SPRINGFIELD NJ — Mel Reid “quit” quit golf less than a year ago.
“In September, I literally told Carly (Reid’s wife), ‘I’m going into media, like I’m going to be one of you guys, I’m not playing golf anymore,'” Reid revealed Friday at Baltusrol.
Full-field scores from the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
But just nine months later, the 35-year-old Englishwoman is T-2, one stroke off the 36-hole KPMG Women’s PGA Championship lead.
And it’s been quite a ride back to this point for the world No. 214.
The 2020 ShopRite LPGA Classic winner and six-time champion on the Ladies European Tour had fallen on hard times a few years ago. Trying to regain her dominant form, she was hitting nearly 500 golf balls a day. Doing that, however, Reid injured her right wrist.
“It wasn’t something that was very smart, but I felt at the time that’s what I needed to do,” she said, “and it was stressing me out, and then my injury, and I wasn’t playing well, and I was tired, so it’s a kind of snowball effect.”
In jeopardy of losing her LPGA card, she played through the injury. Then, exactly one year ago at the 2022 KPMG Women’s PGA, Reid went back to her old swing coach, Jorge Parada, the head pro at Liberty National.
“I’ve worked with him since 2018, I think, or ’17 even, and I think I kind of split with him in the middle of ’21,” she said. “It was not a good decision for me, which I own, and luckily he took me back. I didn’t think he would, but he did.”
Because of Reid’s injury, she came into this year with medical status on the priority list after working with Parada in the off-season. She had six starts to improve her tour status, but in her first five events she missed three cuts and her best finish was a T-39. Her final medical start came at the Founders Cup — and she birdied the last to make the cut on the number en route to a T-25 finish.
“That was huge for me,” she said. “Kind of reshuffled me back into stuff, which kind of took a little bit of pressure off. That’s been the turning point.”
She followed that up with a T-27, T-15 and T-20. Ahead of her opening round at Baltusrol, however, she was skeptical that her strong run would continue.
“I hit it like s— yesterday in my warmup, so I was like, ‘Oh, this could be interesting,’ then hit a horrible drive off the first,” she said.
But she’d recovered to the tune of the clubhouse lead when she walked off the course Friday.
“Am I surprised (I’m leading)? Yes and no,” she said. “It’s halfway. Like to me, I don’t feel like I have the lead. It’s kind of weird. Don’t really think that I did anything that impressive today. I just kind of stuck to my game plan. … I’m just trying to keep in my own little world and just execute the shots as well as possible and just the standard stuff.”
The LPGA’s best wanted the challenge of Baltusrol, and Baltusrol has delivered
Leona Maguire, playing late in the afternoon, would finish one shot better than Reid to hold the lead through 36.
Reid, though, knows there are still two days of golf to be played and won’t get ahead of herself. But however she fares following 72 holes at Baltusrol, exciting times lie ahead for her and Carly, as they are expecting a baby.
After nearly shelving her clubs for good late last year, she’s had one heck of a voyage climbing back to relevance — and becoming a mother has fueled her journey back to success.
“I want to win tournaments,” she said, “and I want my kid and my wife to be running out. Like that’s something that I would love a moment to have. It’s definitely given me a lot more drive and got my hunger back for the game for sure.”