Emma Talley is on the rebound after hitting rock bottom.

With opening rounds of 65 - 67 at the Portland Classic, Talley is off to her strongest start of the season at Columbia Edgewater Country Club. On a course where making birdies is a must, Talley is bogey-free through 36 holes, well-positioned heading into the weekend, and poised to make just her second cut of the LPGA Tour season.

“It's been a really big grind and it's been really hard,” Talley said about the challenges she faced on the LPGA Tour. “I feel like we all put in so much work and sometimes it doesn't pay off for some reason.”

Throughout the 2023 LPGA Tour season, the fruits of all that hard work remained elusive for Talley, who missed the cut in more than half the starts she made. It was a time that she described as the lowest of her career.

“I struggled so much last year and I kind of - I don't want to say gave up mentally - but kind of I hit rock bottom,” Talley said about the challenges she endured last year, which bled into this season.

Talley has spent most of the 2024 season balancing her time on both the Epson Tour and LPGA Tour. She has made eight starts on the Epson Tour this year with two top-15 finishes and one missed cut since March. Her 2024 LPGA Tour season began in April with a string of missed cuts and she failed to advance to the weekend through the first six months of the year. She finally turned the tide at the Dana Open in July, when she recorded her first sub-70 round of the season and finished tied for 29th.

“This whole year, I know this is kind of sad, but my husband caddied for me at ShopRite this year and I joked, but it's true, it was the first time I hadn't cried on the golf course in almost eight months,” Talley said about her struggles in recent months.

Talley sought help by connecting with a new coach during the off-season, but it wasn’t until the last month and a half that Talley said she’s really started to see a change in her game which resulted in her solid finish at the Dana Open and strong start to this week’s Portland Classic. And Talley’s recent success is as much a reflection on how her game has improved as it is how her mental outlook has shifted. She’s found herself not only inspired by the success of her friend Lauren Coughlin, who earned her breakthrough win last week at the CPKC Women’s Open, but also in knowing that there is more to life beyond golf.

“After seeing Lauren last week and a few of my friends, Solheim Cup coming up, and I want babies one day, just a lot of things feeling good right now as far as just being out on the golf course and my identity is not in golf,” Talley explained about her new outlook. “It's just starting to click for me.”

This year, Talley has dabbled in other avenues outside of professional golf, exploring what the next step might look like should she decide to step away from life on Tour. In March, she joined the coaching staff at Western Kentucky University in her home state. She’s also spent some time on the media side, contributing to Golf Channel and the LPGA’s podcast along with other video content geared around her fellow players.

“It's been great to see like how the best players in the world are doing it. They make it look a lot easier than how I play golf,” Talley said about watching her fellow competitors through a media lens. “It's been very inspiring and I think all of us when we take a step back, the bigger picture of golf, we're just playing a game of chess really. So it's really fun.”

Talley will look to keep the fun rolling this weekend in Portland where she says she’s in a great place mentally, feeling calm and confident with her game. Talley says she knows that so much of the game of golf is played between the ears and after mentally hitting rock bottom last year, she is well on her way to bouncing back.

“I feel really good about my game and I feel really at peace and I like this golf course, so I'm just excited.”

Talley on the rebound after hitting rock bottom

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