It wasn’t the way she wanted to finish, but Brittany Lincicome has much to be proud of as she wraps her 18th season on the LPGA Tour and looks forward to the arrival of her second child.
At 30 weeks pregnant, Lincicome teed off Thursday at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship – her tenth and final event for the season.
The 36-year-old ultimately missed the cut at Congressional Country Club, posting Round 1 and 2 scores of 6-over 78 and 2-over 74, respectively, concluding her final tournament before maternity leave with an 8-over total.
“Had a sinus infection all week that really took me down,” Lincicome said on Instagram. “But super excited to get home and start getting stuff ready for our new arrival.”
The eight-time tour winner played until she was 26 weeks with her first child, Emery, who was ultimately born eight weeks ahead of schedule, at 32 weeks, in July 2019. This time around, Lincicome was eager to stay on tour, versus sitting at home, for as long as possible, making the time fly a little faster in the process.
“I could have gone so much further,” Lincicome said of her first pregnancy. “I’ve been feeling so great that why not play as long as I can?”
Weekend or not, Congressional was the planned final stop for Lincicome before she and her husband, Dewald Gouws, become parents of two, especially with the potential of another early arrival.
Lincicome’s best finish this season came at last weekend’s ShopRite LPGA Classic, where she tied for sixth. She only missed three cuts all season.
Despite the challenges that growing another human presents, Lincicome’s average driving distance only dropped 2.36 yards from last season – 263.34 yards to 260.98 yards. Her swing hasn’t changed much either.
“It goes dead straight every time, and, obviously, you can play with that,” Lincicome observed.
Full-field scores from the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
As excitement awaits her family, Lincicome does have another challenge lingering on the horizon: how do you manage being a professional athlete and being a parent of two?
“It’s fine right now, because I still only have the one. I think when two comes it’s going to be a whole different ballgame. It’s going to flip our lives upside down,” Lincicome said. “But, obviously, I have great help with my husband, my mom and dad travel. So we’re going to try to keep it going and keep playing next year.”
That’s the drive of a woman who has “nothing to prove,” yet still has the desire to play at an elite level while being a mother. The competitive fire doesn’t go away either – it just morphs into something more… manageable.
“I think it just kind of puts it into perspective a little bit more,” Lincicome said. “[When] you have that bad day, you can always go back and be like, ‘I have a healthy baby growing inside of me,’ or, ‘I have a beautiful baby at home.’”
“You still get super frustrated,” Lincicome elaborated. “I would be lying if I told you all that makes it so much better, but just being a competitor and wanting to win on the LPGA every week, I still get super frustrated.”
Lincicome is an example of a woman who is thriving at the intersection of motherhood and career and, in this case, sport, but her worth is not defined by those external factors. She is, after all, a human, simply navigating life her way.
“If you want to have family and your career, whether that [comes from] family help or hiring a nanny or however it may be, you can definitely do it,” Lincicome said. “I give all the women in the world the encouragement to go out and do it.”
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Spanish