Pregnant Pause: There's Something the PGA Doesn't Worry About

Imagine you're one of the best female golfers in the world. So good, you're on the LPGA Tour. And you use a belly putter.

Then you and your husband decide it's time to start a family. You become pregnant. Your belly starts to grow.

What happens to that belly putter? Well, you start trimmin' that shaft:

The speaker was Janice Moodie, who played 10 times on the LPGA Tour last year, during her pregnancy, and is now back on tour after giving birth.

With the exception of a few golfers with chronic back pain (Couples, Love, et.al.), the biggest things most PGA Tour players have to worry about are the likes of a speck of dust in the eye, calluses, or an unrepaired ballmark.

For the best women golfers, the decision on when to start a family can be difficult, but playing while pregnant isn't that unusual.

Three LPGA Tour members are pregnant now, with Hee-Won Han the best-known. Hee-Won is five months along and plans on playing through the Kraft Nabisco Championship late this month.

The woman in the photo is Ladies European Tour player Ursula Wikstrom, seven months pregnant and playing the 2006 Dubai Ladies Masters (she finished 2-over par). Look at her expression: she doesn't appear very comfortable, eh?

Continuing to play while pregnant is probably an easy decision for most golfers: it's what they do, after all. Laura Diaz and Iben Tinning were both pregnant when they met in a 2005 Solheim Cup match. Diaz played into her sixth month of pregnancy and also caddied for her brother at the PGA Championship. Jackie Gallagher-Smith hit a bucket of balls on the driving range one day before giving birth!

Pregnancy can certainly have a deleterious effect on a golfer's career. And it's not just the belly. Because, well, John Daly.

It's going from 120 pounds to 150 or 160 in just a few months; it's the morning sickness; the stress and strain; it's the aftereffects of giving birth; and perhaps biggest of all, it's the demands of motherhood.

Patricia Meunier-Lebouc won a major in 2003, played until she was 6 1/2 months pregnant in 2004, gave birth and returned to the tour just eight weeks later, and finished as high as fourth in 2004. But in 2005, trying to juggle motherhood with the life of a professional golfer, Meunier-Lebouc missed a lot of cuts and finished no higher than 22nd. She still hasn't won post-pregnancy.

But others say their games aren't affected much at all, other than missed time. Janice Moodie told the Honolulu Advertiser, "It made my swing a little flatter but I still hit it pretty good."

Perhaps the two most famous pregnant golfers have been Nancy Lopez and Juli Inkster. Lopez missed large chunks of the 1983-85 seasons, when her first two daughters were born, and many more tournaments in the early '90s after the birth of her third daughter. She still won 48 times.

Inkster had two daughters by 1990 and fell into a slump in the early to mid '90s, struggling to balance motherhood and golf. She went winless from 1993 to 1997, but finally figured things out and has gone on to 31 career wins and 7 majors.