{"id":585229,"date":"2025-11-21T18:43:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/585229\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T18:43:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:43:27","slug":"pro-golfer-alison-lee-found-a-unique-way-to-calm-her-mind-reading-fantasy-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/585229\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro golfer Alison Lee found a unique way to calm her mind: Reading fantasy books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering leadership, personal development and performance through the lens of sports. Follow Peak\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For as long as Alison Lee can remember, she\u2019s been hard on herself.<\/p>\n

Lee, a 30-year-old professional golfer on the LPGA Tour, has battled anxiety and doubt in many forms: the \u201cyips,\u201d fear of what people thought, pressure to perform and lack of confidence in her ability.<\/p>\n

She vented to family and friends, tried counseling, meditating and opened up about her experiences in interviews. She has two professional wins, both on the Ladies European Tour, but her dream has always been to win on the LPGA Tour. In a lot of ways, she believes, her headspace before tournaments and rounds has set her back.<\/p>\n

Until she found a unique solution: fantasy novels.<\/p>\n

A few years ago she set goals for herself on GoodReads, an app to track and review books, in order to get back into reading. During long mornings or slow practice rounds, Lee would crack open a new fantasy book. She noticed after reading that her mood and her thoughts shifted. But most surprisingly, her nerves seemed duller, if not almost gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not thinking about what\u2019s going on with me,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about what\u2019s going on in this fantasy world.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she caught herself worrying about what people would think of her or how she performed on the green, her next thought became about a character in her book: Oh my gosh, she just endured torture for five days in a row. What I\u2019m doing is nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this sounds so dumb,\u201d she said, laughing, \u201cbut that honestly helped me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nothing is dumb if it works, and Lee has embraced new ways to tame her mind in the past. Years ago, she played a round of golf with Fred Couples, who won The Masters in 1992, three years before Lee was born. Afterwards, Couples reached out and encouraged Lee, but he did it in a way Lee had never experienced before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was certain language, how he would speak to me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a coddling thing like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re so great.\u2019 It\u2019s, \u2018Hey, wake up. You\u2019re really good at golf. So you need to believe it. Do you hear me? What\u2019s going on with you? You can\u2019t be talking to yourself like this. Hey, you need to wake the f\u2014 up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s someone you respect, and someone who believes in you, it just means so much more,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The different, unexpected methods have ultimately helped Lee in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of 2023, Lee was competing in the BMW Ladies Championship. Heading into the last day of the tournament, she was in contention to win.<\/p>\n

At the time she was reading a fantasy series called \u201cThrone of Glass,\u201d which she now ranks as her all-time favorite series. The night before the final round, she felt really nervous, so she read before eventually falling asleep. The next morning, she used the hour-long commute to the course to \u201cpump out a few more chapters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of living in my own world and being really nervous, overthinking and getting stressed out,\u201d she said, \u201cI was able to really absorb the book and enter into this different fantasy land. It really gave me a sense of ease.\u201d<\/p>\n

She soon realized it wasn\u2019t going to be a normal round. While a round usually takes around four hours and 40 minutes, Lee said this round took six hours. Sometimes she said she waited as long as 10 or 15 minutes between holes or shots.<\/p>\n

Lee knew she needed to make a few birdies to stay in contention for the win, but she also knew if she continued to stand there and wait, she would get in her head. So during the last few holes, she pulled out her Kindle, found a restroom and sat in the stall to read her book.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did feel a bit crazy reading a book in the middle of the round when it was obviously really important,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She birdied the final two holes to force a playoff. While she lost the tournament, she was happy with how she performed and thinks reading during the tense final round helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to be confident, and sometimes it\u2019s tough to do that,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you read a book, you\u2019re reading someone else\u2019s POV or reading about someone else\u2019s life. It gives you perspective and a step back, so you can look at everything from an outsider perspective, and you are allowed to think about things differently then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee became a mom this year and began her professional comeback only recently. The life change required adjustments to her game as well: to her swing, her free time and, of course, her priorities. She plans to make a full comeback next year. Only this time, she knows how to better manage her exhaustion, fear and questioning when it arises.<\/p>\n

As she eats breakfast now before rounds, or she has some free time while her son, Levi, naps, she pulls up a book and takes a step back into fantasy land. She reiterates that it might sound a little \u201cdumb\u201d to other people. But more importantly she knows that it has helped.<\/p>\n

Want to give fantasy a try? For those looking to dive in, whether for fun or to see if it can help, Lee recommends \u201cFourth Wing\u201d by Rebecca Yarros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0This story is part of Peak,\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s desk covering leadership, personal development and performance through the lens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2766,2826,7126,131080,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-585229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-olympics","11":"tag-peak","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115589166268596599","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}