18-Holy Matrimony : Husbands Do a Little Bit of Everything When They Travel With the LPGA

Who wouldn’t want to live the life of a professional golfer--traveling the world, playing the best courses, having your face plastered across ESPN. . . .

But what if the pro is your wife ?

“There are more married couples on the LPGA tour than you realize,” says John Dormann, the golf-widower of sorts of Dana Lofland-Dormann, a 25-year-old who won the $500,000 McCall’s Classic at Stratton Mountain, Vt., in August. Dormann had no qualms about forgoing any man-and-his-castle fantasies three years ago when he married Dana, then a rookie. He didn’t even mind learning how to cook.

And Lofland-Dormann, playing this weekend in the Kyocera Inamori Classic at San Diego, is grateful to have him around.

“I am so lucky he is out there on tour,” she says. “It can be really lonely, spending nine months on the road. I’m a lot happier when I have him with me and I’m very fortunate he decided to forgo other things.”

Dormann gave up his job as a loan officer and found his niche on the LPGA tour as a caddie. Although he caddied for Dana “for about six weeks,” it was evident they were a better team off the golf course.

“Everything was golf, day and night,” Dormann says. “It got old quickly.”

Now he caddies for another player, Meg Mallon.

“I was lucky to get a great player like Meg,” Dormann says. “Besides, Dana was a rookie and me working with a good player like Meg took the (financial) pressure off Dana. And it was nice to have my own thing.”

When Lofland-Dormann and Mallon were paired half a dozen times last year, the only one who had a problem with it was Dormann.

“It’s not like they are in direct competition out there,” he says. “Everybody is just trying to play the best they can. The first couple of times, it was difficult for me. I had to concentrate on what Meg and I were going to do. I probably ignored Dana more than I would have anyone else. As time goes by, it gets easier.”

One thing many of the husbands on the LPGA tour share is a knack for the game. Doug Mochrie, married to Dottie Mochrie, 1992 player of the year, was a club pro before becoming her teacher and caddie for a year. Brian Inkster, husband of Juli Inkster, is a club pro at the Los Altos Country Club.

“I think in order to support a life playing golf, it’s good to have someone who knows the game,” says Juli Inkster, a two-time winner of the Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament. “A non-golfer might say, ‘How’d she miss that shot?’ It helps that they know we’re in a tough job.”

Brian Inkster attends about eight tournaments a year. Even on the road, he and Juli try to maintain some semblance of home life--especially since 3-year-old Hayley came along. They stay in at night and Juli does the cooking. When Brian is not on the tour, the couple, married 13 years, “talk a lot--probably three times a day,” Juli says. “He wants to know how I play, and it’s nice because we miss each other.”

For Mochrie, taking husband Doug on as her teacher and, for a while, her caddie, was a good career move. She shot to the top of the rankings a year ago and passed the million-dollar mark.

“I wasn’t really making any progress,” says Mochrie, 27. “Plus, it was simply the advantage of having Doug right there. . . . There’s nothing like being able to share your professional career with the person you chose to spend the rest of your life with.”

What Mochrie remembers as a classic moment occurred last year as she stood over a four-foot putt on the last hole.

“He said, ‘If you don’t make it, you’ve had a great week, so don’t worry about it.’ It takes a lot for somebody to say that, and (as her teacher), he had a lot on the line.”

The husbands also shoulder some of the burden that goes along with traveling nine months of the year. They take care of the travel details and day-to-day pressures, so that “the players don’t need to think about anything but playing golf,” Dormann says.

But there’s a point when their wives might think too much about golf.

“I don’t let Dana practice as much as she wants to,” Dormann says. “She works hard and she practices a lot. She wears herself out. I like to drag her away for a while. I just say, ‘Let’s go do something.’ ”

Their three years on the tour has seemed almost like an extended honeymoon, Lofland-Dormann says. With all the traveling, they do things a “typical couple would do,” such as going to the popular tourist attractions.

“And John is a crazy sports fanatic,” Lofland-Dormann says. “He has this goal to hit every baseball stadium in the country. We see a lot of games.”

Lofland-Dormann, Inkster and Mochrie give at least some of the credit for their golfing success to their husbands.

“There are a lot of lows in golf,” Inkster says. “You don’t win every week, and my husband is real positive.”

Having a child has also given Inkster a different outlook on her career, making her family her No. 1 priority. But that’s not to imply that she would prefer a picket fence to her putter.

“I don’t think women should have to choose between work and family,” she says. “They should be able to have both.”