Who Is Abigail Mullinax? Trey Mullinax’s Wife, Their Marriage and Their Children

Abigail Mullinax has been married to PGA Tour golfer Trey Mullinax since March 2017. She goes by Abi. Before the marriage her name was Abi Essman, and Golf Digest reported at the time of the wedding that the two were high school sweethearts, which places the start of the relationship in Gardendale, Alabama, years before Trey ever held a PGA Tour card.

She keeps her own profile small. Her Instagram account is private, she has never given an interview about the marriage, and she does not appear in tournament broadcasts the way many tour wives do. What is on the record comes from reporting about her husband, from the PGA Tour’s official player bio, and from a handful of quotes Trey has given over the years. A wedding held five days before a PGA Tour start, a head injury that changed her husband’s personality at home before it changed his career, a father in law who was treated for Stage 4 cancer, and a family that is now considerably larger than you thought.

Who Is Abigail Mullinax?

Abigail Mullinax is the wife of Howard Travis “Trey” Mullinax III, an American professional golfer from Birmingham, Alabama. She is listed on the PGA Tour’s official player profile simply as “Wife, Abi.”

Her maiden name was Essman. Golf Digest identified her by that name in March 2017 when it described her and Trey as high school sweethearts. Trey attended Gardendale High School in Jefferson County, Alabama, where he led the golf team to three straight county 5A championships between 2006 and 2008. That is the setting in which the relationship began.

Her exact age has never been published. Trey was born on June 29, 1992, and is 34. If the couple were high school classmates, she is close to that age, though no source states her birth year.

Abigail is not a professional golfer, and she does not have a career in golf.

How Trey and Abigail Met

Golf Digest, reporting from the 2017 Puerto Rico Open the week they married, described Abi Essman as Trey’s high school sweetheart. Trey grew up in Gardendale and went through Gardendale High School there. That is the origin of the relationship, and it means they were together through his four years at the University of Alabama and through the first years of his professional career, which began when he turned pro in 2014.

Trey has spoken once, indirectly, about how he thought about marriage during that period. In an interview with Links Players, a Christian golf ministry, he described the influence of Stephen Bunn, the College Golf Fellowship leader who ran a weekly Bible study for the Alabama golf team. “He poured into me the man I wanted to be when I left school, the man I wanted to be as a husband to my future wife,” Trey said. The future wife in that sentence is Abigail.

Trey and Abigail married on Saturday, March 18, 2017, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Several of Trey’s former University of Alabama teammates attended, including Justin Thomas, who by then was already a PGA Tour winner and would win the PGA Championship five months later. Thomas and Mullinax played together on the Alabama teams that won the NCAA Championship in 2013 and 2014.

There was no immediate honeymoon. Trey was a PGA Tour rookie sitting 118th in FedEx Cup points, and the Puerto Rico Open started the following Thursday.

Five Days After the Wedding

On Thursday, March 23, 2017, five days after the wedding, Trey opened the Puerto Rico Open at Coco Beach Golf Course with a nine birdie 63 and took the first round lead.

“Obviously, to shoot the score I shot today you have to putt well,” he told reporters. “But it was nice to hit the ball like I feel I’ve been playing. I feel like I’ve been hitting the ball well, just haven’t been scoring.”

Their Children

The couple have three children: Sawyer, Jude and River. Trey’s own Instagram bio said the same thing for years.

The PGA Tour’s official player profile currently lists the family as: Wife, Abi; Sawyer Ann, Howard IV (Jude), River, Holland, Selah Jane.

That is five children.

• Sawyer Ann is the eldest, born in September 2018. Golf.com described her as an infant when Trey came home from Colonial in May 2019.
• Howard IV, who goes by Jude, was born in May 2020. Golf.com reported in March 2020 that a second child, a son, was due that May. His legal name continues the family line: Trey himself is Howard Travis Mullinax III, and “Trey” is a nickname meaning the third.
• River was born in December 2022.
• Holland and Selah Jane are the two youngest. Holland was born in March 12, 2024.

The family also has a golden retriever named Hogan.

The Concussion Years

In May 2019, during the Wednesday pro-am at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Trey was struck in the back of the head by a ball hit by one of his amateur playing partners. He woke up on the ground. Tournament medics took him to the emergency room, where doctors ruled out internal bleeding and diagnosed a mild concussion.

He played the tournament and finished 40th. Then he missed the cut in every event he entered for the rest of the year.

At home, Abigail was the first person to see what was actually wrong. Golf.com’s account of that summer, written by Alan Bastable, reports that Trey’s short fuse became evident to Abi while he continued to insist he was fine and that everyone around him was being oversensitive. His father, Chip, noticed the same thing while caddying for him at the Canadian Open and asked directly whether he was okay. Trey snapped back that he was.

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It took a collapse at the Barbasol Championship in July, where he vomited in the locker room after signing for a 77 and later passed out getting out of a car, before he agreed to be examined properly. Four doctors returned the same finding: he was severely concussed. He had convergence insufficiency, a condition in which the eyes cannot properly focus on nearby objects. The ball had struck him near the visual cortex.

“My brain and my eyes were telling me two different things,” he said.

He put the clubs away for six weeks and sat at home in sunglasses. His doctors told him that if he had rested for two weeks immediately after the accident, he would most likely have been fine. He lost his PGA Tour card and dropped to the Korn Ferry Tour for 2020.

The one thing he said he gained from it was time in the house. His daughter Sawyer Ann learned his face during those months. “She knows me as Daddy now when I come home,” he said.

Family During the 2022 Win

In November 2021, while Trey was playing the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, his father Chip was diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer. Chip Mullinax is a former stock car racer who runs the family transmission shop in Birmingham, and he was Trey’s first coach.

Chip went through five months of chemotherapy and three rounds of radiation. Trey kept missing cuts, 14 of them in 23 starts across that season.

Chip was declared cancer free three weeks before the 2022 Barbasol Championship. On July 10, 2022, Trey birdied the 72nd hole at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky, holing a 15 foot putt from the edge of the green to beat Kevin Streelman by one shot and win his first PGA Tour title. He finished at 25 under par and earned $666,000, plus the last available spot in the Open Championship at St Andrews the following week.

“But mentally it’s tough, watching your dad, your best friend, go through cancer,” he said afterward at TPC Southwind.

When Links Players asked Trey to name the people he relies on, he listed his caddie, his swing instructor and his agent, and then put his family above all of them: his wife Abi and his parents, plus his college coach Jay Seawell and Stephen Bunn. He calls that group his “tight corner.”

“Those would be the people I would call if I’m ever in a funk,” he said. “I know that with any decision I have to make, they’ll tell me where it will be good or bad, and what will be in my best interest.”

Where Trey and Abigail Lives?

The PGA Tour lists Trey’s residence as Gardendale, Alabama, the town he grew up in and where he went to high school. He was born in Birmingham and still plays out of Birmingham.

The family has stayed in Alabama for the whole of the marriage. They have not moved to Florida or Texas, where a large share of tour players base themselves.

Trey Mullinax Career Summary

• Full name: Howard Travis Mullinax III, born June 29, 1992 in Birmingham, Alabama
• Height 6 feet 4 inches, weight 195 pounds
• Gardendale High School, then the University of Alabama
• Won two college tournaments, earned All-American honors, and was part of the NCAA Championship teams in 2013 and 2014
• Turned professional in 2014
• Three professional wins: the 2016 Rex Hospital Open and the 2020 Orange County National Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour, and the 2022 Barbasol Championship on the PGA Tour
• Best major finish: tied 9th at the 2017 U.S. Open. He also tied for 21st at the 2022 Open Championship
• Highest world ranking: 77, reached on March 5, 2023
• Career earnings: $7,410,499

The 2026 Suspension

On July 29, 2026, the PGA Tour announced that Trey Mullinax had been suspended for six months for violating its anti doping policy after testing positive for a substance prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency. He is eligible to return on January 16, 2027.

In a statement released alongside the Tour’s announcement, he said the positive test came from taking a medication for a condition he was first diagnosed with in college, without seeking approval.

“I take full responsibility for what happened,” he said. “At the end of the day, it is my responsibility to understand and follow the PGA Tour’s anti-doping policy and all of its rules and regulations.”

He added: “My lack of knowledge is not an excuse. It was my responsibility to know the rules before taking any medication and I failed to do so. I want to be absolutely clear, I have never taken any substance with the intention of gaining a competitive advantage.”

The PGA Tour said he cooperated throughout the process and accepted the suspension. He had made only two PGA Tour starts in 2026, missing both cuts, and had not played since the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in April.

Abigail Mullinax has not commented publicly.

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