Among the many LPGA professionals who traverse the globe for begins is Alison Lee, proper.
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There may be, after all, a glamorous aspect to life within the higher echelon {of professional} golf. Adoring followers. Endorsement offers with luxurious automotive and watch manufacturers. Smoothing Professional V1s on immaculate, sun-splashed driving ranges — swing coach, masseuse and analytics whiz in tow.
However there’s one other aspect, too.
Canceled flights. Jet lag. Residing out of a suitcase. Lengthy stretches away from household and buddies.
First-world hardships for positive, however hardships nonetheless, particularly on the more and more international LPGA and Women European excursions, and most particularly this time of yr when fatigued gamers can be forgiven for forgetting what metropolis, if not time zone, they’re in. The LPGA Tour is within the midst of a month-long swing that takes the professionals from China to Korea to Malaysia to Japan. In the meantime, over that very same interval, the LET schedule has hopped from China to Taiwan to India to Saudi Arabia, the place the tour is that this week for an Aramco Group Sequence occasion at Riyadh Golf Membership.
The journey is a grind, not simply bodily but in addition mentally and emotionally. Ask the gamers on the Riyadh cease, who earlier this week spoke brazenly in regards to the challenges of their nomad life.
“I don’t suppose there’s one woman on the market who says they love going to the airport each single day and going to tournaments each single week, as a result of it’s laborious, it’s actually laborious,” mentioned Alison Lee, who’s ranked thirty fourth on this planet; after taking part in three of the LPGA’s Asian swing occasions, Lee is now taking part in making her fourth begin in 4 weeks throughout 4 nations and two continents. “It’s laborious on our our bodies. Particularly after we journey internationally and spend hours and hours on the street, packing, unpacking, and a number of the time, a number of us journey alone as nicely. So, if we’re going to the airport, we’ve got two, three, 4 suitcases. Dragging it via the airport, slowly making our option to the subsequent occasion, renting a automotive, attending to the resort room. It might get fairly lonely at occasions.”
The pains of journey are, after all, not distinctive to the ladies’s recreation. However when it comes to passports stamped and frequent-flier factors collected, the highest feminine gamers are, nicely, miles forward of most of their male counterparts. Additionally, whereas there’s some geographical circulation or logic to the PGA Tour schedule (the season kicks off with a few Hawaii occasions adopted by just a few stops within the American West earlier than settling in Florida for a month, and many others.), the LPGA is actually all around the map.
A few season-opening Florida occasions are adopted by stops in Singapore, Thailand and China. Then it’s again to the U.S. for a dizzying itinerary that takes gamers from Arizona to Hawaii to New Jersey. This yr, over a three-week stretch in July, the tour Ping-Ponged from France to Ohio to Calgary. Final yr, my colleague, Claire Rogers, captured the quantity of journey in an eye-opening video that has drawn 1.6 million views on X.
It’s no surprise that by the point the gamers attain the autumn, they’re spent.
Charley Hull, who lives in England, performed in Malaysia final week adopted by Saudi Arabia this week. When she’s on the street, she mentioned in her splendidly direct fashion, “I simply need to go residence.”
Hull, who’s ranked fifteenth on this planet, will be extra selective than many LPGA professionals about which occasions she performs, which affords her the luxurious of following what she calls her “golden rule”: by no means taking part in greater than two weeks consecutively.
“Until it’s within the UK,” she mentioned. “Like, I can go from Evian to British to Scottish.” She added, “I turned professional once I was 16 years outdated. Now I’m 28. I’ve to have a little bit of a life in between.”
Sure, golfers — identical to dentists and attorneys and academics — needs lives, too. While you see them strolling the fairways, rapping putts on the observe inexperienced or stretching their limbs within the health trailer, it’s straightforward to neglect that every one these actions are their jobs. Shirking or underperforming in any of these duties can result in missed cuts, and stressing about earnings and taking part in standing, and tough conversations with spouses and caddies, and…extra stress. Issues can spiral in a rush.
Fifth-year LPGA professional Patty Tavatanakit grew up and performed competitively in Thailand earlier than starring on the ladies’s golf workforce at UCLA. Now 25, she has two LPGA wins, together with a significant title (2021 Chevron). When Tavatanakit was requested this week what retains her motivated to maintain spanning the globe in pursuit of {golfing} greatness, her candor was startling.
“I’m already considering if I truly love golf, however I do it as a job,” she mentioned. “What drives me to do what I do might be being profitable. I actually need to achieve success, simply setting targets and making an attempt to attain them, no matter it’s. I really feel like I misplaced that for slightly bit the previous two years, I used to be simply actually misplaced and like, why am I taking part in? And so, I set an excellent purpose at first of this yr, and it type of sparked some good emotions inside.”
Charley Hull is ‘shattered.’ After the yr she’s had, you possibly can perceive why
That constructive mojo nearly instantly translated into wins. Tavatanakit gained Aramco’s different LET Saudi occasion, in February, blowing away the sector by seven, earlier than per week later profitable the LPGA’s Thailand occasion. “I’m unsure how lengthy I’m going to maintain that going — undoubtedly not, like, the subsequent 20 years,” Tavatanakit mentioned. “I’ve a time due date on what I need to do, what I need to obtain, and I simply need to get out.”
Tavatanakit’s early retirement plans aren’t an anomaly within the girls’s recreation. Lydia Ko, who’s 27 and having fun with top-of-the-line seasons of her profession, has mentioned she needs to hold up her spikes earlier than she turns 30. Earlier this yr, Lexi Thompson, 29, surprised the golf world when she introduced that she was calling it quits.
