Pro snaps into emergency mom duty during U.S. Women’s Open round

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.”

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.

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