Bailey Shoemaker spent two days as the most criticised player in amateur golf. The USC junior had become the unwilling face of the pace-of-play debate after a clip from the Augusta National Women's Amateur — showing her standing over a shot for an extended pre-shot routine — went viral and drew waves of online commentary. Speaking with Golf.com, Shoemaker finally explained what was missing from that 30-second clip: a year of nerve surgery, daily rehab, and the genuine fear that she might never play golf again.
"I know I keep saying it and I sound like a broken record, but a year ago, I didn't know if I'd be playing golf anymore," Shoemaker said. "This was a pretty substantial injury, given it was my nerve. I'm happy to have motor function over my hand. I thought I was going to lose my hand basically, you know? So that's pretty scary, too, to think about."
She said the nerve damage means her body does not always do what her brain tells it to — a reality that makes deliberately stalling on a tee shot, as critics suggested, almost beside the point.
"I've been battling injury for over a year now, and still, I mean, I got some things bugging me," she explained. "When you have nerve surgery, you aren't in control. It doesn't matter what my brain says or does. You think I want to do it intentionally? Of course not."
Most of the criticism, Shoemaker said, came from people who had only seen the single shot that went viral.
"That was the worst one yesterday, of course, that went viral," she said. "You clearly don't see the rest of the round. You don't see me at home working out five hours a day, going to rehab, waking up before practice to go to rehab — you don't see all of that. You don't see what's behind the scenes."
Shoemaker credited her support system at USC for getting her back into competition at all.
"I put a lot of faith in USC and my coaches and trainers and whatnot," she said. "They got me to here where I am today."
Asked whether the avalanche of criticism had thrown her off, Shoemaker pushed back. She said her father had drilled into her how to handle negative feedback in competitive sport, and the Augusta backlash had functioned the way she was taught it should: as fuel.
"If anything, it was fuel," she said. "My dad has trained me right to use that as fuel to ignite me a little bit. I didn't pay too much mind to it."
She was even more direct about the people calling for her to be penalised, fined, or removed from the field.
"Can you imagine anyone being here in my shoes?" Shoemaker said. "Good for them if they are, but I'm just going to keep doing my thing. I'm playing Augusta National tomorrow."
The broader pace-of-play conversation in women's professional golf has only intensified in 2026, with the LPGA recently adopting one-stroke penalties for repeat offenders and the USGA reviewing its own enforcement procedures. Shoemaker's situation sits awkwardly inside that debate — a player whose long pre-shot setup is, by her own account, partly a function of nerve damage rather than indecision.
For now, she is asking viewers to widen the frame.
"You don't see what's behind the scenes," she repeated. The Augusta National Women's Amateur, for Shoemaker, was the result of more than a thousand days of rehabilitation. The viral 30 seconds were not.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/bailey-shoemaker-augusta-amateur-slow-play-nerve-injury-fuel-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
