Tour Diaries: Behind the Scenes with an LPGA PT

As a physical therapist that does a little travel work for the LPGA/Epson tour, I thought it would be fun to share a little behind the scenes look from the medical team at an event. With HIPPA and just being courteous to the players, I am not going to go into any details of treatments but will give you an idea of what injuries we commonly see and some generalized treatment techniques we use.

Typical Set Up:

Unlike the PGA Tour who has both a "gym" trailer and a "medical" one. On the LPGA we only have one trailer at this time that has to work for both. We will generally also have access to a gym in the city of the tournament if the club does not have one itself, so the gym area of the trailer becomes more of a pre-round activation area or used more for stability work. It is also a great area for the physios to show our corrective exercises we are prescribing for the players or even to just work through some techniques for lifts if a player is struggling with one.

On the LPGA, we staff two physical therapists for every event and then will occasionally have a strength coach, massage therapist or chiropractor onsite as well. Players at this level may also have private physios and trainers, but they will have their own designated work spaces on-site.

PT setup for Event without the Trailer

Now I mentioned earlier that we only have one trailer on the LPGA. But that trailer cannot make it to every event due to the logistics of getting it around the country or when we leave the states.

When that is the case, Alex (our Rehab Director) helps the tournament pick out an adequate space in the clubhouse where we will work out of for the week. During those weeks, we have to make sure to pack an extra supply bag of our goodies to have everything that we need and would generally have on the trailer.

Now on the Epson Tour, there is not a physio trailer, so setting up at the course and making sure we have adequate space is something that has to be done for every event. This can lead to a wide variety of set ups for the PTs throughout the year.

Here are a few of the set ups from the events that I covered this year on the Epson Tour:

Epson Tour Set Up

The Epson Tour is also unique in the sense that as of right now, we only have one physical therapist who will cover the event. Since there are no privates on this tour due to the added costs for the players, the PT schedule will be full as soon as it is released every day!

Tournament Week:

Monday is generally when we are all rolling into town and getting settled in. This isn't a work day but if we have a different set up for the week (like we did at Black Desert Resort not having the rehab trailer onsite) we may get over to the course to check it out and do some minor set up. This week we are in the brand new spa locker room which is right across from the gym here at the resort. With our new strength & conditioning coaches out with us some this year, having the gym nearby to collaborate was a nice touch. The hotel gym set up this week is pretty sweet with just about any piece of equipment you can think of.

On Tuesday, practice rounds will start for the players. For practice rounds, we open our schedules a little later than we do on tournament days. But we are still here nearly all day to be available for appointments as well as walk ins for the players. Since the players are in a stretch with a lot of traveling, this can also be a good recovery day for them where we are taking care of some nagging aches or pains with dry needling and various other manual therapy techniques. A lot of the players will also make sure to get in a good workout this day since they will have plenty of time to recover. Most have programs they are following from coaches in their hometowns but may still want to get our opinion on them as well or any accessory movements they may need to get in if they are battling an injury.

Wednesday is Pro-Am day. This doesn't changes things much for us other than we might start doing a little more taping for those players that have some blisters that are hanging around. This week after the first night or two, I saw several players with neck pain. This is an area that for most players, it appears that it will actually come from their sleeping arrangements since the pillows are varying weekly and can go from being flat to tall and firm. After some manipulations and soft tissue work, we will generally have these areas cleaned up and just provide some education on how we can try to mitigate these the best we can. The most common areas where player's have been dealing with some injuries that I have encountered so far this week have been the lower back, neck, and the lead elbow.

Once we move into the tournament days starting Thursday-Sunday, we make sure to be at the course at least an hour and a half before the first tee for player's that need to be taped, need some quick adjustments, or go through some body check movements as part of their pre-round routine. When it comes to these days, we actually end up seeing most of these players for two sessions. The first is those quick ones right before they start their warm-up just to get the body moving and feeling well or tp get a little tape. Then after the round, we actually do a recovery session which may consist of more soft-tissue work, mobilizations, and might finish up with some sort of recovery device (I.E. Normatec Boots).

We are available throughout the whole day as it is also our responsibility for any course call that a player request such as for assessing an injury after hitting a root, or just needling to reapply a tape job that is starting to come off during the round.

Common Injuries:

The most common area of injuries that I have seen throughout my time this past year are the lower back, elbow, and neck. That doesn't mean that we don't see plenty of other regions in a given day, but these just seem to pop up more regularly when I sit back and look at the schedule. It seems like every week once we are in the thick of the season, we have a lot of players who we are trying to help keep these areas under control until we get to a little down time where some bigger adjustments can be made.

In general, most of our players have good mobility and would pass most of the golf specific tests (think TPI) even when they "feel tight." But tracking changes in mobility throughout the year is important , especially since we will see some players tighten up as the weeks go on.

Restoring their normal mobility and then providing ways to build stability into those ranges (such as hip internal rotation strength work as this video here shows) is something I feel like we spend a lot of time on and is generally missed in a lot of the workout programming.

These players are also GRINDERS and will spend hours on the range. Education on how to better break that up can make a big difference in some of the overuse injuries that we see.

New this Year:

For the first time on the LPGA Tour, this year we added a new service during one of the weeks: on-site force plate testing. Our goal is to continue growing with the tour and help to optimize the information that we can supply our players.

With force plate testing, we were able to find some inefficiencies with the players that we see on a regular basis that could be contributing to injuries as well as power leaks. This allows us to share this information with their full team to help build a plan to address these areas.

Our plan is to continue rolling this out even further over the next year as we build out our performance unit for the Tour.

With our new commissioner Craig Kessler, and the changes that have already been made, it's time to buy stock in the LPGA because I think it is about to hit another level starting in 2026!