What happens when an LPGA player’s body changes twice in two years—first from pregnancy, then after it? Austin Ernst Dods found out the first time she swung a club after giving birth.

“The last time I played, I had a little bit of a belly,” Ernst said. “Now I have no belly and no core, and I can’t feel anything.”

The three-time LPGA winner sat down for an interview during the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, her first start since taking maternity leave after son Charlie’s birth in December 2023. Asked about the mental shift required to step away from competition, enjoy pregnancy, and return to Tour golf, Ernst offered a candid breakdown of what the past two years actually looked like—and identified the physical recovery as the hardest part of the entire process.

“I think the pregnancy was really a full reset,” Ernst explained. “I didn’t really touch a club. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll just let my neck heal, kind of chill.'”

That neck injury predates motherhood. A bone spur surfaced at the 2022 Lotte Championship, the pain hitting after a routine post-round dinner and forcing a withdrawal by 3 a.m. Doctors couldn’t explain why someone under 60 had developed the condition. Surgery offered no guarantees. Ernst stepped away from full-time competition, accepting an assistant coaching position at Texas A&M in June 2023—and then discovered she was pregnant while playing her final two events at ShopRite and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

The pregnancy became an unintentional healing window. Training shifted entirely, focused on preparing for birth rather than preparing to compete. For the first time in years, the neck had room to recover without the repeated stress of hitting golf balls.

The return brought its own reckoning. Ernst described that first post-birth range session as disorienting, the familiar feedback loops of her swing suddenly silent. She knew immediately that her timeline would look different from other LPGA mothers who had raced back within four or five months.

“My process will be way slower,” she acknowledged.

“Getting back into playing golf is way different than just kind of grinding on the range, chipping, putting, whatever,” Ernst said. “I play way more golf now. That is kind of my practice, just with my neck and then kind of with my time, how I want to spend it.”

The competitive mentality hasn’t changed. She wants to be aggressive. She wants to win. But the separation between mother and competitor has become deliberate.

“I know that Charlie is taken care of and there is nothing I can do for the five hours I’m on the golf course,” Ernst said. “So I shut it off.”

Then came the central point—the thing that made everything else harder to navigate.

“Body-wise, I think it was the hardest thing,” Ernst said. “One, just recovering from pregnancy, and then, two, like working around my neck. Now I just don’t swing at it as hard. Now I dial it back a little bit more, which has really helped my accuracy. Today I drove it, probably the best I’ve maybe ever driven on Tour. I probably should have been doing this before.”

The LPGA’s maternity policy made this patient approach structurally possible in the first place.

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Austin Ernst Dods benefits from the LPGA maternity policy that preserved her Tour status

Ernst holds No. 33 on the 2026 Priority List draft (Category 1), a prior report noted, enabled by the Tour’s medical and maternity leave extensions that allow players to retain priority positions without losing membership benefits. She plans roughly 10 events this year, including at least two majors, bringing Charlie to tournaments that don’t require a flight.

One adjustment has delivered results she didn’t anticipate. Ernst stopped swinging at full power, dialing back to protect her neck—and the accuracy followed. “Today I drove it probably the best I’ve maybe ever driven on Tour,” she said after her round at Lake Nona. “I probably should have been doing this before.”

The body demanded patience. The neck demanded adaptation. The fairways at Lake Nona suggest the recalibration might have been the answer all along.