Once among the world’s best, McPherson returns to LPGA Tour Q-School

Kristy McPherson is not ready for the ride to end just yet.

After nine seasons as a member of the LPGA Tour, McPherson played her way off the tour with a poor season in 2015.

So at 34, the Conway native returns to the LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament Finals, which begin Wednesday, for the first time in a decade in an attempt to play a 10th year at the highest level of women’s professional golf.

“I’m not ready to be done yet,” said McPherson, who has been impacted by injuries each year since 2010. “If you go out you kind of want to go out on your own terms and I’m definitely not ready to be done and not ready to basically have injuries cause me to be done.

“I think I’m getting healthier than I was last year and I’ve got to mentally get back there.”

The five-round Q-School finals feature 157 players at LPGA International’s Jones and Hills courses in Daytona Beach, Fla. The top 20 players will have full LPGA Tour status and players finishing 21st through 45th will have conditional status. Julie Yang was limited to 12 starts this past season after finishing 21st at Q-School last December.

McPherson will settle for a year on the Symetra Tour, the feeder circuit of the LPGA where she played from 2003-06 after graduating from South Carolina, if she doesn’t get her LPGA status back.

“I feel I can go back and finish top 20 and get my full card, but I’m okay with whatever happens as well,” she said. “I don’t think it’s the worst thing if I do have to go back to the Symetra. It’s obviously not ideal, but I’m not ready to be done.”

LPGA tournament purses are between $1 million and $4.5 million, while Symetra purses are between $100,000 and $150,000. The top 10 players on the 2016 Symetra Tour money list will earn full LPGA Tour status for 2017.

If she isn’t successful at Q-School, McPherson’s LPGA tenure and career earnings will still qualify her for a few tournaments next year. “Obviously that isn’t what I want,” McPherson said. “I want to go and give it all I’ve got this [upcoming] year and get healthy and play healthy and be mentally strong each week. I’ve got to do it one week at a time.”

McPherson played in a SunCoast Tour event two weeks ago on the two LPGA International courses to become reacquainted with them. “It was kind of weird being there and using a yardage book from 2005 because I hadn’t been there in so long,” McPherson said. “But it is what it is. I’ve had some very poor years and a lot of struggles.”

She believes her experience gives her an advantage over many players at Q-School. “I’ve been out on tour and I’m not nervous going into Q-School,” McPherson said. “I feel some of the girls beat themselves before they even get there, grinding it out and putting so much pressure on themselves. I feel if I play good, solid golf I’ll be back on the LPGA again.”

Rise and fall

McPherson was once among the top players in the world, and has earned more than $2 million since her rookie year on the LPGA Tour with 16 career top-10 finishes.

She rose to No. 14 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings and played on the victorious U.S. Solheim Cup Team following a stellar 2009 season.

That season she did just about everything but win, and she’s still seeking her first LPGA title.

She finished 16th on the 2009 money list with more than $800,000 earned, made 21 of 24 cuts, recorded 12 top-20 finishes, including a runner-up in the Wegman’s LPGA and tie for third in the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship, and posted three top-seven finishes in majors, including a tie for second in the Kraft Nabisco Championship.

She had another solid year in 2010, recording another runner-up and placing 27th on the money list.

But injuries began to plague her near the end of the 2010 season, and exacerbated by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that was diagnosed in McPherson’s childhood, they have affected her since.

She has had multiple surgeries and medical procedures on her left elbow – the last in November 2012 – had hip issues and this year injured her back.

Is there a chance she can remain healthy and recapture the 2009-10 level of play?

“If there wasn’t then I wouldn’t still be grinding it out,” McPherson said. “I want it to happen quickly, but I’m not sure it will. I have to just get one good tournament at a time. You try to do so much and hope it happens overnight. I just have to get back to playing solid and getting out of my own way, playing to where my bad rounds are even par, and a lot of that is confidence.”

“I haven’t played well in a long time and you start questioning it. I feel I can still compete, I just have to do it and stop putting pressure on myself.”

McPherson did just enough to retain her LPGA status from 2012-14, but made just four of 18 cuts in 2015 to finish 146th on the money list and has plummeted to No. 419 in the world.

“Once I started missing cuts then every week gets harder and harder because you’re trying to make sure you put money on the money list and that’s not a way to play professional golf,” McPherson said.

She said her health is now “pretty good.”

“I feel like I’ve kind of been through the worst of it,” McPherson said. “The last few years I’ve been lost, searching for so much. I hadn’t accepted that I won’t have my old golf swing after surgeries. I’m trying to change golf swings week in and week out. I feel if I can just accept it and just play golf again, then I feel I can still compete.”

McPherson worked on a swing change for four consecutive days with instructor Kelley Phillips in Greensboro, N.C., and was happy with the results, but the change hurt her back and in June she had to receive two epidural shots in her spine for tears in disks in order to continue playing.

“I got my little draw back and was hitting it well, but because of the swing change I started having back issues and my trainer said I can’t do that swing change,” McPherson said. “So two epidurals later I was like, ‘Now what?’ ”

She went back to see her childhood and longtime instructor Mike Schroder at the Steve Dresser Academy in Pawleys Island and now has a swing she believes she can trust that still produces a desired slight draw.

“I was aiming at the middle of the fairway and hoping I hit the fairway,” McPherson said. “You know you’ve lost it when you just aim at the middle of the fairway and don’t even have a ball flight in mind.”

The future

Competing on the LPGA Tour has become more challenging in recent years because the level of play has been upgraded with a lot of young American talent and the continued influx of strong Korean players.

“It’s getting harder and harder. The girls are good,” McPherson said. “The competition is getting better so you can’t afford to make mistakes and hurt yourself.”

McPherson is one of the shorter hitters on the LPGA Tour and relies on accuracy to score. She averaged about 251 yards off the tee when healthy in 2009, which ranked 67th on tour, and was in the top 10 in driving accuracy, hitting 77.4 percent of her fairways.

That accuracy made the two-time SEC individual champion incredibly consistent early in her pro career. She made the cut in each of her 60 Symetra Tour tournaments over three-plus seasons, eventually winning twice in 2006 to finish fourth on the money list and begin her LPGA Tour career without having to return to Q-School for a fourth time.

The loss of her exempt LPGA status this year forced McPherson to think about life after pro golf.

“You have to kind of have those talks with yourself when you figure out if you’re going to sign up for Q-School or not,” McPherson said. “I don’t want to play more than next year if it’s all a struggle. These last few years have not been fun at all. I’ve always said if you’re not having fun then you’re doing the wrong thing.”

Coaching golf in college interests McPherson, who has a Sports and Entertainment Management degree with a minor in Business. Her brother, Kevin, is the head men’s coach at Coastal Carolina and her college teammate and friend Kory Thompson Henkes is the head women’s coach at Ole Miss.

“Afterwards I’d love to get into coaching somehow, something with golf,” McPherson said. “I love the interaction you have with the girls and helping them, and I think that would be something that I might enjoy.

“But I’m not quite there yet.”

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 9:42 PM with the headline "Once among the world’s best, McPherson returns to LPGA Tour Q-School."