‘Be true to yourself.’ Hamilton’s Alena Sharp shares message of love on LPGA.com to celebrate Pride Month

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This article was published 02/06/2021 (1950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although Alena Sharp won’t be teeing it up this week at the U.S. Women’s Open, her voice is most certainly being heard.

Sharp, of Hamilton, penned a personal essay for LPGA.com on the first day of Pride Month about being part of the LGBTQ+ community and encouraging everyone to live their truth.

“Be true to yourself, whatever your sexual orientation,” Sharp wrote. “Life is too short.”

Sharp’s wife, American Sarah Bowman, is also her caddy. They got married in their backyard in November.

The 16-year LPGA veteran told the “Next Round’s on Me” podcast that she and Bowman met while playing hockey in Arizona. With a laugh Sharp said one thing that drove her nuts was that she could never win a faceoff against Bowman.

The pair had a frank discussion after Amy Coney Barrett was elected to the Supreme Court of the U.S. in September, since there were concerns she and the court’s five other conservatives would start stripping gay rights, so they put together a ceremony idea quickly.

They married in their Arizona backyard in front of an intimate group of family. Friends like Brooke and Brittany Henderson watched on a Zoom ceremony.

“People view us now as married people,” Sharp wrote in her LPGA.com essay. “We aren’t the ‘gay couple,’ we’re the couple, just like any other. That’s a big jump from just a few years ago and light years from where society was when I was a kid.”

Sharp alluded to suppressing her feelings growing up Catholic and initially when she went away to college. She came out to her friends in her second year at school (“The sky didn’t fall. My friends remained my friends,” she wrote), but family was a different matter, she admitted.

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She didn’t come out to her family until she was 23. To her surprise, and joy, Sharp said her parents had “known for a while” and loved her no matter what.

Now she wants to spread that message of love.

Sharp has had a solid career on the golf course and lately has been doing much off it as well — she’s on the LPGA’s board and helped chose the organization’s new commissioner on May 25 — but her voice as part of Canada’s LGBTQ athlete community will be a big part of her lasting legacy.

“To try to hide who you are is not a way to live,” Sharp concluded in her essay. “You cannot imagine the weight that is lifted, and the love you will feel, when you open yourself up to your personal truth.”

Adam Stanley is an Ottawa-based contributor to the Star’s Sports section and the host of golf podcast Next Round’s On Me. Follow him on Twitter: @adam_stanley