She’ s been mostly injury-free lately after a series of hip and back ailments forced her to curtail her playing schedule during her last few years on the LPGA circuit. Back in 2012, she had been hoping for one more season— it would have been her 25th on tour— when one final calamity prevented her from reaching that goal.
“ I had a cat bite bring me down,” she said.“ We had gotten a new dog and I was holding the cat. The dog jumped up and went after her and the cat bit me on the left index finger. It now takes a left turn.”
These days, she can laugh about it, but at the time, there was nothing funny about spending four days in the hospital with a bone infection, followed by three weeks of intravenous antibiotics and many months of not being able to grip a golf club, let alone swing it.
Maryland. Tiffany and her husband, Brian, moved to Northern California several years ago, but they remain great friends with Tschetter and are always asking about the girls. Tschetter sees the Tysers whenever she’ s in the Bay Area and loves the fact that Tiffany, a fine athlete who played college volleyball, took up golf herself and now is totally addicted.
Neither Lainey nor Kyra play golf. Lainey was active in ballet as a youngster, and even convinced her mother to perform a cameo several times in Nutcracker productions, including one year with a torn calf muscle. A year ago Lainey decided she preferred soccer to ballet, mercifully ending Tschetter’ s dancing career just in time. And little sister Kyra has become a spelling bee whiz and has a great passion for rock climbing, definitely
“ They have 25 engineers in China and another 25 people in Oakland. I can tell you it’ s keeping me busy. This working for a living is hard on your golf game.”
“ When I was able to play again, I was playing with a doctor and he looked at the finger and said‘ that looks bad,’” Tschetter recalled.“ I told him I probably could have lost the finger. He looked at me and he said,‘ no, you could have lost your hand.’”
DREAM COME TRUE Tschetter has never lost her sense of humor. She’ s led a truly intriguing life, growing up in South Dakota, where she’ s considered the finest golfer in the state’ s history, and playing college golf at Texas Christian University, where her team often practiced at Shady Oaks, Ben Hogan’ s home club in Fort Worth, Texas. She and Hogan met on the practice range there and became great friends, and Tschetter even wrote a book about it a few years ago called“ Mr. Hogan, The Man I knew.”
Clearly, her daughters are now the main focus of her life. They were both carried to term by a surrogate mother, Tiffany Tyser, who was then living in suburban a pursuit her injury-prone mom also should probably avoid.
Despite all those physical problems, Tschetter still has a great passion for golf. And now it’ s the same for that new fulltime job, even if she gets plenty of ribbing from her colleagues at 18BIRDIES over her rather limited business resume.
“ The joke at the company is that‘ it’ s Kris’ s first job out of college,’” she said.“ When I was hired, I went out there and met everyone. We were sitting around a table and when I was introduced, they talked about me having my first‘ real’ job and they all burst out laughing. Turns out I was the oldest person in the room.
“ But I’ m having so much fun doing this. It’ s really been a dream come true, to be able to keep playing and also doing what I would have done if I hadn’ t been playing professional golf for 30 years. I’ m very lucky, and very happy.”
And very much in the pink, you might even say.
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