Sara Byrne’s elbow injury was a standard occurrence for a normal day in the depths of winter. She slipped on ice and fell on her right elbow, fracturing it and damaging some ligaments also. It wasn’t quite ‘man slips on ice in 2010’ spec but the effects were deeply troubling and left the Cork woman mourning the death of her golf game.
A game she had worked so hard to salvage in 2025 after a rollercoaster rookie season as a professional where she attempted to balance schedules on the Epson Tour – feeder tour to the LPGA – and the Ladies European Tour. It was a difficult time for the Dromoland Castle star who was often alone Stateside with her own thoughts and when results aren’t going well, those thoughts tend to be negative.
By the time mid summer came around last year, Byrne had foregone her American dream and was putting all of her energy into preserving her status on the LET for this term. Doing so was lauded at the time and rightly so, it truly was a courageous effort with four cuts in her last five starts including a 5th place finish in Switzerland.
Byrne was bouncing into the winter of 2026, ready to knuckle down on the range and in the gym and give a proper full season on the Ladies European Tour a go having learned that there is no rush to make it to the LPGA Tour. At 25, there is plenty of time.
That was until a random January day, after what she had described as a superb gym session, she slipped and fell awkwardly. Once again she was plunged into turmoil. She was advised against surgery for the sake of her career but there was still no guarantee that her elbow heal sufficiently to give her the seemingly simple and taken for granted function of being able to straighten her arm.
“Last year was tough on the golf course but it was tough for personal reasons as well so when it got to January 1st I was thinking that, oh my god, 2025 is finally over and then five days in to 2026 I break my elbow and I was thinking I just can’t catch a break. I was thinking ‘will I play professional golf again?’ It was a whirlwind of a few weeks. It felt like my life was ending.”
After missing eight events and four months waiting for the all clear to return to competitive action, the Douglas native made her first start of the season on the LET and since then has made six cuts in eleven starts including a career-high runner-up finish in France on just her third start since injury. A final round of 69 at last weekend’s Italian Open has bumped her up to 59th in the Order of Merit. With five events remaining on the LET and with the top-70 retaining their cards for next season it looks as if Byrne will have no stresses towards the end of the campaign.
She may even have more in the tank and finish with a flourish which would be in contrast to the physical and mental burnout she felt at the end of last season.
To say Byrne has had a topsy turvy first couple of seasons as a professional would be an understatement. But it’s great podcast or written content. What makes her so easy to root for is that she is unapologetically open about her struggles as well as her successes. Stories of catching last minute flights, eleventh hour trips to passport offices to sort visa issues or being fined hundreds of dollars for eating in a players lounge while waiting as a reserve at an Epson event. There isn’t much she hasn’t seen in the infant years of her career.
But in the last two seasons, Byrne has been bullish and has met each challenge head on. It took courage to retain her card last season after a torrid time and her courage has been rewarded so far this season again. It would have been easy to feel downbeat about things having missed a large chunk of the season through injury. It would have been easy to think that things were going against her over the winter. To return with the grain of doubt in her mind about being able to hit certain shots out of certain lies with her elbow.
But she has come out fighting again and looks to have added a consistency to her game which has of course yielded the results that sees her in a positive position on the season long rankings.
She admitted that being sidelined for the first eight events of the LET season has given her a fresh perspective on golf and life.
“I am enjoying it so much more. I feel like the two tours really took it out of me, trying to cross the Atlantic every couple of weeks was just too hard. Everything is in a way better head space, my game is great and I am just playing with a lot more confidence and fun and letting golf be the game it is and make it happen.”
Irish golf has commanded a lot of headlines this season, understandably so. But Byrne’s year is an underrated success story and she has the tools to grab the spotlight over the business end of the campaign.
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