GOLD CANYON, ARIZONA | The question had a deeper meaning than the questioner thought. Late Thursday, as the clear Arizona sky glowed orange and the shadows of Superstition Mountain flickered like crows wings on the desert below, Alison Lee stood tall and elegant, the smile that once seemed forced now easy and true.
“You were fighting the darkness,” the questioner started, nodding toward the western sky. “Did you struggle a little bit with that towards the end?”
The reference was to Lee’s first round at the LPGA Drive On Championship ending near sundown. But as metaphors go, few have been better. Lee had indeed fought the darkness, in far more ways than one.
Those who know her saw it, and worried. An enormous talent who was medalist at LPGA Q-Series in 2014 after three semesters at UCLA, walked around for more than a couple of years with eyes easily recognized by anyone who has agonized with depression. There was a hole, one that had little to do with golf. The young woman who had once been 25th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings and a member of the 2015 U.S. Solheim Cup team in her rookie year, seemed lost and alone.
Last summer, Lee opened up about her struggles.
“After a couple of years on Tour, darkness crept in,” she said. “The pressures of tour life began to eat at me little by little. The longer you go without winning, the more pressure you put on yourself, especially if you’ve always been accustomed to winning at every level. Before long, I went from showing up every week expecting to be in contention to not having confidence that I could even make a cut.
“Three years after being on the Solheim Cup team, I was back at Q-School. I felt worthless. I kept asking myself: What am I doing? Why do I keep putting myself through this? I was living in Las Vegas, alone, and I was miserable. My friends from school were getting jobs and moving on with their lives, and my tour friends, while supportive, had their own careers to manage.
“I started looking up job opportunities, telling my mom that if I didn’t get my card back, I was done. I had played so poorly that I had to go back to second stage of Q-School before advancing to Q-Series. Thankfully, I made it through. And while the following season was marginally better, I still missed keeping my card.
“I didn’t have any sponsors. I was in a deep emotional hole. But my parents said, ‘Give it one more year and we’ll see what happens.’ Then COVID hit, so I had this awkward conditional status. In 2021, I played in a couple of Epson Tour events, which was a humbling experience. The players working their way up are grinders, hard-working women fighting to reach the next level. But I had been No. 25 in the world just a few years ago. At that point, I felt like a different person.
“There were times when I couldn’t hit a pitching wedge straight. It’s not something people who haven’t been there understand. There were times when I hit such an emotional low that I was scared to go to the course.
“The deepest hole for me came just a couple of years ago when I had to Monday qualify for an event, which I did. At that moment, when I earned a spot in the field, I thought, great, I can play well this week, get reshuffled into more fields, and work my way up. But on the way to the course for the opening round, I had this crazy panic attack. Every mile that I got closer to the course, the more my anxiety overwhelmed me. My heart was pounding. My breath came shallow and quick. The feelings got so overwhelming that I began looking at the concrete barrier on the interstate and considered crashing my car into it. At that moment, I would rather have been in the hospital than have to tee off in competition.
“That was my bottom.
“People don’t see that side of golf.”
Lee is 28 now, with a degree from UCLA – she finished school while playing full time – a T20 on the books that came at the Honda LPGA Thailand earlier this year, and a late tee time on Saturday at Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club after posting rounds of 65-69.
“It feels good,” Lee said of seeing her name near to the top of a leaderboard. “You know, it's definitely a lot of pressure. I try really hard not to look at the leaderboard and just pretend like I'm playing against one of my buddies back home or something like that, a money game or something.
“I’m just trying to take it one hole at time. Usually, I really love looking at the leaderboard and putting myself under pressure and playing really aggressively, but that always hasn't worked out for me in the past, so I'm trying really hard to stay patient.
“Like I said, 36 holes left. So much golf left out there, so you just try and make smart decisions and get birdies when I can.”
That was the golf side of it. The other side, the straightness in her carriage, the brightness in her eyes, that felt good, too…and not just for her.
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