From 10k walks to 'quiet confidence' at Irish Open: Sara Byrne ready after difficult road back

After suffering a fractured elbow in January, the Cork golfer wondered if she would play professionally again but patience and persistence has paid off. She tees off at the K Club on Thursday for the Irish Open

Sara Byrne on dealing with injury: “It gave me a bit more freedom and I got to realise that professional golf isn’t life or death. It took that pressure off every shot really.” Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Rain will fall and the wind will blow at the K Club during this week’s KPMG Irish Open and Sara Byrne couldn’t be happier.

The summer has been spent traversing the European continent, and with another stop in Morocco. There have been tournaments in eight different countries and all the flights and hotels and day-to-day logistics that come with life on the Ladies European Tour (LET).

So, yeah, a week on home soil is welcome.

“It's so nice,” she said before her Thursday lunchtime tee time at the Palmer South Course in Kildare. “I got in my car on Monday morning and drove up in two hours. It was so nice, no flights, no airports, none of that. It just makes life so much easier.” 

Byrne left her house in Cork earlier this week having availed of her mother’s home cooking and washing, but it isn’t the first time she has leaned on home comforts this year after a freak injury in January that fractured an elbow and added partially torn ligaments.

The emotional toll was no picnic either. She went from asking the surgeon if she would be able to play the following week to wondering if she would ever feature as a professional golfer again. The recovery process was slow but, thankfully, steady.

It was mid-May before Byrne made her return at the Amundi German Masters with the days, weeks and months in between taken up watching a lot of movies on Netflix, visiting family and friends in Spain and the US, but mostly walking.

Lots of walking.

“Yeah, it was tough. For the first three or four weeks I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t going to the gym, I literally couldn’t do anything, so I started walking ten kilometres a day because I was like, ‘If I get back on tour as quickly as possible, all these girls are playing 18 holes a day on me, so let’s just start walking’.

“Literally rain, sun, anything. You would have seen me walking up the road in Carrigtwohill. I’d say people thought I was absolutely mental being out there every day. I was going a little bit crazy at the start because I didn’t know how it was going to heal but I just had to walk with my arm as straight as I possibly could.” 

That patience and persistence paid off.

The elbow is back to maybe a nine out of ten. It still gives a few niggles now and again, and her swing is still slower than before, but it hasn’t affected her distance. The only thing it hurts, she jokes, is her ego when she sees the swing speeds on Trackman.

That’s a work-on. The other side to the layoff is the perspective it brought.

Life as an amateur in the US collegiate system was followed by life on tour, initially on both sides of the Atlantic, so she embraced the downtime the injury allowed with her nearest and dearest and it has imbued a new perspective with it.

“It gave me a bit more freedom and I got to realise that professional golf isn’t life or death. It took that pressure off every shot really.” 

All of which was helped by a tie for runner-up at the Jabra Ladies Open de France in May in what was just her third tournament back. It’s a relaxed approach she will aim to bring to the K Club as fans keep their fingers crossed for a first ever home winner.

Byrne is one of 16 Irish players in the field this week, nine of them professionals. She isn’t alone in approaching it with what she calls “a quiet confidence”, but there is a realisation that there is such a thing as wanting something too much.

“You can’t force it because that is the worst thing you can do. Less is more. The weeks you do well you might not expect it and you’re just letting it flow. Just have fun with it out there.” 

Whatever about a green tint on Sunday’s leaderboard, the record number of Irish involved across the four days is reflective of a rising tide in the amateur and pro games, and a long way from what Byrne would have seen looking on as a young girl.

Leona Maguire was still in college in the US when Byrne was growing up: there was a distinct lack of Irish women on tour to aspire to. It was seeing the 2011 Solheim Cup play out at Killeen Castle that made her decide a pro career was the way for her.

There are Irish women featuring now on the LET and LPGA tours and in the feeder tours below. Lauren Walsh, back this week from her new surrounds on the LPGA, has talked up the importance of that collective push from the home ranks.

“It shows the hard work over the last 15-years,” said Byrne. “It's fun. You go on tour and the first person you see in the room is an Irish person, so it's a home from home. Even some of the caddies. The Irish are taking over the LET and it makes travelling so much easier.”