For players like Sarah Schmelzel, who were vying for a spot on the Solheim Cup, the beginning of the 2024 season was a crucial time. In order to move up on the points list and make the team in Virginia, Schmelzel needed top finishes. At the start of the year, the 30-year-old had four consecutive top 10 finishes in February and March. But then she missed five of the next six cuts.
Now, we know why.
One of those missed cuts came at the first major of the year, the Chevron Championship. Schmelzel told the LPGA that an ovarian cyst ruptured, putting her in the hospital the day before the Chevron started. Schmelzel has endometriosis, a disease where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside of the uterus. Many symptoms come with endometriosis, including severe pain. Ovarian cysts, like the one that sent Schmelzel to the hospital, are also common.
Though Schmelzel has dealt with endometriosis symptoms throughout her six seasons on the LPGA, this hospitalization was new. She left the hospital in pain but decided to play the Chevron anyway. After shooting 75-76, she missed the cut.
RELATED: What’s on the line at the Solheim Cup in what feels like a must win for the Americans
“I totally lost my golf swing. I didn’t have any feel,” Schmelzel told the LPGA in a piece that was posted on the tour’s website Sunday. “I continued to try to play through it because I had gotten off to a good start, and I was trying to get Solheim points. It took a lot of work from my physio on the road, my trainer at home, my coach, and then my mental coach for getting me through it emotionally. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get back to a performance state because I started missing cuts, and I didn’t know where the golf ball was going. It was hard to work through.”
Sarah Schmelzel had a long road to qualify for the Solheim Cup. But she persevered and now she's making her first ever Solheim Cup appearance 🇺🇸
FULL STORY ⬇️ https://t.co/WRcuWlLZWo
— LPGA (@LPGA) September 8, 2024
Schmelzel’s results threatened to undo the work she’d done to move up in the points list. But in June, she saw progress. She tied for 30th place at the Meijer LPGA Classic and then tied for ninth at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. She added another top 10 at the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open before the qualifying period ended, but it still wasn’t enough. Schmelzel finished 11th on the Solheim Cup points list and needed to rely on a captain’s pick for her goal to be achieved.
It did when U.S. captain Stacy Lewis and assistant captain Angela Stanford told Schmelzel she’d made the team.
“This is a dream come true kind of a thing,” Schmelzel said. “To be able to climb my way out of it, and get back into contention, and get back into performing, it was a really emotional moment when they did tell me because I felt like I did fight through a lot in that middle portion of the year to get to that point.”
Surely there are many attributes that captains discuss when looking at who they’d like to select with their picks. With Schmelzel, toughness had to have been at the top of the list.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
