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(CNN)<\/cite>Arms and hips out of sync? Are you struggling with your game? Try carrying an unborn child while navigating the course.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (CNN)Arms and hips out of sync? Are you struggling with your game? Try carrying an unborn child while navigating the course. Twenty years ago, amateur Brenda Corrie-Kuehn – eight months pregnant – did just that at the US Women’s Open at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club with playing partner Jennifer Greggain, who was well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport"],"yoast_head":"\nTwenty years ago, amateur Brenda Corrie-Kuehn – eight months pregnant – did just that at the US Women’s Open at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club with playing partner Jennifer Greggain, who was well into her second trimester.<\/p>\nTheir results weren’t the best and they weren’t the fastest on the track – they were even put on the clock by the officials given the number of bathroom breaks Corrie-Kuehn naturally had to take.<\/p>\nBut the mother-of-three ended up with a birdie, defying her obstetrician-gynecologist, who thought she was too close to her due date to be on a golf course in the 80-degree heat.<\/p>\n“I said to her, ‘Over my dead body.’ I qualified for it, I worked hard to get there, I’ll play,” Corrie-Kuehn told CNN Sport.<\/p>\nDaughter Rachel was born a week later, and her 56-year-old mother will have inspired others to move on when your stomach and doctors tell you no.<\/p>\n“It wasn’t pretty. I don’t remember what I did, but towards the end of your pregnancy there’s a point where you just grow up really fast,” said the nine-time US Open veteran.<\/p>\n\u201cI think that happened between qualifying for the Open and the actual event itself and it’s hard to fire the hips with the extra weight so my swing changed and I couldn’t hit it very far. But I was glad to be there.<\/p>\n“A lot of people have asked me, ‘How could you play like that?’ What I was trying to show was that it’s part of life, I had some physical limitations and after the US Open I was playing a cart at home before Rachel was born.<\/p>\n“What I wanted to show was just because you’re pregnant and if you don’t have a disease you can do the same things that you did before pregnancy and after delivery. That was my message.\u201d<\/p>\nWith golf genes like that \u2014 Corrie-Kuehn’s mother was a Venezuelan national champion, as was her father \u2014 it’s no wonder Rachel followed in her mother’s footsteps at North Carolina’s prestigious Wake Forest University, where she also excels at golf and narrowly missing out on the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Finals in Augusta earlier this year.<\/p>\nShe has the staunchest supporter in her mother, who advises any pregnant golfer to watch how long they practice on the greens.<\/p>\n\u201cThat affected my distance a lot. Imagine having a 30 pound ball in front of you and trying to fire your hips, you would lose your balance. So my swing became very poor and rhythmic.<\/p>\n“But there’s no reason the short game shouldn’t be good – although you can’t sit long and practice your putting because your back is killing you.”<\/p>\nREAD: Patty Tavatanakit: The golfer who admits it’s ‘strange’ to think she’s a big winner<\/p>\n\n\nstrong mothers<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Three-time Major champion Nancy Lopez has three daughters and won events in the 1980s and 1990s while pregnant. <\/p>\nIn 2003, four months pregnant, French Patricia Meunier-Lebouc played in the Solheim Cup, taking some useful advice from Carin Koch, the Swede who competed in the 2002 competition at the age of 12 weeks.<\/p>\nIn 2005, Laura Diaz and Iben Tinning met in the biennial competition, American Diaz six months pregnant and Dane Tinning 16 weeks pregnant.<\/p>\nIn the world of long drive championships, Lisa “Longball” Vlooswyk was the first competitor in the field to throw her extra weight into the game’s biggest drives.<\/p>\nIn turn, she inspired five-time world champion Sandra Carlborg of Sweden, who completed 300-yard drives with her daughter Ebba at the 2019 tournament at 24 weeks pregnant.<\/p>\n\u201cWe had a medical tent because it was very hot that day. The medical guy used ice to cool me down between sets,” Carlborg told CNN.<\/p>\n“I felt safe and he said, ‘As long as you feel good, it’s ok.’ I promised him that if I felt unwell I would stop competing,” said the 37-year-old, who hit 80 full-force balls that day and whose longest drive is 401 yards, five shy of the world record.<\/p>\nCarlborg is now expecting her second daughter, who is due in September, and has used the Covid-19 lockdowns to launch a podcast called PowerMamas in Sweden to empower new moms.<\/p>\n\u201cI’m getting weaker and weaker again so I’m really looking forward to coming back as a strong athlete next year. My goal is to be my strongest self – stronger than ever and swinging it faster than I’ve ever been.<\/p>\n“A lot of people say that women are stronger after being a mother.”<\/p>\nCarlborg gets some of her positivity from the way her sponsors initially took the news that she was having her first baby.<\/p>\n\u201cNowadays there is a big difference. I was very nervous when I told my sponsors I was pregnant with Ebba and wondered what they would say, but I think that’s been a big shift in all sports in recent years.<\/p>\n“I’m glad we don’t live like we did 10-15 years ago where people used to say, ‘If you have kids, you’re out of your sport.’ I hope more women think that having kids isn’t stopping them from becoming top athletes.”<\/p>\nFormer British rower Baz Moffat founded Well HQ in early 2021 with two doctors – one of whom, Dr. Emma Ross for writing a chapter on women and pregnancy in the Gulf as part of a health book for women athletes.<\/p>\n\u201cPregnancy and postpartum recovery in sports are really, really new things. Brenda is one of a kind,” Moffat told CNN.<\/p>\n“It’s only since Serena Williams in 2014 that it’s really become a thing in terms of more women slipping kids into their careers \u2014 rather than just pushing their careers to the point where they want kids and so that’s that Main reason why they are retiring from the sport.”<\/p>\nMum-of-two Moffat, who trained with the British Olympic team between 2004 and 2008, said the change has been massive since she was a top athlete after the Beijing Games.<\/p>\n\u201cI don’t think there were mothers in the world of international sport back then. Some people tried to go, have children, and come back within a four-year cycle, but the support systems weren’t there. <\/p>\n\u201cIf the number one reason women leave sport prematurely is to have children, how can we support them? It’s not perfect now, but there are examples of women doing it amazingly.”<\/p>\nREAD: ‘Everybody loves to hate the bad guy,’ says shooter McGavin 25 years after ‘Happy Gilmore’<\/p>\n\n\nEven par one day, a small birdie the next<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Back at Wake Forest University, Kuehn’s teammate Emilia Migliaccio is the talk of US amateur golf after making the playoffs in Augusta but losing to a clutch par from 17-year-old Japanese star Tsubasa Kajitani.<\/p>\nLike Kuehn, her mother was a brilliant talent. Representing the University of Arizona, Ulrika Migliaccio starred alongside fellow countrywoman and 10-time Major winner Annika Sorenstam. <\/p>\nWhen Ulrika donned the famous white Augusta jumpsuit as a caddy for her daughter in April, Emilia was filled with pride as she thought back to her mother as a golfer, not least playing while pregnant.<\/p>\n“I think the day before my mom had me, she played a round of golf and even got a par,” the 22-year-old told CNN, a big smile spreading across her face.<\/p>\n“She played with two men who looked at each other and said, ‘Really? We’re playing this pregnant woman?’ Then she totally tore it up!”<\/p>\nMigliaccio grew up claiming to be a professional sport, rubbing shoulders at team events with the likes of Patty Tavatanakit, Collin Morikawa, Jennifer Kupcho and Viktor Hovland, and playing the game at a level most people can only dream of. <\/p>\nHowever, she has chosen to follow in her mother’s footsteps and not join the professional ranks.<\/p>\n“She didn’t really like living out of a suitcase and decided that the career path wasn’t for her. When I questioned my career path, my mother shared her experiences and she gave me a lot of advice.\u201d<\/p>\nVisit CNN.com\/sport for more news, features and videos<\/p>\nLike Ulrika Migliaccio on the course that day, Carlborg has a lesson for some male golfers.<\/p>\n“In 2019, when I was 30 weeks pregnant, I told the boys at an event not to complain about their big bellies, they won’t stop you from going far!<\/p>\n“Hopefully I can inspire a lot of people about being pregnant.”<\/p>\n