Piller brings baby bump to Orlando
She’s playing tourney well into pregnancy
Gerina Piller did not take up golf until she was 15 — an age when virtually any player with a future has a swing coach and a shelf full of trophies.
Piller had other dreams as a girl.
To Piller, “the majors” meant playing in Yankee Stadium, not at St. Andrews.
“Most of my life I played baseball, it was my first love,” Piller said. “I thought I was going to be the first girl in MLB (Major League Baseball).”
Piller’s passion for baseball has her pumped up to play in the third annual Diamond Resorts Invitational today through Sunday at Orlando’s Tranquilo Golf Club.
A little league pitcher growing up in Roswell, N.M., Piller will not have her best stuff on the golf course this week. The world’s 43rd-ranked player is 51⁄2 months pregnant with her first child and is taking off this season.
Even so, Piller will have enough game to impress a collection of big-name athletes
from other sports whose second love is golf.
“It’s awesome because all the football and hockey players and basketball players and baseball players I’ve ever met, they’re always so jealous of what I do for a living,” Piller said. “And I’m like, ‘You play baseball for a living! That’s like the coolest thing ever.’
“We’re both kind of envious of each other.”
Piller is among 84 contestants scheduled to tee it up during the 54-hole event benefiting Florida Hospital for Children.
The field features four LPGA players, 28 PGA Champions Tour pros and 52 entertainment and sports celebrities, including Hall of Famers, AllStars and All-Pros.
Piller will be grouped with three-time World Series winning pitcher Jon Lester of the Chicago Cubs and former All-Star pitcher Mark Mulder, the 2017 celebrity winner.
Piller, though, essentially will be playing in a foursome. Piller and her husband, fellow Tour pro Martin Piller, are expecting a son in May.
Piller, though, will not be the first pregnant golfer to compete during a tournament.
Catriona Matthew even won a 2009 event in Brazil while five months pregnant. Laura Diaz, who played in the 2005 Solheim Cup while expecting, is among a group of players to play while well into their pregnancies.
Given her late start to golf, Piller already is a bit of an outlier. Now at age 32, she plans to keep competing in a sport where the top players are getting younger and younger.
Piller has some strong examples to follow, including one close to home.
Nancy Lopez, like Piller, attended Roswell-Goddard High School before embarking on a Hall of Fame career. Lopez won 48 times and bore three children during 17 years on Tour.
As a girl, Piller was familiar with Lopez, but unaware of her true impact until Piller began to golf. Then during a rain delay at a Symentra Tour event in Syracuse, N.Y., Piller’s phone rang. It was Lopez. “I honestly thought my friends were playing a prank on me,” Piller said. “She just wanted to wish me luck and if there was anything she could do to help to give her a call. She’s been nothing but supportive. It’s pretty cool to share that with her and definitely big shoes to her.
“I look up to her in many ways on the golf course and off.”
Piller has since developed into one of the top American players and participated in the 2016 Olympics, yet still seeks her first win on the LPGA Tour.
To date, her careerdefining moment is a dramatic eight-foot putt to win her match and propel the U.S. to a come-frombehind victory at the 2015 Solheim Cup.
“The chance to be in that situation is rare, and to make it is even more rare,” Piller said. “That’s what you practice for.”
This weekend is another rare opportunity Piller will cherish.
The first girl to make the Little League All-Star team in Roswell, Piller — then Gerina Mendoza — was a force on the pitching mound.
Those summer days 20 years ago and the presence of two older brothers made Piller the golfer she is now. This weekend, Piller might be at the top of her game, but she undoubtedly will compete to the end.
“It was really cool to just strike them boys out and send them back to the dugout with their head down,” Piller recalled. “I just loved competing against them. They made me a better pitcher, a better player, a better athlete all together.
“My golf has benefited from that.”