You may have heard this one: Two golfers step to the tee as a funeral procession passes along the road. The first player doffs his cap and bows his head. “That was so respectful of you,” says his friend, admiringly. The first player puts his hat back on and says, “Well, it’s only right. I was married to her for 35 years.”
That used to be funny. Then Covid showed up and women embraced the game in record numbers. Now there’s a one in four chance that someone in your group won’t laugh at the old stereotype of a man out golfing and the heck with his wife and kids.
Kristine Frankin and Suzy Leprino might laugh, but only to be polite. Kristine met her husband, Brent Franklin, in Tokyo in 1992, when both played on the Japanese pro tours. Now golf is part of the family fiber in the Franklin household, where Kristine wins CGA championships with Brent on the bag.
Suzy Leprino and Gary Albrecht met later in life, but now “couples golf” is such a thing for them that they’ve adopted “Baker’s Dozen,” a game that pits them against each other in boys vs. girls matches but sends them home together happy.
Kristine and Brent Franklin rarely play golf together. When they do, it might be as a team in the annual couples’ championship at The Ranch or for a casual twilight nine with their sons, Jaxon, 25, and Walker, 23. Over almost 30 years of marriage, life has frequently gotten in the way of golf.
But it’s safe to say there wouldn’t be marriage without golf. After storied junior and college careers, Brent winning numerous accolades in Canada and then at Brigham Young and Kris in Colorado and then at the University of Arizona, both golfers took their games to the Japanese pro tours.
On Sunday nights, after the pro tournaments wrapped up, international players from Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada would decompress in Tokyo over ribs at Tony Roma’s or burgers at the Hard Rock Café. Brent and Kristine got to chatting, and next thing you know, Brent was caddying for his new lady friend in a Japanese LPGA tournament.
“I wasn’t an idiot,” Brent jokes. He had, however, won three straight Canadian Men’s Amateur Championships before turning pro and winning the Canadian PGA Championship in 1988.
“It was a major hoohaw with the Japanese because Brent was, I think, fifth on the money list over there and now he’s caddying for a woman,” Kristine remembers, laughing. “And I hadn’t really done anything over there. We were playing with Ayako Okamoto and maybe (Hiromi) Kobayashi, big names, and their introductions went on and on about all their accolades, so I thought, well, they’ll find something to say about me. And they introduced Brent and went on about him! And I had nothing. It was so funny. He was the rock star.”
Kristine didn’t win that day, but the two of them made some magazine covers and Brent says, “That was the beginning of my caddie magic.” He says he remembers many shots from that day, but the pair cannot remember the first time they played 18 together. “I think it was with Brent’s parents when we went to Hawaii for one of his tournaments,” she says.
They married in July 1995. And shortly after that, their golf pro careers ended. They eventually took jobs at CU – Brent as associate women’s golf coach and Kristine as director of operations for men’s basketball – and settled in Colorado to start their family.
Brent says he lost his desire to compete, in part because of the toll on his body after a car hit him while he was jogging in 1990; even though he is now retired and maintains a plus-4.5 handicap with the CGA, he’d rather support his wife’s competitive efforts. She (plus-0.5) does indeed, after an absence from tournament play for nearly 20 years, love to compete, and Brent is right there where he was in the beginning, on her bag. Most recently, in 2024, Kristine was named Senior Player of the Year by the CGA for the fifth time since her return to the game.
“When she wants to play in tournaments, it’s kind of like our little vacation away where we can spend the week together,” Brent says. “And she still enjoys the competition, and we enjoy our little roles trying to help each other be successful. The satisfaction I get is just because I know how much it means to her to compete. If I feel like I had just a tiny, tiny part in that, that’s the proud moment for me.”
Gary Albrecht and Suzy Leprino met on a golf course back in the 1990s, but their lives took different turns until another round, about 30 years later, at CommonGround.
Suzy’s pal Janene Guzowski, then president of the CGA, put together three foursomes at the CGA’s home course and invited the two of them, now in their 60s. Serendipitously, she put Suzy, now a widow, in Gary’s foursome, and they’ve since been teeing off all over the place.
Albrecht remembers one of their early rounds in particular. Leprino told him she loves rocks, so they went and played Fossil Trace, which has an informational fossil exhibit right in the middle of the course.
“We realized we had a lot in common and enjoyed playing golf a lot,” says Leprino, who has a 7.3 index and memberships at both the Vintage Club in California and Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado. “So we sort of did that for that summer, and really enjoyed the experience.”
Albrecht, whose recent index is 0.5, is a former CGA president and winner of many titles, most recently the Denver Senior Men’s Amateur. Leprino, who taught golf for about seven years after competing on one of the early women’s golf teams at Rickie Fowler’s Oklahoma State, didn’t much like that he was regularly winning their matches.
“I guess it made me want to work on my game and get better,” she says. “I still don’t beat him often, but it’s fun to be more competitive.”
Says Albrecht: “We have played golf for about the same length of time, which is over 55 years. And she has a wonderful golf swing. I thought it would rub off on me just from being close to her, but it hasn’t. (He laughs.) I’ve had to deal with my own swing issues. But she loves to be active, and we play pickleball, work out with a trainer and try to stay as fit as we can. We both love to experience new golf courses.”
Their adventures have included a four-couple jaunt to Arizona in the fall and a 10-day, nine-round excursion to Melbourne and then New Zealand during the Christmas holidays. This summer the four couples have booked London, including a Zach Bryan concert and golf on the finest courses.
Chances are, they’ll be playing a lot of Baker’s Dozen, a version of match play that the pair says is less cutthroat than traditional match play and friendlier for couples. The two teams pop the card with strokes based on the lowest handicap, and, as in traditional match play, count the lowest score on each hole. The twist: Only 13 scores count in the game, and the teams must decide as they go whether to count a score or not. (Scoring is kept to par, to equalize the values of par-3s, 4s and 5s.)
They play boys vs. girls, which frees couples from having to negotiate whether to use a given score and, points out Leprino, “It’s always good to avoid conflict.”
But both of them start laughing describing how testy things get when someone wants a gimme. They agree that Leprino is more generous, but even she says, “When it really counts, when it really comes down to it, you’re going to putt it.”