Steve Stricker has faced down Ryder Cup pressure, major championship heartbreak, and a career resurrection. But there’s one opponent he won’t challenge — his wife.

“So we just go out and try to have friendly games and try to keep it good between the four of us,” Stricker confessed at the PNC Championship. “Nobody works harder than Nicki,” he told reporters. “She works the hardest and is probably the most competitive out of all of us.”

The fiercest competitor in the household isn’t the man who captained the United States to a 19-9 Ryder Cup demolition at Whistling Straits. It isn’t Bobbi Stricker, the Epson Tour professional grinding through Q-school stages. It isn’t Izzi Stricker, the reigning Wisconsin State Golf Association Amateur Player of the Year. It’s Mom, Nicki Stricker. The family vote, he noted, was unanimous: Nicki handles losing the worst.

This competitive fire within the family didn’t emerge from nowhere. It runs through every branch of the family tree.

Steve himself nearly won a major, finishing runner-up at the 1998 PGA Championship. He lost his PGA Tour card, rebuilt from scratch, and climbed back to world No. 2. He dominated the Champions Tour, winning seven senior majors and claiming the Charles Schwab Cup without even playing in the postseason.

Nicki played collegiate golf at Wisconsin, the daughter of longtime Badgers coach Dennis Tiziani.

Bobbi concentrated on tennis through high school as her mother believed she could have played Division I doubles before shifting to golf and twice reaching the second stage of LPGA Q-school. Izzi is tracking toward her own professional career after claiming Wisconsin’s top amateur honor.

When four people in one household have competed at that level, avoiding head-to-head battles isn’t a weakness. It’s survival.

But 2025 tested that arrangement. While Steve managed only four starts due to back surgery, the women of the household carried the competitive torch.

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Nicki Stricker’s summer of golf revealed the hidden shark in the family

Nicki hadn’t competed seriously since the 1992 U.S. Women’s Amateur. Then she looked at Wisconsin’s summer calendar and saw an opportunity. She entered the Wisconsin State Women’s Four-Ball Championship and recruited the only partner she needed — her youngest daughter.

“I told her, ‘I want to do something golf-related and competitive with you. Let’s do the Four-Ball,'” Izzi recalled. “So we ended up winning.”

This wasn’t a case of a talented daughter dragging Mom across the finish line. Nicki made seven birdies in that championship round, including the final three holes. The mother-daughter duo closed like assassins, birdieing 16, 17, and 18 to claim the title.

But the summer wasn’t all triumph. Nicki also entered the Wisconsin State Women’s Amateur — the same tournament her daughter had dominated. The two met on the same course, playing under the same pressure.

Izzi won. Decisively.

“That was the one she won,” Nicki said, glancing at her daughter with a rueful smile. “She kicked my butt.”

That loss explains everything. A former University of Wisconsin golfer who spent decades watching elite competition from inside the ropes, who returned to tournament play in her fifties and immediately started winning — that woman does not enjoy getting beaten by her own child. The “no competing” rule suddenly makes perfect sense.

“I was hitting a lot, not playing a lot,” Nicki explained. “I think just to see how I could do, put myself out there. I hadn’t done it for a while, and just seeing what would happen.”

What happened was a competitive awakening — and a family reckoning.

The Strickers function because they channel their competitiveness outward — against the field, against the course, against their own limitations. At the PNC Championship, Bobbi caddied while Nicki worked Izzi’s bag. They support each other fiercely. They play for each other, not against.

At a tournament built entirely on family competition, the Strickers arrived with a strict policy of avoidance. Golf’s nicest family keeps the peace by keeping the scorecard friendly.

And somewhere in Orlando, the most competitive Stricker of all watched from home — probably already planning her next state championship run.