Balancing professional and personal life is difficult for any professional golfer. But elite sportswomen carry an extra pressure, trying to balance both. Several LPGA and LET stars have had to take a career break to manage pregnancy, but have fought their way back to elite competition in recent seasons. Georgia Hall was among them. Speaking to Sky Sports Golf ahead of her return to Royal Lytham & St. Annes, she was blunt about how much she underestimated the time her body would need to recover.
“It’s taken quite a bit of a toll on the body. Definitely underestimated how long it takes for your body to recover. But I’m getting slowly there and obviously excited to play.”
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“Yeah, it’s definitely underestimated for sure. And I don’t think it gets enough recognition. Yeah, it’s really over a year, really, because for nine months you’re pregnant, and then it takes, they say, nine months for your body to fully get back. So even the muscles come back properly. It’s hard, but it can be done if you have the right support around you and the right team after.”
Hall and her fiancé, former DP World Tour player Paul Dunne, welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Connor, in February 2026. Before she stepped away from the course last August, she had been a fixture at the top of the women’s game. Her win at the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2018 made her one of the consistent names on both the LPGA and LET.
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Hall returned to competition just three months after giving birth, competing at the Jabra Ladies Open in France from May 28-31. She made the cut and finished T28 on the leaderboard. She followed it with a T44 at the Dutch Ladies Open (June 19-22) and a T24 finish at the Hulencourt Women’s Open in Belgium (July 2-5).
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Sports have clear double standards regarding players returning to the field. When male athletes have to withdraw because of a long-term injury, the conversation around the comeback is loud and sympathetic. Whereas when female athletes have to step away to have a child, that same empathy rarely follows. Even though the physical toll can stretch well beyond a year. The 30-year-old was candid when asked whether the sport directly matches the effort it requires, saying that the conversations are definitely underestimated and female pros do not get enough recognition.
Despite that, the pro has taken a forward-looking perspective.
But she’s not the only LPGA player to describe the stretch as brutally underestimated. Alison Lee, who returned to competition only months after having an emergency C-section, also spoke about facing a hard time. She admitted she assumed motherhood would end her career. She also shared that she was thinking about retirement after giving birth.
For many LPGA and LET players, coming back to the course, the aspiration is almost the same: to show other players and women that their lives do not have to stop after childbirth. Hall credited her team and partner for helping her return, while Lee has leaned heavily on family to manage her recovery around tournament travel.
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Hall will play in the 2026 Amundi Evian Championship (July 9-12) before focusing on the Scottish Open (July 23–26) and the AIG Women’s Open (July 30–August 2).
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