Every Mother’s Day, Patty Ehrhart’s three daughters would get their golf clothes on and tell their mom they wanted to go to the range with her. It was a fun tradition for Patty, a professional golfer from 1989 to 2006 who played on the LPGA Tour in the 1990s, because her girls had all become champion surfers, not golfers. It wasn’t until the youngest, Scarlett Schremmer, was 13 that mother and daughter started playing together in earnest. Within just a few years, Scarlett has become one of the best junior golfers in the country and a member of the U.S. National Junior team.
And mom has been by her side the entire way.
The philosophy Patty implemented in raising her girls was simple—and had nothing to do with trying to produce elite athletes. “I wanted to make sure that they appreciated that they needed to move their bodies, be outside and not sit in front of a TV,” Patty said. “I just wanted to keep them active, that was important to me.”
She took her kids everywhere with her. They spent their Florida days on the beach, in the pool, out on boats. Patty had transitioned easily out of the role of professional athlete into full-time mom. She loved it. Though, she did have a little bit of a wakeup call when her eldest daughter brought home a kindergarten school project where the students had been asked what their parents did.
“Their dad is an ER doctor. He worked hard and was working all the time, so she has him in the project like: ‘He saves lives,’ and it’s this really grand thing. And then it says, ‘My mom goes grocery shopping.’ And I was like what, ‘that’s not all I’m about.’”
Patty, who turns 60 later this year, doesn’t take herself too seriously. She saw the humor in her young daughter’s view of her world, but she also took it as an opportunity to show her girls that her talents extended beyond grocery shopping. She taught them how to compete. She set up little contests amongst the girls and entered them in organized sports.
Patty enrolled Scarlett’s two older sisters, Mason and Lola, in junior golf. Despite her own intense background—she played college golf, competed on mini-tours around the world and was fully exempt for a season on the LPGA Tour in 1998—Patty was unfazed when her girls showed an early and earnest distaste for the game.
“I could tell that I liked it for them, and I didn’t want to be that parent that was like, ‘You have to do this because this is what I did,’” Patty said. “So they did other things.”
They tried tennis and volleyball, neither stuck. The young family had just moved to Hawaii from Florida when the girls were 8, 7, and 2 years old. Surfing was everywhere. Patty signed them up. No one in the family had ever surfed, but the two older girls took to it immediately.
The Schremmers soon met families they connected with and created a strong community around the water.
“I wasn’t a surfer, but it was a new life and the girls loved it. It was such a special time,” Patty said.
After her own career in golf, Patty was genuinely happy to be doing something else. “After I had Scarlett, I didn’t play any golf,” Patty says. “It was so fun just to be mom and not have to worry about playing golf, and then I became a surf mom. We met some really wonderful people and learned a lot about different cultures that I never would have had I not gotten out of golf for a while.”
Like many youngest siblings, Scarlett spent her littlest years following her older siblings around. So she, too, became a surfer. And a pretty great one at that. She owns three national championship titles in the 18-and-under shortboard division.
Scarlett during her surfing days.
As the girls became successful, Patty maintained standards, ensuring her kids were grateful for their opportunities.
“They had to keep up their part of the bargain, with their schoolwork and doing things around the house, being good to each other,” Patty said. “There was a lot of mutual respect, and we enjoyed each other.”
They loved their life as a surfing family. But when one sister became a professional surfer and moved to Australia, and the other went to college, 13-year-old Scarlett suddenly felt lonely in the water.
At the time, the Schremmers were living in Oahu in a golf community, so Scarlett was closer to the game than she had ever been.
“Scarlett was interested in golf, and she liked it. It was lucky,” Patty says.
Patty Ehrhart got her amateur status back in 2014 and was the youngest player in the field at the 2015 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur (USGA/Matt Sullivan).
For Scarlett, golf wasn’t just a new athletic endeavor at a time when she needed one, it was also a way to spend time with her mom. Being the youngest sibling, she didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with her mom. And her parents had split up, which made her, even at a young age, realize the value of the close relationship she had with Patty.
Scarlett learned something about her mom pretty quickly: She was really good at golf. The youngster marveled at her mom’s short-game abilities, feel honed from decades of chipping and putting. Patty had gotten her amateur status back in 2014, and Scarlett caddied for her in events including the U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur.
“It was fun when Scarlett realized I was better at golf than her when she was little,” Patty said. “The first time she out drove me, I still have that memory of the pride on her face. She was so happy for herself, and I was happy for her, too, because of course you want your kids to be better at everything than you’re good at.”
Scarlett remembers the moment, too. Her drive went about 196 yards to her mom’s 194. They took a picture of Scarlett’s ball in the fairway, slightly ahead of Patty’s.
Soon, the roles had reversed, and Patty was the one caddieing for Scarlett. At this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where players often opt for local caddies, Scarlett kept Patty on the bag en route to a T-25 finish in her debut in the championship.
Patty has taken on many roles as Scarlett, now 18, has risen in the junior rankings, currently No. 5 in AJGA rankings and No. 80 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. Pursuing elite junior golf requires a lot of travel, so Scarlett switched to online schooling. Patty became mom, swing coach, caddie when the tournament called for it, and teacher.
Since giving up surfing, Scarlett has become a standout amateur golfer with the help of her mother’s coaching.
Augusta National
They don’t bicker on the golf course. If a tense moment happens, they deal with it after the round. Patty’s level-headedness works well with Scarlett’s dedication and passion. The homeschooling, however, proved more difficult. They soon realized subjects like chemistry, geometry and algebra were better taught by a tutor. Patty jokes she’s glad Scarlett is heading to college next year and will have professors, so she no longer has to think about math.
Of all the lessons Scarlett has learned from her mom, she says the most important is this: “You have to be extremely patient, and you cannot ever give up,” Scarlett says. “Golf seems to be one of those things where you have to practice like it’s the most important thing in the world, and then you have to play like you don’t care that much—at least for me. It’s never like you play bad and then you go work on something and then the next day it’s way better. Improvement is so small. And it can be really frustrating to not be rewarded. She’s really helped me be patient with myself.”
The Schremmers know they’re one of the few mother-daughter teams in elite golf right now. It’s more common to see dads play the role of swing coach, caddie and manager of sorts. But Patty doesn’t believe that will be the status quo for long.
“I think there’ll be a whole lot more golf relationships that are going to be built in the next generation because little girls love golf, and a lot of moms love golf,” Patty said. “Golf has really come a long way already. Being at the ANWA, oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe how many people were there.”
Patty has been there for all of it: Scarlett’s top finishes in AJGA tournaments, appearances in the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the ANWA, her recruitment to Texas A&M where she’ll be a first-year student in the fall of 2025. She’s watched her daughter fall in love with golf. And in the process, she has found a new love for the game, too.
“I think I love golf more now than I loved it when I was trying to make a living at it,” Patty says.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
