On her way to the golf course, Mhairi McKay extricates herself from her 14-month-old son's tearful clutches and delivers him to the LPGA Child Development Center. Then she scoots around the corner and braces herself. McKay waits for his sobs to subside, and only then does she gather herself to leave. Although there is no way around the separation anxiety that makes mornings miserable for McKay and her first child, Angus, the tour does what it can to alleviate it. Since 1993, the LPGA has offered free day care for players at tournaments in the United States in exchange for their participation in a couple of corporate outings a year for the center's sponsor, J.M. Smucker Co. Two full-time staff members, aided at each stop by volunteers, teach and take care of children ranging in age from 10 weeks to older than 10 years. The director, Bardine May, has been traveling with the tour since 2003, long enough to usher some players' children through potty training into adolescence. 'I would not be able to have this career without the Smucker's child-care center,' said McKay, a native of Glasgow. Few working mothers have a better setup. In the WNBA, players must pay for their own arrangements if they want their children to accompany them on the road. On the WTA circuit, tournaments are more likely to offer doggy day care than child care. And yet it's golf, oddly, that has lost its two best players, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, to retirement over the past year and a half because neither wanted to juggle career and family. They are not the only ones -- merely the most visible. The tour has 32 mothers, 20 of whom have played in at least one event this year. In 1999, McKay's second year on the tour, there were 49 mothers. May said the center's numbers had dipped to 12 children during an average week this year, from 24 a few years ago. On the Tuesday of the LPGA State Farm Classic in Springfield, Ill., in June, May and three others had six children in their care. May, with time to ruminate, said, 'We're hoping for more pregnancies.' McKay, 35, said the tour seemed to be growing younger as she got older, and the world rankings back her up. The average age of the top 10 players is 25. In golf, women can remain competitive well into their 30s and 40s. Since 1999, women in their 40s have won four majors. That does not include Catriona Matthew, currently the highest-ranked mother, No. 19. She won the 2009 British Open one month before turning 40 and less than three months after giving birth to her second daughter. McKay, who had made the cut in one of four events this year, said: 'I still feel I can be competitive. I've been on the tour 13 years now. I'm a lot closer to the end of my career than the beginning. I'm just kind of testing the waters this year and seeing how both myself and Angus cope.' 