Pro snaps into emergency mom duty during U.S. Women’s Open round
Rachel Rohanna hits a shot off the 2nd tee at Lancaster CC.
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Competitors at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club are facing their fair share of adversity: multi-group backups, difficult conditions — even Nelly Korda carded a 10! But no one else in the field experienced the sticky situation that Rachel Rohanna did on Thursday, one that involved her infant son.
Rohanna, who earned a berth in the field as a sectional qualifier — the medalist, in fact — is playing her fourth U.S. Women’s Open. At Lancaster CC’s difficult par-3 12th, Rohanna and her group encountered a sizable backup of players. That’s when Rohanna’s attention drifted to her husband, Ethan, who was watching the action with the couple’s children, 5-year-old Gemelia and eight-month-old Greenlee, who was in a stroller.
What did Rohanna notice? Any parent can probably guess.
“There was a backup with the playing and then there was, you know, the opposite of a backup in the stroller,” Rohanna said after her round. “There was like, I think, four groups or something on the tee box. I was talking to my husband and looked down and happened to see that my youngest was just — went to the bathroom all over the place. I was like, Ethan. So I brought them inside the ropes and we went into a roped-off area and changed her. It was a two-man effort to get that taken care of.”
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A competitor changing a diaper in the middle of a U.S. Women’s Open round has to be a first. But Rohanna took it in stride.
“At first I was like, I’m not sure he can come in the ropes,” she said. “Oh, whatever. Nobody is going to say anything. It’s just me and him. So I was like, he had to — like I said, he had to come in because it was definitely a two-man effort. Yeah, no, it was everywhere.”
Rohanna signed for an opening round of 76 — six-over par, though she did par the 12th. Rohanna said she plays primarily on the Epson Tour and is hoping for a good finish this week to help boost her LPGA status.
“Just trying to stay with it and stay patient with everything in my game, and I think a lot of good things I see coming back with my game,” she said. “I think if I can just do what I know how to do, I’ll be fine.”
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