Juli Ogilvy reveals her alcoholism battle and journey to sobriety
To outsiders, Australian golfer Geoff Ogilvy and his wife, Juli, appear to be the perfect couple. But she has now revealed a secret spiral that saw her drinking a bottle of vodka every night.
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Juli Ogilvy’s last alcoholic drink was at about 11.45pm on April 30, 2017. It’s been 951 days.
The wife of Australian golfer Geoff Ogilvy has bravely chosen to speak out about her battle with alcoholism on the eve of the Presidents Cup, where her major-winning husband will serve as captain’s assistant for the International Team at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, across the road from their new bayside home.
Juli, 43, admits there are still days where she is “hanging by a thread”, and that she will never even be able to have a sip of alcohol, knowing that it could spark a spiral that could derail almost three years of sobriety.
But she said the “hell” she had been living had seen alcohol control her, sparked by what she describes as losing her identity while Geoff travelled the globe as one of Australia’s top golf stars.
Juli recalls drinking a handle of vodka (1.75 litres) over two nights — the equivalent of more than one standard bottle of vodka every evening.
“Looking back, I think it started … we had three children in four years,” she said.
“We had them very fast, and we planned it that way. It’s what we wanted, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
“But it was chaos. It was hard work for a long time. And after our third child Harvey was born, I started staying home full time.
“I had travelled with Geoff for 10 years – everywhere. We went everywhere together. And all of a sudden I found myself at home with three small children, him still living that life that we had lived together.”
HOW DRINKING PROBLEM EVOLVED
The “outgoing party girl” to her friends, her drinking problem was an evolution, starting with sauvignon blanc – mostly from New Zealand – before she started to gain weight, eventually searching for a low-carb option, which she found in vodka.
While she never hid bottles at home, consumption was easy to hide for the woman who “didn’t know who I was anymore”, bottles sometimes filled with water to cover up the night before from Geoff or the family’s nanny.
“I lost my identity,” Juli said. “I was his wife or their mum, but I lost sight of myself completely.
“That’s when I started drinking more. That’s when alcohol started becoming a daily thing for me. Then, gradually, it just grew, and grew, and grew. And the last three years before I got sober were pretty rough.”
It is an issue Juli believes “is not talked about enough” – alcoholism in women under the age of 50 who are often drinking behind the closed doors of their home.
She conceded that things had been difficult, especially for Geoff, and that she had struggled to recognise that she had a problem as he travelled, playing across the globe.
American Juli – then Juli Justice – met Ogilvy more than 20 years ago, having met Australian golfer Craig Spence who in turn introduced her to his mate.
The rest is history: the pair married in 2004 and has been together for 20 years.
But while losing her own identity had contributed to her spiral, long-held pain after the loss of her father – Jasper Kenn Justice, known as Kenn to his family and friends – when she was 15 had resurfaced.
This week marked 28 years since Kenn’s passing, which Juli concedes she thought she had dealt with before she was consumed by alcoholism.
She had not.
“I think it was kind of a perfect storm in a way for me – not only that story of losing my identity but also things from my past, things from my childhood … losing my dad when I was 15 years old and for most of my life thinking that I had dealt with all of this properly,” she said.
“And I hadn’t. So I used alcohol to numb everything that I was feeling. I didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t want to feel good. I didn’t want to feel bad. I just didn’t want to feel anything. So the alcohol numbed me and let me push everything further and further down.”
The tipping point came after countless hangovers and promises to never repeat her actions.
There was anxiety about how much she had consumed, then shame.
Then her perceived remedy would be “hair of the dog”.
“I would think … ‘I’ll have a shot of vodka and it will make me feel better’,” she said.
“It would for a while, and then that next night I would just go right back into it. It just got out of control. I just let it control everything.”
‘EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER’ ON TOUR
Geoff, now 42, had won the US Open – a PGA Tour major – in 2006 and reached a top ranking of world No. 3.
But as Juli spiralled – largely without his knowledge – his game was struggling too.
Ogilvy didn’t win a tournament for more than four years before a victory in 2014 broke the drought – at the height of Juli’s addiction.
“As good as the life is of a tour player family and the whole set-up, it’s an emotional rollercoaster,” the golfer said.
“Anyone who plays golf knows that just on the basic level, you’re up and down on every hole sometimes. That’s how your tour life is – you have good weeks and you have bad weeks and you have good months and you have bad months and you’re flying when you’re flying and you’re not when you’re not.
“So it was a weird period, because as Jules said, we’d been together for 10 years pretty much everyday. Travelled, and for the first few years with the kids, they were there every week. And then when they started staying home, it took a while for me … to recognise what was going on – that Jules was having a hard time.”
It was a struggle, he admits, and he did his best to be the best support he could be and, when home, create the least stressful environment that he could in what was uncharted territory for both.
“Anybody who gets into this situation either from Jules’ side or my side, it’s probably the first time they’ve been in it,” he said.
“You’re kind of doing your best along the way. Just trying to create a good environment and be a great dad when I was at home. I tried my best.”
JOURNEY TO SOBRIETY
Juli knows she is lucky.
She and her therapist landed on May 1, 2017 as her day to get sober.
She hasn’t had a drink since, despite taking it right to the wire.
“I actually have a picture of it on my phone,” she said of her last moments as a drinker.
“My last drink was, I think, about 11.45pm on the night of April 30, 2017. I have a picture of the clock when I was crawling into bed and I think it says 11.58pm.
“So I stuck with not drinking after midnight. Because I knew May 1st was my day – it was the day that my therapist and I had chosen for my day to get sober. So that was it.”
She describes her therapist – who never even suggested rehabilitation for the young mother – as her “guide” and “angel”.
While Geoff admits it has been a “rocky road” at times, he said “it’s been getting better every day for two and a half years”.
He calls it an “unbelievable achievement”.
Juli said she would never fully recover.
“I will want a drink, I think, for the rest of my life,” she said.
“It’s the first thing that pops into my head when something’s chaotic, or I’m down, or I’m sad, or if I’m happy.
“A lot of people think that alcoholics just want to drink when they’re down and sad, but celebrations around the world involve alcohol. I don’t get to do that anymore. And that’s OK, and it’s better for me not to do that. Because I know that if I had even one sip, that I wouldn’t stop.
“I know that having even a drink later on in life – you never say never – to celebrate our children’s wedding or anything like that, I can’t do that. And that’s OK. But it’s been hell. There are days that I’m hanging on by a thread. There are moments that I’m hanging on by a thread. And then there’s beautiful days.”
The Ogilvy family – Geoff, Juli, Phoebe, Jasper and Harvey – have moved back to Melbourne and live across the road from one of the holes of the famous course.
Her revelation – revealed only to family before she chose to share her story with the PGA Tour’s Presidents Cup charitable giving program – comes as Melbourne prepares for the teams event, led by Tiger Woods and Ernie Els, Ogilvy’s team captain, to descend.
With it will come millions of dollars of charity donations thanks to player-allocated funds in lieu of payments and prizemoney.
Part of Ogilvy’s share will go to The Alfred Foundation, where Juli sits on the board.
She said she had learned “a lot about myself” through her journey with alcohol, and that she had come to the realisation that she “just wants to give back … to help take care of people”.
“(I’ve learned) … to be graceful, to be kind, to love myself,” she said.
“I’ve really never done that. I like to take care of people. I feel deeply. And that comes with a lot of anxiety. It’s just trying to find that balance … and knowing that it’s OK to be in a rough spot and that I will get through it – I will get to the other side, no matter how long it takes.
“Just having faith in myself that this is a battle that I have taken on and I’m proud. I’m glad that I am where I am today. Our family … I’m obviously a more present person. I’m not hungover, I’m not drunk. So I’m sure that obviously makes everybody a little bit happier around the house.”
An app on her phone indicates she has also saved some $20,000 Australian dollars in ditching the booze.
Ogilvy – who is this week playing in the Australian Open in Sydney as he scales back his golfing commitments in favour of his foundation and golf course architecture – will also set aside a portion of his allocated funds for The Geoff Ogilvy Foundation that he hopes will assist the next generation of Australian major winners.
“The legacy (PGA Tour events and the Presidents Cup) leave in all these towns … it leaves a lot of money in a lot of communities and it leaves long-term legacies,” he said.
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“It’ll leave millions again in Australia and also a lot of players will take a lot of the charitable giving and take it to their communities, too. It’s a really powerful machine for fundraising for all sorts of causes around the world. And the Presidents Cup is one of the flagship events that it has for that.
“The driver is the charitable giving it can do. The Presidents Cup is here for a week and then it disappears, but the legacy it’ll leave in Melbourne will be around for years because of the money it leaves in town.
“It really is an incredible thing.”