I THOUGHT I WAS FINISHED BUT I COULDN’T GIVE UP

It hits you like a brick,” says Becky Brewerton as she gathers her emotions. “I’m hoping this will be the week; the week where it all changes and the hard work pays off. But every week is the same. Monday and Tuesday, I feel fine. Then, as the clock ticks down to Thursday, I can feel the pressure building. The nerves are getting stronger. Thursday arrives and I’m trying to convince myself it will be okay. But I am putting on a front. It hits me as I walk to the first tee and I realise it’s happening again. I feel terrified – but by now it’s too late.”

There is a long pause as Brewerton takes a moment. We have been speaking for nearly 40 minutes and there have been a couple of these, but none seem as significant as this one. It is hardly surprising, as the 39-year-old continues to pore over the last ten years of a career that has been the absolute definition of ‘two halves’. Brewerton joined the professional ranks in 2003, with her reputation and glittering record as an amateur turning heads from the word go. By 2009, she was a multiple winner on the Ladies European Tour with two Solheim Cup appearances. Not yet 30, she was, just as everybody expected, going places – and she was always up for the fight.

Twelve years later and Brewerton is still fighting, but it is – about how her game had sunk to such depths that she did not want to play anymore. This is not strictly true; she was desperate to play, but golf had become such a struggle that just getting through 18 holes would put an immense strain on her mental state. Selfconscious, embarrassed and struck down by a vicious case of the ‘yips’ – from the tee, not on the greens – the outlook was bleak to the point she had accepted her life as a professional golfer was over.