies’s Open in 1972 and 1973. She performed twice in 1977, the yr she gave beginning to a second daughter, Cindy.
“I at all times thought that having my family on tour was not only a blessing, however it was a bonus,” Berning stated when she was inducted. “Regardless of how the spherical went, I used to be mother first. My priorities have been at all times to ensure their day went nicely and to spend time with them, to indicate and educate them that their targets are price going after, that robust competitors can occur in a loving surroundings.”
Berning, a pupil of Jim Flick, grew to become a famend educating skilled. She break up time between The Reserve Membership in Palm Springs and Maroon Creek Nation Membership in Aspen, Colorado.
“I nonetheless imagine that we must always swing the golf membership,” Berning stated in 2021. “We do not attempt to hit the ball with our core. My palms are a very powerful factor I’ve in golf. After which the second most necessary factor is my toes. That is the best way I performed. I swung the membership.”
