there is important context<\/a>. She had surgery last October to fix the cubital tunnel syndrome in her right arm, but before that, she spent about seven months playing through \u201cexcruciating pain\u201d and numbness so severe that he fingers would involuntarily come off the club at the top of her backswing. While Shoemaker has returned to 100% physical health, evidenced by her five top-12s this spring for the Trojans, she revealed to Golf Channel last week that she was still fighting a \u201cmental battle.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cJust trying to reassure myself that there isn\u2019t pain anymore,\u201d Shoemaker explained. \u201cI\u2019ve been struggling with it for the last four months, just being fully committed to hitting the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reached by phone Tuesday evening, Shoemaker said, audibly dejected, \u201cThat\u2019s what it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Shoemaker, who famously shot a record 66 two years ago at Augusta National to finish runner-up, was more frustrated by the missed putts, as she enters Thursday\u2019s second round eight shots off the lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy what she\u2019s going through as far as being able to swing comfortably and confidently,\u201d USC head coach Justin Silverstein said last week. \u201cShe\u2019s taking it back and her brain is still firing like it\u2019s going to hurt, and that\u2019s how she played all last spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silverstein calls Shoemaker, pre-injury, \u201cone of the fastest players I\u2019ve ever coached.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in front of cameras and under the bright lights of arguably the biggest women\u2019s amateur tournament, Shoemaker showed that her battle continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EVANS, Ga. \u2013 Bailey Shoemaker had just been made aware that she\u2019d gone viral. As she put the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-559276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}