At age 47, Dawn Coe-Jones isn’t inclined to do the math that would determine how old she will be when the current crop of teens and 20-somethings play their 25th years on the LPGA Tour. “I challenge any of them,” says Coe-Jones, who played her final tour event in Canada at Ottawa Hunt in August at the CN Canadian Women’s Open. “I say, ‘If you’re out there in 25 years, I’ll come and shake your hand.’ They’re like, ‘There’s no way I could last that long,’ and I say, ‘Ah, you don’t know that for sure. I thought I would be five years and done.'”
It turns out her career went a little longer than five years. A quarter century after breaking on to the tour in 1984, Coe-Jones is wrapping up a career that included wins at the 1992 Women’s Kemper Open, 1994 Healthsouth Palm Beach Classic and 1995 Chrysler-Plymouth Tournament of Champions. Those are the wins that count on her tour resume, but she also won the unofficial 1992 Pizza-La LPGA Matchplay Championship. Whether you want to count that one or not is up to you, but the fact is that Coe-Jones’ record is good enough to have landed her in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.
Her arrival after winning the 1983 Canadian Amateur Championship and all-American status at Lamar University that year was part of a second wave of Canadians on tour after trailblazers Sandra Post and Jocelyne Bourassa, both close friends of Coe-Jones. That wave continued throughout the ’80s and included Canadians such as Gail Graham, Nancy Harvey, Jennifer Wyatt, Barb Bunkowsky and Lisa Walters, who was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame last month. “In ’84, my locker was next to (JoAnne) Carner’s. She was two or three down from me, so I did get to play with the Carners, (Nancy) Lopez, Donna Caponi, Judy Rankin a little bit – just big, big names like Annika (Sorenstam). I’ve played with a lot of pretty awesome, awesome golfers,” says Coe-Jones.
Coe-Jones is the last from that second group of Canadians who hit the tour in the ’80s to retire and she credits the very youngsters she kids about their expected longevity for raising the bar with their talents. “Competition’s so strong,” she says. “I can hit the ball as well as the rest of them. It’s a putting thing — that’s something I’ve struggled with and I’m hot and cold. Before, when cuts were four and five over par, you could get away with having a cold day and still make it. You can’t do that anymore.”
Coe-Jones didn’t get too many chances to sample that competition in her final year. Unlike Sorenstam, who is also playing her last full-time year, Coe-Jones didn’t get a chance to play until the end of May when she took part in the Ginn Tribute Hosted by Annika tournament in Charleston, S.C.
It was her first competition of the year after breaking her foot and suffering a high ankle sprain at the beginning of February. “I ran across the street at night and came down on a small stick and just rolled my foot,” she says. “They initially said four to six (weeks) and then, (the doctor) said six to eight and I got tears in my eyes and on week 16, I was so mad, I couldn’t even see straight. It was very disappointing. It put me out mentally too, more than anything. I knew I wasn’t ready in South Carolina. I pretty much got what I expected – a lot of rust,” said Coe-Jones, who shot an 83 and a 79 to miss the cut.
After a family vacation in B.C., her next competitive start was last month’s Canadian Women’s Open, where she missed the cut in a tournament that provided so many highlights for her over the years. In her last competitive start in her home and native land, this year’s Women’s Open was extra special with the induction of her pal Walters into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame held that week at Ottawa Hunt. The only time Coe-Jones missed a Canadian LPGA Tour event was in 1995, the year her son Jimmy was born.
In 23 appearances, she has seven top 10s and some fine memories.
“Even though I didn’t win in Canada, I had a lot of really good finishes. Those were a blast. Those were fun,” she said. “To be in the hunt in Canada, I look back and think about those and the shots that I hit in Canada and it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ “I still made the best shot ever in the whole, wide world to make eagle at 18 at Glen Abbey to miss the cut by one. I’m like, `Hey, that’s a memory for me.'”
Coe-Jones takes those memories into a future that hasn’t been completely planned out just yet and that’s fine by her. “What am I going to do now? I don’t know and I don’t feel pressure to have to make that decision,” said Coe-Jones.
Family is a priority. With Coe-Jones on tour and her husband Jimmy Jones an executive with several golf companies, including Lady Fairway shoes, over the years, they’ve devoted a lot of time to golf.
An avid Montreal Canadiens fan, Coe-Jones looks forward to time at the rink as hockey mom to Jimmy Jr. The rink perhaps might have potential for her second career, she adds.
“I do really want to learn how to drive a Zamboni,” says Coe-Jones, who can call on her British Columbia roots for training. “That may happen. I have connections in Lake Cowichan. I could probably get taught how to drive it.”
