At 17, Cassie Porter could barely get out of bed. A misdiagnosis kept the future LPGA Tour player away from golf for 18 months, leaving her wondering if she would ever play again. Now, Porter is an LPGA pro with three top-10 finishes in 2026 and hopes of making Australia’s 2028 Olympic team. The painful chapter began with what doctors believed was a stress fracture in her lower spine, but a second opinion eventually revealed a different problem. Porter reflected on that dark chapter of her life in an interview with Golf Digest.

“I lost my patience,” she said. That frustration eventually led her to seek another opinion, which helped her find the right treatment and get her golf career back on track. 

In 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the 17-year-old LPGA pro was busy with schoolwork. Determined to finish her exams early and graduate ahead of schedule, Porter decided to take a break from training. Instead of working out and practicing every day, she suddenly spent most of her time sitting at a computer. After weeks of this drastic change in routine, one morning she woke up and found that she could not get out of bed.

“Searing pain in my hip and back radiated down my left side,” she recalled to Golf Digest. A scan showed what doctors believed was a stress fracture in her lower spine, and what followed was 18 months of rehab, including several months in a back brace. She followed her doctor’s recovery plan the entire time, but the improvement never came. “Stress fractures shouldn’t take that long to heal,” Porter said. “I lost my patience, as did my parents.”

Eventually, Porter and her parents decided to get a second opinion. The new doctor said she had sciatica, which is pressure on the sciatic nerve. It is the longest nerve in the body and runs from the lower back to the toes. After three weeks of treatment, Porter was free of pain. When she picked up a golf club again, she was not sure how she would play after such a long break. But her swing still felt natural. She practiced for a month and then won her first three tournaments after returning.

Porter says she does not blame the doctors who first got her diagnosis wrong. Instead, the experience taught her to speak up for herself when dealing with medical problems. It also showed her how much she truly loved golf.

That experience changed Porter’s plans. Instead of spending more time as an amateur, she decided at 19 that she wanted to become a professional golfer. She played on mini-tours in Australia before moving toward the Epson Tour. In 2024, she won the FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship and finished 10th in the season’s Race for the Card. That was enough to earn her LPGA Tour card for 2025.

Her first season on the LPGA Tour brought a new challenge. Porter finished fourth in China in just her second event, which helped secure her card for the next season. However, she also missed many cuts later in the year. She knew something had to change.

Porter moved to Las Vegas to make traveling easier. She also made the difficult decision to stop working with longtime coach Dan Morrison, who had been with her since she was 13 and had also caddied for her. “He’s like a family member,” Porter said. She then started working with a new coach, Holton Freeman. It became another important change in her career, much like the second medical opinion that helped her return to golf. When something was not working, Porter was willing to make a change.

That new partnership with Holton Freeman is starting to pay off for Porter this season. She finished T5 at the Fortinet Founders Cup after shooting rounds of 69, 71, 72, and 66 for a 10-under total. She then finished T9 at the ShopRite LPGA Classic, shooting 4-under over 54 holes.

Her best result came at the Meijer LPGA Classic. Porter opened with a 5-under 67 and stayed near the top of the leaderboard throughout the week. She finished T5 at 14-under. She also finished T26 at the Amundi Evian Championship in July. That result showed that her good form was not limited to just one tournament.

Of course, the season has not been perfect. Porter missed the cut at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the Scottish Open and the AIG Women’s Open. Still, three top-10 finishes in 2026 show how much her game has improved.

Porter gives a lot of credit to Freeman for that progress. Their work has gone beyond small swing changes. They have worked on her game during tournament weeks, looked closely at different parts of her game, and added more shot shapes. Porter says this has changed the way she approaches and plays different golf courses.

That makes her comeback even more impressive. At 17, Porter was not even sure if she would play golf again. Now, at 24, she has an LPGA Tour card, five career top-10 finishes, and three top-10s this season. She has also earned more than $500,000 in official LPGA money in 2026 and remains in the field for this week’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.

The biggest change, however, is in what Porter is chasing now. She once wondered if she would ever pick up a club again. Now, she is thinking about making Australia’s team for the 2028 Olympics. Losing 18 months of golf was a major setback, but Porter has clearly refused to let that period define her career. Instead, she used it to decide what she really wanted from golf and went after it on her own terms.