BANDON, Ore. – Don’t let Brooke Biermann fool you.
Off the golf course, she’s an All-American girl from St. Louis, both affable and benevolent, and to whom conversation comes easy.
But when she enters the arena, she’s downright tenacious.
“The kid is going to give you everything she’s got,” said Brooke’s father, Bill Biermann. “And no matter what, she never quits.”
Not after a right-wrist injury popped up just days before this week’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at Bandon Dunes, the 22-year-old Biermann’s final start before turning pro and entering Q-School.
Not after she trailed for the first 21 holes of her Round-of-32 match against Olivia Duan on Thursday morning.
And certainly not after she found herself 2 down to Texas standout Cindy Hsu with just four holes to play later that afternoon.
So, what did Brooke Biermann do this time? What she often does. She fought her way back by claiming two of the next three holes, and then despite botching a 3-footer to win in regulation, she knocked out Hsu on the first extra hole to advance to Friday’s quarterfinals, where she’ll face incoming Northwestern freshman Arianna Lau of Hong Kong.
“People are always amazed because here you have this sweet, blonde-haired kid who’s so nice, but when she gets on the golf course, the switch flips,” Michigan State head coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll said. “She’s just so tough, and her grit is unmatched.”
Well, nearly.
Brooke will argue that her determination is largely influenced by her younger sister, the strongest person she knows.
Ashleigh Biermann was born with Jacobsen Syndrome, a chromosomal condition so rare that when she arrived two decades ago at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, doctors there had never treated such a patient. Bill Biermann can still picture the distinct, grayish color of his baby girl, who would undergo multiple surgeries, including an open-heart procedure and cardiac catheterization, and spend months in the hospital, only to go home with a feeding tube and to a room outfitted with monitors and wires.
Those diagnosed with Jacobsen Syndrome are missing genetic material in the 11th chromosome, which causes a variety of cognitive and physical issues, and developmental delays, especially with speech and motor skills.
And yet, Ashleigh, now 20, has never let her limitations affect her resoluteness. She’ll likely never be able to drive, but she can bike, swim and walks about five miles a day.
“She’s just so relentless,” said Bill, who points to the time when Ashleigh, while still in school, began working at a hospital through Special School District of St. Louis.
“She had this job wrapping sandwiches, and don’t ask me why, but they timed the kids, and she’s sitting there on the first day, and she’s stressing,” Bill recalled. “But what does she do? She comes home and tells us, ‘You need to buy me some bags so I can practice.’”
Adds Brooke: “To see her determination and her mentality when she’s told, You can’t do that, or you can’t play this – I try to take that and run with it as much as I can out on the golf course. Being able to walk with her and see her, it’s like, you know what, I’m fortunate enough to have a healthy body and able to compete at the highest amateur level, and what a blessing that I’m able to do this.”
Brooke wasn’t even 3 years old when she first visited Ashleigh in the hospital, and she’s since accompanied her little sister to over a hundred doctor’s appointments. Ashleigh’s devoted defender, Brooke once confronted a bully who was teasing Ashleigh at their school; with her right fist buried in his chest, Brooke threatened the bully with a few words that are not suitable for print.
Once Brooke left for college in East Lansing, Ashleigh would call or FaceTime her big sister “probably 15 times a day,” Bill estimates. “And Brooke, so graciously, never complained.” For Ashleigh’s most recent birthday, Brooke surprised her with tickets to a Jason Aldean concert. Even Brooke’s boyfriend, Drew Barclay, who played college golf at D-II Maryville in St. Louis, will buy Ashleigh gifts and take her on dates when Brooke is out of town.
“Ashleigh couldn’t have gotten a better sister,” Bill said.
And vis versa.
Ever since a partial jaw removal in middle school pushed Brooke away from contact sports and toward golf, Ashleigh has been enamored by her sister’s game. She’ll spend hours on the range watching Brooke beat balls, and she rarely misses a tournament. When Ashleigh’s new job as a teacher’s aide at her church’s preschool kept her from attending last month’s Western Amateur, where Brooke reached the semifinals, several competitors were asking Brooke where her sister was. And for four years, as Brooke garnered trophies and All-America honors, Stoll and the rest of the Michigan State players considered Ashleigh a part of the team, so much so that when the squad posed for photos after advancing through the NCAA Norman Regional last spring, Ashleigh was invited into the frame.
“She’s my No. 1 fan,” Brooke said. “She leans hard on me, and I lean hard on her, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
Ashleigh usually travels with a small stool – though that didn’t make the flight to Oregon – and a backpack stocked full of snacks, raingear, towels, her lucky Sparty ball marker, anything she might need – and some stuff she probably doesn’t need, her family jokes. Her bag on Thursday had to have weighed nearly 20 pounds, but Ashleigh didn’t care. Also donning a green Michigan State hat, she walked all 41 holes on Thursday while providing constant encouragement with her favorite cheer, “Kick butt, Brooke!”
“It makes me smile,” Ashleigh said of Brooke’s golf.
Bill beams, too, when talking about this moment. Not only are both of his daughters enjoying the times of their lives, one competing in and the other witnessing the nation’s premier women’s amateur championship, but Bill is on the bag – and on a piece of property that his late father, also named Bill, called the “most beautiful place I’ve ever been,” after visiting the coastal David McLay Kidd design just months before his death 13 years ago.
Brooke’s relationship with this game can be traced to the elder Bill, a golf nut who prior to passing gifted a 9-year-old Brooke a dozen yellow golf balls, which she calls, “Goldies.” It was with one of those goldies that Brooke, playing in maybe her third tournament since her grandfather died, recorded a hole-in-one at Yorktown Golf Course, a par-3 layout across the river in Shilo, Illinois.
“That was a sign,” Brooke said. “And that’s why to this day I always play a yellow ball. I know it’s unique, and a lot of girls, when they ask what I’m playing, I’ll go, ‘Yellow Titleist 1’, and they’re like, ‘Okay…’ But I always want to have my grandpa with me.”
He was surely with her as she placed the goldie back in front of her mark on the 18th green, seemingly poised to complete her comeback right there and then. But Hsu had rolled her birdie try first, and her ball came to rest in Brooke’s line. In hindsight, Brooke says, she should’ve conceded the putt, but instead, she found herself adjusting her stance around Hsu’s coin – and the slight change likely influenced the shocking push that never touched the hole.
Brooke realized it soon after contact, rising early and immediately placing her hand over her face as the crowd gasped.
Ashleigh, however, showed no reaction. Perhaps she knew how her sister would respond. She’d already witnessed Brooke drain a clutch par save at the par-3 15th to claw back to 1 down, and then nearly hole her pitch at the par-4 16th, her ball hanging on the lip before eventually time ran out.
Bill was surely confident, telling his daughter on the first tee box, “Brooke, you got it.”
When Hsu’s par putt from 10 feet lipped out hard, Brooke Biermann’s marathon day had reached its conclusion. After entering the championship as the world No. 112, she’s now just three wins away from etching her name onto the Robert Cox Trophy, one of the most beautiful trophies in sport – and at the “most beautiful place.”
For as competitive as she is, Biermann couldn’t help but get sentimental: “No matter what happens I’m going to be happy. … That’s what I’ll probably tonight think about most, how grateful I am to be here.”
And to have an inspiration like Ashleigh.
