For nearly 30 years, each has found comfort in the other’s friendly face. It’s just that now, that happens annually when Julia Potter-Bobb and Jen Hong meet at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida. As kids, it was daily on the range at their home course of Knollwood Country Club in Granger, Indiana.
“There weren’t a lot of us out there, so to have someone who was my age – playing golf, a female out on the range – just encouraged me to keep coming back,” Potter-Bobb said of her relationship with Hong. “I feel really lucky that I had that experience, because not everybody our age really did.”
It’s true that in the late 1990s, when Hong, now 37, and Potter-Bobb, now 36, were growing up, few other girls were learning the game. But now, as women’s golf experiences extreme growth not only on the course but in the industry, the two women demonstrate the limitless options that exist for staying involved in the game.
Potter-Bobb, winner of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in 2013 and 2016, is a well-known name in competitive amateur golf. She won the Indiana Women’s Match Play and the LNGA Mid-Amateur this summer and this week advanced to the quarterfinals of match play at the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in West Newton, Massachusetts.
Though Potter-Bobb is the poster child for mid-am competition now, Hong was the standard for junior golf excellence then. If Hong were teeing it up at whatever junior tournament Potter-Bobb happened to be playing, Potter-Bobb knew it “meant for me that I was not going to win that tournament.” She jokes that those memories of being some of the only girls at Knollwood also included a lot of reprimands for bothering the hard-working and focused Hong.
At Penn High School in nearby Mishawaka, Potter-Bobb played on three state-championship teams. Had Hong also played, Potter-Bobb is sure that number would have been higher. Instead, Hong moved to Florida in middle school to take advantage of more golf resources there.
Hong honed her game with myriad instructors in the Orlando area and played a national junior schedule, but she still would return to Indiana in the summers for one-off Midwest junior events such as the Pepsi Little People’s Championship in Quincy, Illinois, and the Hudson Junior Invitational in Hudson, Ohio.
The girls fell out of touch as they went through the college recruiting process separately, with Hong landing at Northwestern and Potter-Bobb playing for the University of Missouri.
When Hong graduated in 2009, she began a five-season stretch on the LPGA’s developmental tour. Potter-Bobb played for just one year, in 2010. Both have since regained their amateur status.
“It wasn’t until after college and then on Symetra [now the Epson Tour], I saw Julia at an event and I was like, Oh, my God. You’re so good. This is incredible! I hadn’t seen her in so long,” Hong said.
Potter-Bobb was always aware, she said, of Hong’s progress. It was natural for her to keep track of her friend because she had been a barometer for success when they had competed as kids. Despite their close age, Hong has always been a role model for Potter-Bobb.
“It’s weird to say looking up to someone who was just a year older, but the things she was accomplishing, I was always fully aware of. It was inspirational knowing that someone from the same area that I grew up in was doing what she was doing; I, too, could do that,” Potter-Bobb said. “While communication was not as high during those times [in college and immediately after], I was still well aware of how she was doing.”
Hong had an epiphany four events into the 2014 Symetra Tour season. Suddenly she knew this path wasn’t right for her. It remains the last competitive round she played, and she vowed never to sign a scorecard again.
With that chapter closed, she returned to south Florida, where she had been living and practicing, and followed a lead from a friend that turned into an internship for Ernie Els’ foundation, Els for Autism. Initially she helped with tournament setup, but once hired full-time, she co-created and piloted a golf program for kids and adults with autism and related disabilities.
“That was probably the best piece of my golf life was doing that job,” she said.
Hong, now based in Hobe Sound, Florida, transitioned to fundraising and events for the Els foundation before finding her current job as Maui Jim’s U.S. sales director for golf and tennis.
Potter-Bobb’s impact on Hong was through attitude. Hong experienced the game intensely – often with her head down, grinding – and ultimately, it became unenjoyable for her. She admired that Potter-Bobb always found a way to make it fun, even when practicing.
“That was something I wish that I had more of that,” Hong said, “and maybe if I did, I would still play and maybe I would sign up for a tournament.”
That attitude of enjoyment was perhaps in part what led Potter-Bobb to retire from the LPGA developmental tour with a midseason epiphany of her own. While trying to decide whether to go for a par-5 in two, she felt two distinct pulls: the amateur telling her to go for it and the pro knowing it could cost her cash.
“I don’t like looking at the game this way, so I bowed out a little bit after that,” she said.
“There’s all this other stuff you can do to keep golf in your life. Use everything you did to this point to really set yourself apart.” — Jen Hong
Potter-Bobb always assumed if she wasn’t playing, she wouldn’t want to be working in golf. A USGA Boatwright Internship with the Missouri Golf Association, however, showed her how fulfilling golf administration could be. By 2014, she found her way home to the Indiana Golf Association, where she currently works as the director of business operations and member services. She competes in amateur events regularly, and perhaps someday she’ll even persuade Hong to compete alongside her. Both know, however, that Hong doesn’t need that for her golf life to feel complete.
As a player, Hong had always thought the only path to a life in golf was the LPGA, so upon retiring, there was the sinking feeling of, Oh, I did all this for nothing. It was only at that point that a world of career opportunities materialized before her.
She and Potter-Bobb are a study in life after pro golf, whether choosing to continue signing scorecards or not. Hong thinks that should be shouted from the rooftops to junior and college golfers.
“There’s all this other stuff you can do to keep golf in your life,” Hong said. “Use everything you did to this point to really set yourself apart.”