PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Susie Maxwell Berning, the three-time U.S. Girls’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 mentioned Berning, inducted into the World Golf Corridor of Fame in 2022, died at her house in Palm Springs.
“We’re saddened by the passing of one in all our greats,” LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan mentioned in a press release. “Susie Maxwell Berning was not only a incredible participant and a member of the World Golf Corridor of Fame, but additionally an exquisite ambassador for the LPGA and ladies’s sports activities total.
“We’ll all the time level to her as a task mannequin for balancing homelife and profession, profitable main championships whereas additionally elevating a household. Susie was a robust, 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. Girls’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 12 months.
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 received spooked and broke free, and the younger lady chased after it down fairways and throughout greens at Lincoln Park Golf Course. The pinnacle professional mentioned he would neglect the incident if she taught his youngsters the best way to journey, and the professional ultimately invited her to the course the place Patty Berg was giving a clinic.
“I mentioned to myself: ‘Oh, boy, she’s having a variety of enjoyable. If that is what golf is about, I believe I wish to strive it,'” Berning mentioned.
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 boys’s crew.
“Golf has been nice to me,” Berning mentioned in 2021 when she was elected to the Corridor. “All through my golf profession, I used to be capable of elevate a household, which was icing on the cake. That is one cause 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 instances 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. Girls’s Open titles that 12 months.
She performed simply seven tournaments in 1970 when she was pregnant along with her daughter, Robin, returning to win the Girls’s Open in 1972 and 1973. She performed twice in 1977, the 12 months she gave delivery to a second daughter, Cindy.
“I all the time thought that having my family on tour was not only a blessing, but it surely was a bonus,” Berning mentioned when she was inducted. “Regardless of how the spherical went, I used to be mother first. My priorities have been all the time to verify their day went effectively and to spend time with them, to point out and train them that their objectives are value going after, that robust competitors can occur in a loving atmosphere.”
Berning, a pupil of Jim Flick, turned a famend instructing skilled. She cut 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 mentioned in 2021. “We do not attempt to hit the ball with our core. My palms are an important factor I’ve in golf. After which the second most vital factor is my toes. That is the best way I performed. I swung the membership.”
