Renewed Sense Of Purpose Has Brock Excited For This Week’s Women’s State Amateur

This week’s 93^rd Tennessee Women’s Amateur Championship will take on added significance for Chattanooga’s Blakesly Brock. With the event being staged at her home course, Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, it will represent a cathartic moment of healing given her arduous journey over the last several years.

It will be Brock’s first tournament in nearly two years, having been sidelined with chronic pain diagnosed as suprascapular neuropathy and thoracic outlet syndrome that resulted in a pair of surgeries in 2023. While the competitive juices will surely be pumping when she tees off on Tuesday morning, more importantly she will enjoy a renewed perspective on her recent odyssey and her restored relationship with the sport she loves.

Brock surfaced from a competitive golf sabbatical in 2021 with dizzying results, having spent three years away from the game after concluding her collegiate career at Tennessee. In her first year of eligibility as a mid-amateur, she followed up a nine-shot victory at the Tennessee Women’s Mid-Amateur with a national title in capturing the 34^th U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship only a few days later at Berkeley Hall in Bluffton, S.C.

As a result of her victory, Brock earned a bundle of exemptions, including invites to the 2022 U.S. Women's Open, the 2022 and 2023 U.S. Women's Amateur and the next ten U.S. Women's Mid-Amateurs.

Suddenly, the success was becoming a reality that she envisioned as a junior golfer when she won a pair of Tennessee Girls’ Junior Amateurs and claimed two individual high school championships while leading Baylor School to back-to-back state team titles.

“I had always thought the LPGA was my dream, and had never really considered anything outside of that,” Brock said. “Golf has been the focus my whole life since I started playing when I was 11 or 12. But I was burned out after college. I found myself playing for a score, I felt a lot of pressure and wasn't really playing because I loved the game anymore.

“I got back into golf the summer of 2021 with no expectations, just playing again because I loved it. Then I won the Tennessee Mid-Am, and went straight to the U.S. Mid-Am for what turned out to be a magical week.”

However, the first signs of her physical trials reared their head during the very same week of Brock’s emergence on the national stage at the ’21 Women’s Mid-Am. She experienced sharp pain in her left shoulder blade while playing eight competitive rounds in six days plus two practice rounds.

“I didn't think a whole lot of it at the time,” Brock said. “But I remember asking my husband (Mitch, who served as her caddie) after the 36-hole days if he could rub my shoulder because it was killing me.”

Her initial diagnosis led to a regimen of physical therapy, but the pain never subsided throughout 2022. She was able to compete in the featured tournaments awarded by her U.S. Women’s Mid-Am win the previous year, including making it to the Round of 16 matches in defense of her title at Fiddlesticks Country Club in Fort Myers, Fla.

Eventually, the constant pain began to take its toll on Brock.

“After taking those three years off and then winning a huge tournament and being thrown right back into this world of high-level, elite competitive golf while being in pain left me feeling lonely and confused,” Brock said. “I was playing because I loved the game and was blessed to have all these opportunities, but at the same time I was fighting a bunch of demons and feeling unsure of what the purpose was.”

Her condition worsened to the point when in February 2023, her left hand went numb while playing in the Women’s International Four-Ball tournament. Brock had surgery two months later to relieve some nerves in her shoulder blade, hoping that would resolve her issues. But the nagging pain resurfaced at Stonewall in Elverson, Pa. in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in September, where she tied for fifth in stroke play and made it to the Round of 16 despite battling debilitating discomfort.

“Since I still had all these exemptions, I didn't feel like I was ready to give those up,” Brock said. “When I got home from Stonewall, I was miserable. It had gone down into my rib cage, my neck was having spasms up every couple of weeks, and I couldn’t move my head. I was wondering why God had brought me here, giving me all these opportunities to play golf while seeing how debilitating it had become to my mind and body.”

A trip to Nashville to see a specialist revealed a nerve compression between Brock’s first rib and collar bone, and she had thoracic outlet decompression surgery to hopefully alleviate her pain. But after an extended period of recovery, the procedure failed to eradicate her persistent discomfort.

“My goal was to be recovered by the Mid-Am in 2024, and I ended up having to withdraw from that because I was still in a ton of pain,” Brock said. “I was not in a great place mentally at all, just struggling with depression to be honest.”

It was at this low point of hopelessness and despair where Brock’s strong faith allowed her to gain a renewed perspective, enabling her to catch a glimpse of where God was redirecting her energies.

“I was kind of figuring out what does it look like to lean on Jesus and let go of all these expectations and to know his plan for me,” Brock said. “I really feel like I went all in with my faith and just surrendered everything to him at that point. I was like, ‘If I don't ever play golf again, that's okay.’ I knew God had good plans for me, and I needed to trust him.”

Brock was given the opportunity to join the coaching staff at Baylor as a volunteer assistant last fall, returning to a place where many of her earliest dreams in golf became a reality. It was the perfect antidote to her physical and emotional wounds.

“It really just flipped my whole world upside down in the best way,” Brock said. “I fell in love with coaching, I fell in love with the girls on the team, and really just kind of fell back in love with golf as it should be. There was no pressure and no expectations, just playing for the love of the game, and thinking about all the ways that golf shaped me into the person that I am and all the opportunities I had to see the world.

“I was channeling what it did for me and helping younger girls find their own journey through it, and I just found so much peace and happiness through coaching in the midst of all my pain. My passion now has turned into coaching, and in a way, I'm very grateful for all the pain and everything I've been through because it's led me to what I'm doing now.”

Returning to the competitive arena after a layoff of almost two years would overwhelm many golfers. But Brock, now 29, is excited for the opportunity in front of her this week, joined by Mitch who will serve as her caddie.

“It will be a really special week for me,” Brock said. “I've been a member there my whole life. It's where I met my husband. It's where I fell in love with golf. My husband and I got married there. I think this week for me will really just be playing because I love it, playing because I have the opportunity to do it at home, and I just want to enjoy every second and learn something that I can pass along to the kids I've been coaching. I don't know how much more competitive golf I've got left if my pain doesn't get any better, but I'm to a point now mentally where I can play through a little bit of pain and I just have so much more peace.”

Brock is hoping to be able to complete all three days of competition. But her experience at the Women’s State Amateur will be about much more than the scores she posts. It will be an exercise of her new-found sense of purpose joined every step by her soul mate.

“The thing that I cherish most is the time on the golf course with my husband, the conversations that we have out there and the bond that we've built through the game,” Brock said. “It will be so special to have him on my bag at the place where he was an assistant pro for several years. That's how we met with him giving me lessons out there, and then our friendship just kind of evolved into something more. So, it'll be kind of a full circle moment for us to walk the course together after everything we've been through. The support that he's given me for as long as I've known him has been such a huge part of my life. What I'm looking forward to the most is just being out there with him and having a good time.”

Paul Payne can be emailed at paulpayne6249@gmail.com