Ellen Port Is the Greatest Golfer You've (Maybe) Never Heard Of
Perhaps the best perspective from which to introduce this essay is to name some of the others in the neighborhood.
Tiger Woods and Bobby Jones have nine. JoAnne Gunderson Carner has eight, so does Jack Nicklaus. And then there is Ellen Port. She will tee off in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur this weekend carrying seven.
The bounty we’re talking about here is USGA championships. Woods and Jones have the most. Carner and Nicklaus are next. Safe to say if you have paid any attention to golf over the past many years, you know those names. Type them into Wikipedia, you will find substantial bios on each. Type "Ellen Port" in and you get nothing, no reference.
Safe to say that, unless you live in St. Louis, work for the USGA or consider yourself a wine connoisseur, “Port” doesn’t ring a bell.
Just consider what the 59-year old mother of two and wife of one has been doing this summer:
A few weeks ago, she played in the U.S. Women’s Senior Open at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Conn. The field included some of the greatest to ever play on LPGA Tour, including eventual winner Annika Sorenstam. The championship also featured Carner, as well as legendary amateur Carol Semple Thompson, who also has seven USGA titles. Port, Carner and Thompson played together during the first two rounds.
Port among her peers, in her environment? Don’t be silly; she was like a schoolgirl at the parish picnic. “Oh, gosh, I am fortunate enough to have played a few rounds with JoAnne (before), and I told people yesterday, it was the best group I could have had,” she said afterward.
“Because they were just competitors and both fighting to come back with living life and stuff.”
After shooting 71-69, Port was only four strokes off the lead going into the weekend at Brooklawn, pushing the likes of Sorenstam, Laura Davies, and Catriona Matthew. When she was asked to reflect on it late Friday, she paused and couldn’t keep from tearing up.
She immediately apologized to the group in the media center, then took the apology back. “I don't care,” she said. “I love to cry. The older I get it's like if you can't have some emotion …”
Port didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t need to. If you aren’t emotional about all of this, what’s the point? Passion is what Port does, passionate about the game and those who embrace it, privileged to be around those who have advanced it. There isn’t an entitled bone in her body.
Since putting down a tennis racket and picking up a golf bag in her mid-20s, enthusiasm has been part and parcel with Port. She has stacked remarkable accomplishments the way UPS drivers stack boxes, one atop the next, piled to the roof. She has collected too many qualifying events and area championships to count. They won’t even fit in the truck.
At the age of 32, she won the 1994 Women’s Trans National Amateur Championship when it was still highly distinguished. She starred for the ’94 U.S. Curtis Cup team and then captained the team to victory in the 2014 matches at St. Louis Country Club. She was captured four USGA Women’s Mid-Amateur titles in three different decades and she has won the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur shootin’ match three times (2012, 2013, 2016).
Could she do it again — five years removed — over the next fews days at The Lakewood Club in Point Clear, Ala? Could she tie Carner for the most USGA titles won by a woman? Could she pass Nicklaus and catch the likes of Woods and Jones?
If you’ve never heard of Port, you wouldn’t bet on it. But if you know her, you’d be crazy to bet otherwise.
Ask Joe Malench. The St. Louis amateur had every reason to believe a 3-under-par 69 in the final round at Sunset Country Club on Aug. 25 would be good enough, every reason to expect eight birdies and 25 pars over two days of stifling, 100-degree heat would win the Metropolitan Senior Amateur Championship.
Just to be clear, that’s the Metro Senior Amateur, normally reserved for the male species.
Malench couldn’t have anticipated history in the making. He couldn’t have expected a 16 time Metropolitan Women’s Amateur champion would come from five shots back with a final-round 67, force a tie and make a downhill 20-footer on the fourth playoff hole to prevail.
“That trophy doesn’t know if it’s a man or a woman holding it,” Port said afterward. “It just knows it’s someone who loves golf.”
That trophy now knows the name, “Ellen Port,” etched right there on its base. And what’s important to know is what it means.
Over the years, Port’s game has fluctuated. Her best comes and goes. So it is with a maddening game and with those who don’t call it their occupation. What kind of golf Port brings to The Lakewood Club remains to be seen.
But her husband and sensei of 36 years, Andy Port, who has caddied for Ellen through so many triumphs and disappointments, is quick to tell you one thing never fluctuates. Whether it’s playing golf or cleaning gutters, Ellen Port will do it with emotion. No apologies made, none accepted.
“She does everything at 110 percent,” said Andy, who will be on the bag this weekend. “And she has both a great love and great respect for the game of golf.”
Perhaps Port’s name will move alongside Carner in the next few days, cozy up to Nicklaus and get a notch closer to Woods and Jones.
Those names are impressive, celebrated and historic in golf. Whether you know it or not, Ellen Port has earned the company.