There are moments in every athlete’s career that force you to stop and ask the question you never want to say out loud.
For me, that moment came in a doctor’s office.
“I looked at the main doctor and my first question was, ‘Will I ever play golf again?’ Because at that point, it felt a million miles away.”
He paused, just for a second, but it was long enough. I don’t even remember what he said next. My mind had already made a decision.
I’ll prove him wrong. I’ll make it back.
That moment didn’t just define my comeback. It defined how I see setbacks.
Because the truth is, there’s never a straight line from A to B in professional sport. We like to tell stories that way, clean, simple, upward. But that’s not reality. There are always bumps. Injuries. Doubt. Delays that make your timeline look completely different to what you imagined.
And yet, those moments? They’re where you learn the most.
Setbacks are the biggest learning curve you can get. Not when things are going well, not when you’re winning, but when you’re forced to rebuild. When you have to sit with uncertainty and decide what you’re made of.
I was always driven. From a young age, I had big dreams and I wasn’t afraid to say them out loud. I worked hard, probably, if I’m honest, a bit too hard at times. But I believed in something simple: that hard work, over time, will always pay off.
That belief carried me through injuries, through comebacks, through the moments where things felt far away. But what I didn’t realise back then was how much my definition of success would change.
Becoming a mum shifted everything.
As soon as my son was born, the first thing that went out the window was my own ego. And that’s not something I expected. For so long, my strength had come from putting myself first – my goals, my ambitions, my performance. Suddenly, that wasn’t the case anymore. He was my priority.
And in a strange way, that changed how I saw the game.
I remember thinking: what is another trophy actually going to change? Because the truth is, it wouldn’t change my life. He already had.
That doesn’t mean the competitive fire disappeared – it didn’t. But it became clearer. Healthier. More grounded. I wasn’t chasing something to define me anymore. I was playing because I loved it, because I still believed I had something to give, and because I wanted to see how far I could go with a completely different perspective.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: enjoy it. Enjoy the journey while it lasts.
I was so focused, so driven, always pushing for the next thing. And while I genuinely loved every part of my career, I think I could have been a little bit easier on myself. A little more present in the moments that matter – the small wins, the quiet progress, the experiences that don’t show up on a leaderboard.
Because in the end, success isn’t just about what you achieve. It’s about who you have around you while you’re doing it.
That’s something I believe in now more than ever, whether it’s in sport or beyond it. To really succeed, you need genuinely good people around you. People who support you not just as an athlete, but as a person. That’s the ultimate foundation.
It’s also what drives what we’re building now.
With VOXA, the ambition is simple: we don’t want to be just another management company. We want to be the best team in golf, period. And for me, that doesn’t just mean results or visibility, it means creating an environment where everyone feels supported, understood, and set up to succeed in every sense of the word.
Because I’ve lived both sides of it. I’ve been the player chasing everything, and I’ve been the person redefining what actually matters.
And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this: the journey is never linear. There will be setbacks. There will be doubt. There will be moments where the path ahead feels a long way off.
But those are the moments that shape you.
Those are the moments where you decide who you’re going to be.
And sometimes, all it takes is a pause in a doctor’s office to light that fire.