Susie Maxwell Berning, a three-time champion of the United States Women’s Open golf tournament who was known for her tenacity on the fairway and her grace off it, died on Wednesday at her home in Indio, in Southern California. She was 83.
Her daughter Cindy Molchany confirmed the death. She said her mother had had lung cancer for two years.
Emerging from Oklahoma City in the 1960s, when women’s professional golf was still a developing sport (she later estimated that there were only about 70 golfers on the tour at the time), Berning built a glittering career. She shone brightest when the stakes were highest. Four of her 11 wins on the L.P.G.A. tour were in major tournaments, including the Western Open in 1965.
The three others were U.S. Open wins in 1968, 1972 and 1973. Berning was one of just six women to win three or more, along with Betsy Rawls, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Hollis Stacy, Annika Sorenstam and Mickey Wright — all members of the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 2021, Berning finally joined them in the Hall, which honors both male and female stars of the sport. She was inducted in the same class as Tiger Woods.
Full recognition of her accomplishments came slowly in large part because her career was abbreviated, as she consistently prioritized family.
During her decade-long prime, which began in 1968, she averaged fewer than 13 events a year, including only seven in 1970, when she was pregnant with her daughter Robin, and two in 1977, while pregnant with her daughter Cindy.
Berning had not played in about a month before her first U.S. Open win, in which she beat Wright, a four-time champion, by four strokes at the Moselem Springs Golf Club in Fleetwood, Pa. She had been on her honeymoon with her husband, Dale Berning, a real estate investor.
In her induction speech, Berning called her daughters her “fifth and sixth major,” adding: “I always thought that having my family on tour was not just a blessing, but it was an advantage. No matter how the round went, I was Mom first.”
In those days, the relatively small pool of female professional golfers also functioned as something of a family. “On the course, we tried to beat each other’s butt,” she said in that speech, “but there was never any love lost. Off the course, we took care of each other. We would eat, room and travel together from town to town in caravans.”
The petite Berning excelled on tight, difficult courses where shooting par was considered the standard, according to Golf Oklahoma magazine.
In her second Open win, in 1972 at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., she triumphed by a single stroke over three runners-up, including Judy Rankin, who had been Berning’s maid of honor and was one of the few other women on the tour with a family.
Berning successfully defended her title the next year at the Country Club of Rochester in upstate New York. She started strong in the tournament but faltered on the green. Her husband then gave her a different putter, which he had bought for $5. After spending an evening practicing with it in their motel room, she won the tournament by five strokes on her 32nd birthday.
As she put it in her speech, “Not bad for a girl, five-two, from Oklahoma who really thought horses was going to be her future, not golf.”
Suzanne Maxwell was born on July 22, 1941, in Pasadena, Calif., the fourth of five children of Shields and Isabelle Maxwell. Her father owned a restaurant and later a turkey farm, in Southern California, but the family moved to Oklahoma City after both the restaurant and the farm were damaged by fire.
When she was young, her brothers Roger and Bill were making good money as caddies at Lincoln Park Golf Course in Oklahoma City. Interested in income rather than the sport itself, she inquired about a job. She was told that caddying was not for girls.
Instead, she became devoted to her family’s two horses. As Berning recounted last year on the podcast “Fore the Good of the Game,” she was taking them both on a stroll on a bridle path near the golf course when one of them broke free, trampling fairways and greens.
When groundskeepers hauled her to the course’s pro shop for punishment, the head professional at the course, U.C. Ferguson, a renowned golf instructor, forgave her and asked if she wanted to give riding lessons to his children.
He also offered to introduce her to golf. “I kept saying, ‘No, that stupid game, you chase this little white ball around, no sir, thank you,’” she recalled. A year later, he invited her to a golf clinic being given by Patty Berg, a founding member of the L.P.G.A. Her reaction, she recalled, was “That’s what golf is? I’d like to try that.”
Ferguson became her mentor, and starting in her sophomore year of high school, where there had not been a girls’ team until she started a small one, Berning proved a prodigy.
She won three consecutive Oklahoma high school golf championships. She later played down the accomplishment because there were so few girls playing at the time.
“I shot a 121 at one of these tournaments,” she said, “but see, there was no competition.”
After graduation, she became the first woman to earn a golf scholarship to Oklahoma City University, which was planning to start a women’s team. Because she was the only female player to express interest, she was forced to play on the men’s team, where she was given the nickname Sam.
While pondering possible postgraduation careers during her senior year, she saw that two local golf rivals were already “winning a little bit of money here and there,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘I can beat those. I beat them a couple of years before.’”
Not long after, she joined the tour. She took home Rookie of the Year honors in 1964.
Berning continued to compete off and on into the 1990s before turning her attention to teaching; she divided her time between the Reserve Club near Palm Springs, Calif., and Maroon Creek Club in Aspen, Colo.
In addition to Ms. Molchany, she is survived by her other daughter, Robin Doctor, and two grandchildren. She and her husband divorced in 1997.
Despite her storied career, Berning earned a pittance compared with the professional golfers who would follow. She made light of that fact in her induction speech, turning to that year’s superstar inductee in the audience and saying:
“By the way, Tiger, of my three U.S. Opens, the total winnings was $16,000. I was wondering if you’d like to swap checks.”