Twenty-five years ago, Julie Waldo, a rookie on the LPGA Tour, was making her way in the world of golf. Today, her young niece is making a similar journey, one that is taking her to the finals of the Drive, Chip and Putt at Augusta National Golf Club.
Julie, 9, grew up hearing stories about her aunt, a naturally gifted golfer, whose swing not even renowned golf instructor Bob Toski would touch. Golf is the glue that has held the Waldo family together through the toughest of circumstances. Stuart, Julie’s father, passed down his love of the game to his daughter. It was the same love he shared with his sister, Julie, who was killed after playing a single season on the LPGA Tour.
“My folks never totally got over it, losing a child like that,” Stuart said.
He never got over it, either.
But Stuart found a way to honor his sister’s memory. Kerri and Stuart Waldo named their daughter, the youngest of the family’s four children, after Julie. And from day one, they’ve made golf a part of little Julie’s life. From dragging plastic clubs around their backyard, to meeting Lexi Thompson at the age of three, everything in little Julie’s life has led to this moment.
On Sunday, Julie will compete in the finals of the Drive, Chip and Putt at Augusta National Golf Club. Her father will be her chaperone and caddie. Stuart has done his homework, studying video of Adam Scott’s 15-footer on the 18th green to win the 2013 Masters. It’s the same putt Julie will try to make on Sunday.
For Stuart, and the entire Waldo family, it will be impossible not to think of Aunt Julie. Stuart caddied for his sister during the one season she played on the LPGA Tour in 1983. She died the following year.
“There’s no telling what she could have done,” said Stuart’s wife, Kerri.
Little Julie will have her father by her side, not just to read putts, but more importantly, for emotional support. It was a role Stuart played for his sister, too. When he looks at his daughter, he can see his sister. Aunt Julie was a perfectionist, and a drive to be the best, constantly made her feel nervous. Although her father, Whitson, was thousands of miles away, she could still feel him pushing her to do her best. He was a former military officer who took command of the family’s activities and introduced all of his children to the game of golf.
“Dad was in the Air Force and liked to direct things,” Stuart said. “Guess I got that a little bit from him.”
Julie carried the pressure of performing for her sponsors and worried about making enough money to finance a life on Tour. But whatever she was feeling inside, she hid it well. To those around her, she always appeared happy. Her brother knew her well enough to know the signs when something was wrong.
“When things got a little tough on the golf course, out the cigarettes would come,” Stuart said about his sister.
Little Julie is a perfectionist, too. Especially with her golf. When she gets nervous, she gets nauseous. Like her aunt, she too, has a well-intentioned father who wants her to do her best.
“Dad forgets she’s nine-years-old. He treats her like she’s 19,” said Kerri. “She’s just a kid, I told him. Simmer down. But he gets so excited because she’s so good.”
Kerri has spent a lot of time working with her daughter on learning to manage the mental side of her golf game. The hard work paid off at the Drive, Chip and Putt qualifier. During the chipping portion of the competition, Julie chunked her first shot and came up short of the green. The Julie of old would have lost her cool, started crying or got overheated. But this time, Julie stopped. She put her club down, wiped off her hands and took a deep breath. She followed with two great chips.
“To stop, get back in control of the fear and anxiety, that’s hard for anyone, much less a kid,” Kerri said.
Julie advanced through Local and Subregional qualifying and punched her ticket to Augusta at her home course, The Honors Course, at Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Prattville, Alabama.
“I absolutely broke down and cried,” Stuart said when Julie qualified for the finals. “I couldn’t contain myself. Even now, I’m getting choked up talking about it.”
Between 2007 and 2016, Prattville hosted an LPGA Tour event where little Julie attended junior clinics put on by the Tour’s players. They had no advice for her other than to keep doing what she was doing. Like her aunt, Julie has a natural ability. While the Tour was in town, Stuart often caddied for players in the field. He did it for free. He just wanted, for a few days, to experience the feeling of being inside the ropes again on the LPGA Tour.
Growing up, Stuart and his sister rarely traveled outside the Southeast. Their family lived in Florida, first in Miami and then in Gainesville. Julie earned a scholarship to play for the Lady Gators at the nearby University of Florida and got her Tour card at the LPGA Qualifying Tournament in Sarasota in 1982. When Julie was in school, she wanted to be on the golf course. And when she was on the course, she knew she needed to be studying. She jumped at the opportunity to make golf her entire focus.
But Julie struggled on Tour. She made changes to her swing and had trouble working through the adjustments while also traveling. Stuart became her caddie mid-way through the season in 1983. They’d often travel in tandem with other members of the Tour. A free spirit, Julie, behind the wheel of their old, white 1970s Malibu, would suddenly floor it past the other cars and snap a picture as she drove by. They put more than 20,000 miles on the car that season, but Julie was too frugal to put any money into maintenance. The old Malibu would often rattle and make odd noises. Julie forgot to put oil in it.
“It wasn’t that good, but it got us around,” Stuart joked. “Never left us on the side of the road.”
The pair drove from Illinois to Washington to California. They saw the fallout from Mount St. Helens right after it blew in 1980. And they’d often drive at night. Stuart remembers driving in the pitch dark across the prairies of California. The sky was full of stars. The world seemed so full of promise for them both.
“That was his best friend,” Kerri said about her husband. “They were very close after going on a Tour all over the country in an old car and financing their own way. They got really, really close.”
A year on the road took its toll on the 23-year-old, who was lonely and wanted to go home. Julie was often on the phone, she would call her mother or her boyfriend, Max Alderman, back in Gainesville. The pair had been living together for nearly five years, unbeknownst to her parents, and were planning to marry by the next year. They met at New Year’s Eve party when Julie was a senior at Gainesville High School. When the season ended, she planned to return home to Max and resume her studies at the University of Florida.
In October of 1983, Stuart caddied for his sister in in the final event of the season, The San Jose Classic, held at Torrey Pines, where she made her second cut of the year. They capped off their trip by visiting the nearby PING factory, where Julie was personally fitted by Karsten Solheim, the company’s founder and namesake of the LPGA’s bi-annual Solheim Cup between teams from the United States and Europe.
“’This club is closed or something,’” Stuart recalls his sister saying to Solheim. “He goes and looks at it and says, ‘It’s not closed. You need to practice more.’”
But she didn’t want to practice anymore. At least not for now.
She told her fellow pros if she couldn’t make a decent living on the Tour, there was no point in playing at all. She hadn’t made a cent in 1983. But Julie still had dreams of one day returning to the Tour, with Max as her full-time caddie. He caddied for her once on Tour at the Arden Classic in Miami.
Julie lived with Max in a small one story, white house at 4211 SW 50th Street, on a dirt road near the intersection of Archer Road and I-75 in Gainesville. Max was an auto mechanic who had recently sold a Volkswagen to a customer by the name of Bryant Wayne Sartore.
On January 26, 1984, Sartore came to their home with a complaint for Max, but Julie was the only one home at the time and suffered the brunt of Sartore’s anger. Max found Julie a short time later in what was described as a grim scene. Julie was lying in a pool of blood after being repeatedly struck in the head. An axe and a wedge cutter, both covered in blood, were found in the home.
Two hours later, Sartore was arrested. Later that summer, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Because Sartore turned himself into police and took a plea deal in order to avoid the death penalty, he is eligible for parole. In 2008, he came before the Parole Commission in Tallahassee. The entire Waldo family provided statements to prevent his release. Julie’s father, Whitson, included in his will that the family would need to testify at all parole hearings in order to receive their inheritance. The Waldo family’s testimony, along with aggravating factors due to Sartore’s misconduct in prison, led the Commission to change his parole release date to September 9, 2937.
“It’s the huge family tragedy. It’s stuck with every member,” said Kerri.
Stuart spoke at the hearing, but the memory of losing his best friend is too painful for him to talk about in detail. On the phone, he immediately opened up about honoring his sister by naming his daughter Julie. He laughed as he shared stories about their time together on Tour. But beyond discussing his parents’ reaction to her passing, Stuart avoided any discussion of his sister’s death. Kerri says her husband has tried to emotionally block it out in order to go on with his life.
“He’s super emotional,” said Kerri.
The family used to receive notifications by phone every time Sartore was moved or transferred. They’d also get notices in the mail. It was like opening a wound every time. The family had the alerts turned off.
“It just kept coming back,” Kerri said. “We’re just trying to move forward.”
Little Julie knows that her aunt’s life ended suddenly, but she doesn’t know the details. What she does know are the stories her father shares with her about the loving, nurturing aunt she’s grown to be like.
“I feel honored because I have the name of a really amazing golfer,” Julie said by phone.
Julie practiced nearly every day with her father to prepare for the Drive Chip and Putt finals. Ahead of her trip, she filled out a questionnaire for the competition’s website. One of the questions asked who would be in her dream foursome. She listed 4-time major champion Rory McIlroy, 9-time LPGA winner Lexi Thompson and her aunt.
“I wish I could have known her and learned from her,” Julie said.
Sunday, the Waldo family will write a new chapter in their golf journey. Those memories will forever include Aunt Julie, whose potential in the game she never had a chance to fully realize. But her spirit lives on in her niece, whose success in the same game her aunt loved, has helped the family continue moving forward.
There’s another Julie Waldo making her name in golf.
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