Q School, downtime, and preparing for my 2026 season – with Rosie Belsham
My first full year as a professional golfer is behind me, and hopefully there are many more of them to come.
What a journey 2025 was – lots of highs and lows; almost 100,000 miles travelled; so many flights, hire cars, hotels and Airbnbs; lots of new friends… I absolutely loved it!
I finished the year with a visit to Ladies European Tour Qualifying School in December. I spent the three weeks leading up to the event, which takes place in Morocco, in Texas for some warm weather training with one of my coaches – and I got to catch up with friends from my time at college in America.
Q School didn’t go exactly to plan, but I played some of my best golf for a long time and feel I’m close to getting back to where I was two years ago – when I was approaching the top 50 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings and before I got injured.
My first round in Morocco was one of those days when the golfing gods were really against me. Anything that could go wrong seemed to do just that, and I came off the course knowing I’d played well yet shot four over-par. This left me needing to push over the next two rounds to make the cut and advance. That wasn’t pressure I wanted to put myself under, but I knew I was playing well enough to do it. I shot one under-par for the next two rounds and made the cut with a shot to spare.
That secured my playing rights on the LET Access Series for 2026, and gave me a shot at an LET card at Final Stage. I played well again there, for the most part, but made some errors and didn’t make the top 20 to get full LET status. I may still get some starts based on my finish at Q School, but if not, I feel my game is in a very strong position and I may well qualify for some events through good finishes in other tournaments.
After Q School, I took a whole month off to relax, reset and enjoy the festive period. I’ve always struggled when I don’t have a goal to work towards, so I signed up to do a 10km run in the middle of January. This helped me keep up my fitness while I wasn’t playing golf, and kept my mind active. I managed to complete the run in 46 minutes, which I was really happy with.
After finishing the run, I was itching to play golf – a great sign I was refreshed and ready to get back to practicing and enjoying the game. Time off and missing golf makes me appreciate and enjoy it a lot more when I get back to practising. Doing the same thing six or seven days a week can become laborious after a while, but I’m now raring to go and I can’t wait to start my 2026 season.
