Much ink has been spilled on the role many fathers have played in helping to raise their PGA Tour professional sons. But what of the players’ mothers? What wisdom does a mother offer her son on the eve of a pivotal tournament? What small truths did she feed him over breakfast and afternoon snacks for the nearly two decades he spent in her care? At the heart of it, what is it really like to be a mother of a PGA Tour pro? We asked three of them. For the first installment of our three-part Mother’s Day series, Jordan Spieth’s mother, Chris, shared her story. Come back on Saturday and Sunday for Parts II and III.
Chris Spieth — mother of a certain three-time major winner — remembers a cartoon her sister spotted years ago.
It depicted an elderly woman walking down the road, shoulders hunched, cane in hand. But on the wall just behind her, the woman’s shadow was dancing.
“My sister and I agreed,” Chris says. “That was our mom.”
Chris was born to Ginny and Bob Julius, in the middle of a large Pennsylvania family. When Ginny was 31 and pregnant with her sixth child, she had an aneurysm, which left her permanently paralyzed on one side of her body. Chris was 4 at the time.
“My mom raised six kids with half of her body,” Chris says. “She would fold laundry using her teeth and one hand, but she never saw herself as handicapped. She never complained. My mom was a saint.”
Also worthy of that designation was Chris’ father, who cared for his wife and children in the decades that followed.
“I would take my children to visit my parents in North Carolina for summer vacation,” Chris says. “They had a blast running around with their cousins while we were there, and they grew up watching their grandmom’s struggles. I think seeing how my dad cared for my mom helps Jordan and Steven to be better husbands and dads themselves.”
That would be Jordan, as in the über-popular 13-time PGA Tour winner; and Steven, as in Jordan’s younger brother, who briefly played professional basketball in Europe before settling into a sales job in the golf real-estate business.
What it was like playing Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas as juniors | Subpar
