After Bailey Shoemaker’s viral slow-play moment at Augusta National Women’s Am, context is important
EVANS, Ga. – Bailey Shoemaker had just been made aware that she’d gone viral.
As she put the finishing touches on her 1-over 73 Wednesday to open this Augusta National Women’s Amateur, Shoemaker was shown on the broadcast taking approximately 1 minute, 12 seconds over her tee ball on Champions Retreat’s par-3 eighth, her second-to-last hole. She took several waggles as she struggled to pull the trigger before eventually hitting the ball to 25 feet.
Immediately, social media lit up the USC junior.
Slow play is a major issue, at all levels of the game, but in Shoemaker’s case, there is important context. 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 “excruciating pain” 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 “mental battle.”
“Just trying to reassure myself that there isn’t pain anymore,” Shoemaker explained. “I’ve been struggling with it for the last four months, just being fully committed to hitting the ball.”
Reached by phone Tuesday evening, Shoemaker said, audibly dejected, “That’s what it looks like.”
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’s second round eight shots off the lead.
“It’s not easy what she’s going through as far as being able to swing comfortably and confidently,” USC head coach Justin Silverstein said last week. “She’s taking it back and her brain is still firing like it’s going to hurt, and that’s how she played all last spring.”
Silverstein calls Shoemaker, pre-injury, “one of the fastest players I’ve ever coached.”
But in front of cameras and under the bright lights of arguably the biggest women’s amateur tournament, Shoemaker showed that her battle continues.
