At the insistence of her coach, Jessica Shepley has done swing drills for a month in front of a mirror without hitting golf balls.
She's gone through a period of what she described as “floating,” when she lost purpose and direction.
But the 25-year-old from Owen Sound, Ont., who lives part of the year in Oakville, Ont., has direction now: She's played her way on to the 2009 LPGA Tour.
Shepley finished seventh on the Duramed Futures Tour money list (which wrapped up its season Sunday), with the top 10 getting LPGA cards for next year.
Shepley will get into between 10 and 20 tournaments in 2009, and plans to play in the LPGA's final qualifying school at Daytona Beach, Fla., from Dec. 1 to 8 to try to gain full tour status.
Meanwhile, there's one more tournament, the limited-field Georgia Invitational, Oct. 17 through 19, near Atlanta, for which she's eligible.
The first prize is $21,000 (U.S.), more than any tournament on the Duramed Futures regular schedule.
Shepley's biggest payday was at the Duramed Championship in Mason, Ohio, in May, where she picked up $11,000 for placing second.
It looked as though Shepley might get into a playoff in Ohio, having birdied four of the last five holes to reach eight under par. However, Stephanie Otteson holed a 30-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win.
Still, it was another big step for Shepley. The steps for a while had been small and some even backwards.
“I had very high expectations for myself going into college,” Shepley said of her four years at the University of Tennessee, from which she graduated with a degree in journalism and public relations. “But I didn't fulfill the goals I set.”
Shepley had learned from some of the best while she was a junior.
Marlene Streit, Canada's only member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, had taken an interest.
And Sandra Post, a winner of nine LPGA Tour events and now a popular full-time teacher, worked with Shepley, starting when she was 14.
“Her dad brought her to me on the range that first time we met, and the only thing she could hit was a pop fly,” Post said recently from her home in Caledon, Ont.
Post took Shepley to the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Palm Springs, Calif. She asked her which golfer she'd like to meet.
“She wanted to see Dottie [Pepper],” Post recalled. (Pepper was a fiery player then and is just as fiery on television now working tournaments for NBC and the Golf Channel.)
“I left them and they chatted.”
Post and Shepley pretty much stopped working together when Shepley went to college. Still, Shepley acknowledges her influence.
“I was very fortunate to meet Sandra,” the personable young woman said. “She helped me a lot when I was a junior.”
Shepley later started working with current coach Sean Foley, who also advises PGA Tour players Stephen Ames and Sean O'Hair.
Foley, a Canadian, has an academy at the Piper's Heath Golf Club in Milton, Ont., and another in Orlando.
Shepley and Foley have worked together for a couple of years.
He wanted her to do that month of drills without hitting a ball for a reason.
“I told her she could chip and putt, but that if she hit balls, we were done,” Foley said. “I was testing her will and desire.”
Shepley passed the test, and will now join fellow Canadians Lorie Kane and Alena Sharp on the LPGA Tour.
“I can't say enough about what Sean has done for me,” Shepley said. “The swing part is huge, but he's done so much for me outside golf, teaching me to be nicer to myself, helping with my personal life.”
Still, she'll be asking plenty of herself next year. That word “potential” hangs over every young player who makes it to the PGA and LPGA tours.
“She averages 265-270 yards [off the tee], which is miles on the LPGA Tour,” Foley said. “She understands she has to clean up her wedge game and become a better putter. I'd say that she's at least two years away from swinging the way I want her to, but the beautiful thing is that if her potential is 10 out of 10, she's only 6.5 now.”
It's 6.5 and counting. There's no reason Shepley shouldn't have a successful LPGA career.
Once lost, she's found herself, and knows where she's going.