By Amy Rogers
Tuesday afternoon, Alison Lee hopped out of a golf cart and stepped on to the driving range at TPC River’s Bend to begin preparing for her afternoon tee time at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G. It’s the first tournament that Lee will compete in on the LPGA Tour since October. “Weird,” was the word the 11th year member used to describe her return. It all felt so familiar, and yet so strange, too.
Within minutes of arriving at the practice facility Lee was hugged by defending champion Lydia Ko, who asked about when she’ll get to see the new mother’s four-month old son, Levi. Lee underwent an emergency C-section in April to deliver her first child. Lee thanked the Hall of Famer for the baby clothes she sent and they promised to catch up more later.
“I feel like I still have so much to prove and I want to give golf one last push,” Lee said about her return to competitive golf. “Ten years from now when I look back at 30-year old me, I can say I did everything I could. I have absolutely no regret. I accomplished everything I wanted to and I did the best I could.”
Lee made a return to competition last week on the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Houston Championship where she was tied for 53rd in the 54-hole event. The back-to-back weeks on the road are a learning opportunity and adjustment period for Lee to figure out how to make sense of life on the road with a child in tow. She says she learned last week that something as simple as trying to put her suitcase in the overhead bin on the airplane was a challenge when she has a four-month old she can’t simply put down because he can’t sit on his own yet.
Inside the ropes, Lee was overall optimistic about her game. And while she saw areas in need of improvement, like trying to get back her feel with a wedge, which she believes will simply come back with time, she was happy to see the work pay off that she put in regaining her strength and improving her ball speed. Lee says her ball speed was 150 mph before her pregnancy and had dropped to 135 mph post-delivery, but she was happy to get her speed back up to 146 mph ahead of her competitive return. Lee also put a broomstick putter in her bag for the first time last week after struggling with her putting last season.
“My goal last week was just to make the cut and that’s how it is this week, too,” Lee said about what she’s hoping to achieve. “Even though I made the cut last week I didn’t have a great Sunday, but I accomplished my goal. Obviously, I want to do better and this will be the ultimate test this week and next.”
Lee plans to compete next week at the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship and at the LOTTE Championship in Hawaii before enjoying an extended off-season. She intends to return to full-time competition in April or May, around Levi’s first birthday. At that time, Lee says she will give herself a year to try and achieve her long-awaited dream of becoming a first-time winner on the LPGA Tour. If Lee doesn’t win, or she doesn’t feel like she’s able to contend week to week to a level in which she would be proud, she will walk away from professional golf.
“The last thing I want to do is come out here and not make cuts or not see my name high on the leaderboard, it’s just not worth it,” Lee said about the sacrifices she’s making. “I’m spending so much time and energy into this game to try and be the best player I can and if I’m spending that time away from my son and away from my family just to be an average professional golfer, that’s not worth it to me.”
The decision to walk away wouldn’t just be an emotional one, but a financial one, too. This week at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G, Lee has her mother traveling with her to help care for Levi. That’s an added expense. Lee can no longer share a room with another player. That’s an additional expense. She also has to rent a larger rental car to accommodate all of Levi’s items as well as her mother’s. That’s an extra cost, too. Without a steady string of top-finishes on the LPGA Tour in the year ahead, Lee isn’t sure life on Tour would be sustainable.
Lee’s speedy return is rare on the LPGA Tour, as many new moms in recent years have taken advantage of the Tour’s extended maternity leave, in which players can take up to two years away from competition and retain their playing status upon their return. So, why come back so soon?
Lee feels like she’s in a race against father time. The 30-year-old, who has competed for more than a decade on the LPGA Tour without a win, feels like she’s running out of time to do so with the growing number of increasingly younger players contending week in and week out. That, combined with Lee feeling torn between putting in the time she needs to practice while also trying to take care of her son, has her feeling rushed to get back out on Tour.
“I have mom guilt for leaving him and telling myself that I should be spending more time with him,” Lee said about balancing her career with also becoming a mother. “That’s why it’s hard for moms to come back and perform well because you just can’t have something else in your life that’s so important and you can’t spend the hours grinding the number of hours you know the other girls are putting in.”
Becoming a mother is a life-altering experience of which its power and influence cannot be understated. It’s brought even the toughest of competitors to their knees, who have opted to walk away from competition, finding their ultimate fulfillment in raising their offspring rather than continuing to pursue what had once been a lifelong ambition. For others, there’s still a drive and desire to find fulfillment outside of being a mother. Lee is very much straddling the two worlds, balancing pervasive mom guilt with a deep desire to achieve what she’s wanted most – to become a winner on the LPGA Tour. That remains the driving catalyst for Lee’s return, and something that she hopes, someday, little Levi will understand.
“No matter how much has changed, I’m back to who I was. I’m competitive. I want to win so badly out here, which is probably my biggest downfall, too, is just wanting it too bad,” Lee said about her desire to win on Tour. “Hopefully in the future, when [Levi’s] older, I can say I came back right after giving birth and I was able to achieve what I wanted and be a winner on the LPGA Tour. Hopefully, I can say that. That would be the biggest achievement for me.”
