![\"Leonie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/leonie-harm-womens-open.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\tLeonie Harm experienced enough hardship in her youth for many lifetimes. Ahead of the AIG Women\u2019s Open, she tells TG her inspirational story.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart goes out for the version of myself that suffered through 11 years of thinking she\u2019s going to die every single time she hit a bad golf shot.\u201d Leonie Harm is reflecting on the car crash she wasn\u2019t supposed to survive as a teenager and the residual trauma that then slowly enveloped her adult life.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the 15-year-old Harm was out for a run in her home city of Heidelberg in south-west Germany when she was struck by a drunk driver traveling at 44 miles-an-hour. Harm was flung across the road, suffering a fractured skull, multiple bone fractures and a collapsed lung. She was given less than a one percent chance of survival and and placed in an induced coma for five days. \u201cThey said there\u2019s basically no chance she\u2019s gonna survive this severe brain damage,\u201d she recalls being told in recovery.<\/p>\n
Consumed by golf through childhood, Harm was a talented amateur and at this stage was destined for the professional ranks. The first question she asked when she eventually regained consciousness was whether it was viable to play in the upcoming German Girls\u2019 Championship. \u201cSeven weeks later,\u201d she says, \u201cI was back out on the golf course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harm has recollection of her recovery but not the accident itself, a chasm in her memory that she once felt relieved to have. \u201cThat whole morning scene of me running was just completely gone,\u201d she says. \u201cJust no memories at all. There\u2019s no out-of-body experience, there\u2019s nothing whatsoever. This whole time I was like, \u2018Oh yeah, it\u2019s fine, like my body can\u2019t remember.’\u201d<\/p>\n
But two years ago, Harm began to understand the extent to which her near-fatal experience has shaped her life. \u201cIt turns out that is the highest trauma response we have, so my body was actually in survival mode for 11 years until I decided to address that in therapy,\u201d she tells TG at Royal Lytham, where she is about to make her fourth appearance in the AIG Women\u2019s Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally I was able to process the emotions I had through that accident. My brain could finally find peace again and relax and function like a human and not like someone who\u2019s out in war. Humans are out in the war in a survival fight every day. A bunker in the fairway on the second hole at Lytham is a bunker in the fairway \u2013 still not ideal to be in but it\u2019s not a life or death situation which I used to feel like before. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had full-on panic attacks on the golf course every single time I tried to hit a tee shot. I experienced it in highest stress situations where I would have blackout moments. I thought at first that this is a fear of needles. It starts when you take like blood in the hospital. I started blacking out completely. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut then it started creeping into my golf more and more \u2013 and the more stressed I was the more it happened. That was where a sports psychologist and I parted ways because they were like, \u2018Well everyone\u2019s afraid when they\u2019re on the first tee, just push through it.\u2019 I said, \u2018I don\u2019t think you understand.\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t have a sensation in my body, I would start my swing and the next thing I notice is me having finished the swing and I have no idea where the ball is going. I was in a situation where I had to remove myself from golf for my mental health. It was insanity to just keep putting yourself in that situation that your body just clearly fears to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Long before her golf game reached the point of no return, Harm explored the possibility of another career in her youth. A graduate of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Houston, Harm worked to find a Covid vaccine candidate during her college days Stateside. <\/p>\n
But it was in Houston, during the summer of 2016, that Harm was faced with another personal trauma. Weeks before starting her second semester, Harm\u2019s mother, Desiree, died. She had been battling breast cancer for several years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt my first semester back my mom\u2019s cancer risk returned and she stuck it out like a trooper,\u201d Harm recalls. \u201cShe didn\u2019t really bring it up when I was away. Suddenly you have your whole world falling apart and your closest confidant not being there as you then have to go back to get a degree on the other side of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harm finds comfort in the fact she was at home in Germany when her mother passed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would have hated for my mom to having to go through this while I\u2019m away. It was very clear that it was just going to be weeks so I think ultimately in the perspective of this being a really horrific situation, it was good in the way that we could say our proper goodbyes and actually physically be there. Then I went back to college had a semester of trying to grieve. I would give myself like a D-minus for that, I was not passing grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harm was 18 when she lost her mother and says that, reflecting on it now, she was too harsh on herself as she struggled to process her emotions. She is grateful for the \u201cincredible\u201d support of her college coaches in helping her navigate those isolating first months after her loss. When Harm was set on retirement in 2024, she was considering building on her education and working in cancer research. She still has plans in the future to dedicate herself to that career.<\/p>\n
For now, though, Harm says she \u201cwill still be chasing a white\u00a0little golf ball\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is only by chance that this perplexing pursuit has remained Harm\u2019s day job. \u201cIn 2024, I actually made the decision to quit,\u201d she explains. \u201cI was done and dusted.\u201d Harm planned to give up the game entirely after one final tournament at the notorious DLF Country Club in India.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the hardest golf course we have on the schedule,\u201d she says. \u201cIf\u00a0you\u2019re not hitting it well, you\u2019re not going to have a good time. I thought that was perfect\u00a0because I was going to have the most miserable time of my life on the golf course and I\u2019m not\u00a0going miss it because that\u2019s really the the thing you\u2019re afraid of.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out, Harm\u2019s flights were cancelled and she could not make it to New Delhi. A week later though, she caddied for a friend as a favor at a lucrative event in Saudi Arabia. \u201cI just hit a couple balls on the range for probably the last time in my life,\u201d she says. Opportunistically, Scott Edwards, a PGA coach at Riyadh Golf Club, asked if she could take a look at the swing she was convinced was beyond repair. Harm had spent months digging into the dirt, driving herself crazy, trying to find alternate swing patterns.<\/p>\n
But with Edwards, she found an almost instant improvement. Edwards made her realize her swing demons could indeed be overcome, and inadvertently reignited her career. There was no overnight fix and the first-tee nerves did not immediately dissipate, but slowly Harm found confidence again.<\/p>\n
Almost 18 months after hiring Edwards, Harm added a special chapter to her inspirational story when she won her first Ladies European Tour title at the age of 28.<\/p>\n
Instead of fearing the moment of jeopardy in the final round of May\u2019s German Masters, Harm embraced it. She birdied her final two holes at the Green Eagle Course to close out victory by a single stroke. While Harm received $60,000 in prize money, the victory opened doors to the game\u2019s biggest stages \u2013 like this week\u2019s $10 million showpiece in Lytham \u2013 that for myriad reasons should never have been in reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the moment it feels like there\u2019s no light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are situations out there where there really isn\u2019t and the situation itself\u00a0is horrific. For example, I\u2019ll never have my mom back. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s irreversible\u00a0struggles and traumas but the version of yourself that you\u2019re going to be once you\u2019ve\u00a0fully navigated through it and emotionally processed everything is not going to be the\u00a0same version of yourself that you\u2019ve been before you went through all this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t wait for the next challenges to come my way\u00a0because I\u2019m really excited for the character development ahead of me. I\u2019m really\u00a0excited to meet the version of myself that I\u2019m going to be three, four, five years down the\u00a0line when I\u2019ve potentially navigated through more struggles which life just throws those our\u00a0way.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I find that quite liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leonie Harm experienced enough hardship in her youth for many lifetimes. Ahead of the AIG Women\u2019s Open, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-829497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}