"Big Mama" Carner always a hit with club in hand

When JoAnne Carner was a teenager in Kirkland, she used to hunt for golf balls at the now-defunct Juanita Golf Course.

One day a foursome heard noises off a wooded hole and one golfer turned to the other and said, "There's a deer in there."

One of the co-owners of the course was in the foursome and spotted JoAnne.

"That's not a deer," he said. "That's the state champion."

Today, Carner, 66, is a member of the LPGA and World Golf halls of fame, and has lived in Florida for decades. Her drumroll of accomplishments is long:

• She is the only woman to win the U.S. Girls Junior Amateur, the U.S. Amateur (five times) and the U.S. Open (twice). Tiger Woods is the only man to accomplish that trifecta.

• After turning pro at age 30, she won 42 times on the LPGA Tour, with the last victory coming in 1985 at the Safeco Classic at Meridian Valley Country Club.

• She is the oldest woman to make the cut in an LPGA event, doing it in 2004 at age 65.

Carner may also lead the LPGA in career nicknames. She was known as "the gravel-pit kid" growing up in Kirkland because her family's home was near a gravel pit. She was "The Great Gundy" (family name was Gunderson) and fellow LPGA pro Sandra Palmer nicknamed her "Big Mama" in the mid-1970s.

"I was older, taller (though only 5 feet 7) and hit the ball much longer than she did," Carner said.

Carner's golf roots go back to the 9-hole course in Juanita, where her brother, Bill, got a job watering and soon JoAnne was working there, too.

Another of the co-owners, Gordon Jenkins, required his young employees to learn the game. He helped JoAnne and also made her read Ben Hogan's instructional book. In addition to Jenkins, other pros throughout JoAnne's career were John Hoetmer at Sand Point Country Club (which gave her a free membership), PGA Tour pro Gardner Dickinson and the legendary Sam Snead.

In addition to the free membership, Sand Point also steered its carpentry work to JoAnne's father, Gustav, and that money helped pay her way to national tournaments.

Some of her favorite memories are of nights on the Juanita course, where as many as 10 kids would play.

"We played a lot of moonlight golf," she said. "When the moon was in your face, you had to tell by feel whether the ball hooked or sliced. It was wonderful training."

The graduate of Lake Washington High School went to Arizona State on one of the first golf scholarships offered to a woman. She earned a degree in 1961.

For the past year, Carner hasn't played competitive golf. She suffered a broken wrist last March in a fall after missing the cut in Palm Springs, Calif. She is scheduled to play in a women's senior event in Japan in April.

Carner has been a widow since 1999 when her husband of 36 years, Don Carner, died after a prolonged illness. During JoAnne's active playing days and before Don became ill, they would travel to tournaments towing a trailer.

She was in contention week after week and handled the tension by watching sad movies.

"I would cry and then the tension would be gone," she said.

Carner always has been popular with the media because she is unpretentious and quotable. Among the stories she tells of herself is how she once tried to quit smoking and shot 45 on the front nine in a California tournament. At the turn, she dispatched her caddy to get cigarettes and told him to "find the strongest ones you can."

She shot 32 on the back nine.