Being a Mother Fits Inkster to a Tee

Juli Inkster doesn’t bridle when she’s associated more with motherhood and apple pie--well, French toast--than she is with golf, even after enjoying a June for the ages.

Tell us, Juli, about finishing the LPGA Championship eagle-birdie-birdie to complete a career Grand Slam, followed by a little twist-but-no-shout on the green.

But first, what did you fix for breakfast?

“French toast,” she said, and didn’t resent the question. Instead, she relished it being asked.

“I think a woman is born--especially when they have kids--[with] a maternal gene, a guilty gene,” she said later, laughing. “I think it’s just different for the man. Even though they love their kids and they would do anything for their kids, I don’t know, the bonding part isn’t there. I just couldn’t imagine being away from my kids for two weeks. There are a lot of guys who will go away, play four weeks in a row and not see their kids.”

She has two children, daughters Hayley, 9, and Cori, 5, and she is trying to give them as normal a childhood as is possible when dad Brian is a golf pro and mom has won four tournaments this year; when she won the U.S. Women’s Open and LPGA Championship in the same month; when she led the U.S. team in an 8-1 thumping of Canada in the Nations’ Cup earlier this week.

When mom--a big Giants’ fan from Santa Cruz--and the kids were on the mound in St. Louis on Wednesday night, throwing out the first pitch before the Cardinals’ game against Cincinnati. (The pitch, predictably, was a strike.)

And when her game and her life are undergoing the dissection that accompanies success.

It’s success that has come over time in a career that has been a roller coaster ride, with wins in her 20s, then valleys of her 30s coinciding with the hills of motherhood.

That guilty gene, you know.

“I never really knew about bringing kids up or how to do it, so I was just kind of thrown out there and I . . . was just an emotional wreck,” she said. “Physically I think I was ready to handle it, but mentally I wasn’t. . . . I just didn’t know if I could play golf and be a mom because my mom was always there when I got home from school.”

She had won the Dinah Shore and du Maurier in 1984, then needed 15 years to become only the second woman--Pat Bradley is the other--to win a modern career Grand Slam.

Inkster learned how to cope slowly as the children grew, and now, at 39, is playing better than ever, and perhaps at the best time ever for a woman athlete.

All around her, women’s status in sports is undergoing a metamorphosis, in large part because of the success of the U.S. Women’s World Cup team and the emergence of the WNBA.

But they are female athletes, celebrated for their game. Inkster is a mom, no matter how much money she wins, no matter how well she plays. And nobody on the LPGA Tour is playing better.

Without seeking the role, she has become a spokeswoman for working mothers everywhere.

“I don’t think [I’m] any different from any . . . working woman,” she said. “It just happens that everybody kind of jumped on the bandwagon. . . . I just think I am fortunate to work only half a year and I get the other half off. I have got it pretty easy, as far as being a working woman.”

Not so easy that she isn’t pondering cutting back her tournaments, even while she is on a roll.

“My goal is to make the Solheim Cup team next year in Scotland,” she said. “Then after that I’m going to cut back to probably 10 to 12 tournaments a year . . . because my kids are getting into everything right now and I just don’t want to miss that stuff. I have played golf for 15 years and have had a great career, and I am going to enjoy the rest of my life watching them do what they like to do.”

That, given the times, is probably play soccer or basketball.

ANOTHER COUNTRY HEARD FROM

On Sunday, American Barney Thompson and England’s Brian Barnes decided to celebrate the Fourth of July at the State Farm Senior Classic in Columbia, Md., so they marched down the 18th fairway wrapped in their country’s flags. On the green, they wrapped arms around each other.

Both finished well behind tournament winner Christy O’Connor of Ireland.

NEW LOOK FOR AN OLD COURSE

A rotation for the Tour Championship is being set up, and it apparently will include San Francisco’s Harding Park, a public course.

The facility is being renovated and lengthened from the 6,400 yards it played to when Ken Venturi was learning there, his dad, Fred, was the starter and his mom, Ethyl, ran the pro shop.

The tournament could be held at Harding as early as 2002.

OH, CAPTAIN, MY . . . PLAYER?

After competing seven times as a player, Mark James is Europe’s Ryder Cup captain, but that shouldn’t be set in stone.

James, 44, is playing better than he has in a long while on the PGA European Tour, where he is sixth on the money list and eighth on the Ryder Cup points list.

After briefly considering being the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963, James has instead decided to consider stepping down as captain and playing again.

The point list closes on Aug. 19-22, when the tour has a stop in Munich, Germany. If James decided to play, rather than be the captain, logical replacements are Scotland’s Sam Torrance, Wales’ Ian Woosnam or Germany’s Bernhard Langer. Only Langer among them can qualify as a player.

BIRDIES, BOGEYS, PARS

The Bob Weinberg CHP 11-99 Foundation tournament will be played Sept. 17 at Los Coyotes Country Club in Buena Park. Details: 562-947-1199. . . . The Southern California Golf Assn. celebrates its 100th birthday July 17 at the Industry Hills Sheraton after the third round of the 100th SCGA Amateur Championship.