After enduring a succession of injuries which threatened to end her career, Scotland’s Carly Booth is preparing to get back on the pro circuit and add to an impressive CV that includes three Ladies European Tour titles. By Nick Bayly.
It will be small consolation to Carly Booth, widely regarded as one the game’s brightest talents when she first broke onto the scene as a 17-year-old amateur at the 2009 Ladies Scottish Open, that many a professional golf career has been temporarily derailed due to freak injuries caused by events entirely unconnected with their chosen profession.
World no.1 Scottie Scheffler had to delay his start to the current season after cutting his hand while making ravioli over the Christmas holidays, while 2014 Ryder Cup player Jamie Donaldson and two-time Open champion Greg Norman both had to take some time out from the game after losing arguments with chainsaws.
Rory McIlroy missed six weeks of the 2015 season – and the chance to defend his 2014 Open Championship title – after injuring his ankle playing five-a-side football, while South African legend Ernie Els missed the entire second half of the 2005 season after a tearing knee ligament while playing with his kids on a sailing holiday.
PERIOD OF PAIN
Booth’s injury, which was similar to Els’, was caused by something slightly less dramatic, but no less painful. It happened in 2022 when she slipped on some water in her kitchen while defrosting a fridge freezer.
Holding a freshly roasted chicken in one hand and a knife in the other only, she was unable to use her arms to break her fall and, while the chicken was saved, her right knee popped out at an awkward angle, and she screamed out in agony as she crashed to the floor.
After initially trying to repair the injury through physio and rehab, 18 months of constant pain later, Booth, and her doctors, reached the conclusion that
knee surgery was the only way that she would be able to resume her golfing career.
The operation took place in January last year, and was deemed a success, but just six months later she was back on the surgeon’s table again to undergo the same procedure on her left knee.
Needless to say, it’s been long a very road back for the 32-year-old Scot, with endless hours spent in the gym over the last six months attempting to regain the
strength in her legs, and prepare herself for the rigours of not just swinging a golf club, but walking 18 holes for four or five days a week.
LOOKING AHEAD
Speaking ahead of her long-awaited return to competitive action, which will see her enter the five one- day Rose Ladies Series events being held during April and May, Booth sounds eager to get writing the next chapter of her career, while also being wary of putting too much pressure on herself to perform out of the gate.
“It’s been a tough few years, I won’t lie, as golf has been everything to me,” she says. “I just want to be in a position where I can get back on tour.
I had the opportunity to play in some early season events on the Ladies European Tour thanks to my career money status, but I don’t feel that I’m quite ready to be playing two or even four consecutive tournament rounds just yet.
So I’ll be feeling my way gently back into the game, and the Rose Ladies Series, which are just 18- hole events, is the perfect way to do that.”
She adds: “Up until very recently I’ve not even been able to play more than nine holes, as I simply haven’t had the strength, so I have spent most of this year working on my fitness in the gym while also try to get my game back in shape.
The weather has been terrible, so conditions have not been ideal for practicing or playing, but you just have to make the best of it, luckily it’s improved in recent weeks”
MOVE DOWN SOUTH
Although hailing from Scotland, Booth now lives in Surrey and is attached to Hankley Common Golf Club and Apes Hill in Barbados, although she can regularly be found working on her game at Foxhills and on the busy driving range at Hoebridge Golf Centre, which is near to her home in Woking.
When you’re earning no money from golf, even shelling out £10 for a bucket of practice balls is no fun, so it’s no wonder she is unwilling to commit to travelling to far flung destinations on the Ladies European Tour – and all the costs that international travel involves – until she thinks she is ready to properly compete again.
“It’s super competitive out there, so I just need to see how my game stacks up under the pressure of competition before I commit to the expense of playing full-time on the main tour again,” she says.
Being absent from the game for so long has not only hurt her world ranking, but has also hurt her in the pocket, with no prize money coming in and what sponsors she had deserting her.
NO PLAN B
She has recently signed up with the respected player management agency Jenahura, who are not only representing her career moving forward but are also proudly sponsoring Carly in her determined bid to return to the top level of the women’s game. “Golf is all I know, so there is no Plan B,” she says,
It’s all a far cry from the Carly Booth who made history aged 11 when becoming the youngest ladies’ club champion in the UK, winning the title at her home club, Dunblane New, in 2003.
Just four years later, aged 15, she was rated the No.1 junior in Europe after winning the 2007 European Junior Masters, the same year she lifted the Scottish U18 and U21 titles.
In 2008, she became the youngest player to represent GB & Ireland in the 76-year history of the Curtis Cup.
She also played at the Junior Ryder Cup in 2006 and 2008, and in 2009 became the youngest-ever Scottish golfer to qualify for the Scottish Women’s Open.
After finishing 14th at the Ladies European Tour qualifying school in 2010, Booth made her pro debut in Morocco in 2011, and success soon followed, landing her breakthrough win at the 2012 Ladies Scottish Open at Archerfield Links, then adding the Ladies Swiss Open a couple of months later.
But she had to wait another five years to enter the winner’s circle again, capturing the Czech Ladies Open in 2019.
A year later a major shoulder injury took her out of the game for five months and signalled the beginning of what has been an incredibly frustrating period of her career.
PRIDE OF THE PAST
Looking back on those early whirlwind years, Booth says: “After my amateur career, there was huge expectation on me to rise to the top.
Winning twice in 2012 was a big weight off my shoulders, but the next season was a tough lesson. It’s all mental.
When I was winning, I was so full of confidence that after tournaments I’d take a few days off, not even touch a club.
Then when I started to struggle, I was hitting the range all the time trying to solve my problems. Doubting myself, and my swing. That’s not good for your game.”
She adds: “I look back at my three wins with great pride, but I still feel I have so much to offer in the game.
It was just unfortunate that I picked up my shoulder injury and then to have two knees replaced in the one year was a big setback, so it’s been difficult.
But I’m not done yet. I’ve always loved a challenge, and I won’t be shying away from this one.”