-As told to Jordan Perez

I’ve spent about five years playing professional golf, and at this point, I’m a Q-series veteran. I’ve been there every year of my career. I know the courses pretty well, so this past year, I felt pretty confident in my chances to stay on the LPGA.

At the end of the second round, we were on the clock, so I rushed to write down my scores. After we went to scoring, one of my playing partners approached me and said she wasn’t sure if that was a correct score. I went back and looked it over and sure enough, it was wrong.

Integrity is a huge part of the game, and you have to take responsibility when things go wrong. Within an hour, I was disqualified from 2022 Q-School. I cried the whole way back to my hotel. A flood of texts hit my phone, with everyone asking what happened. I couldn’t respond for three days and didn’t want to touch a club for two weeks. My whole identity is being an LPGA player. I almost questioned whether it was worth playing this year. Thankfully, my dad and my coach really rallied behind me and encouraged me to keep going.

Funny enough, neither one of my parents played golf. On my eighth birthday, someone gifted me a coupon for free golf lessons. I quickly found myself being one of the last kids to get off the range. Growing up in Southern California, I was a pretty athletic kid and my main sport was cross country. I even went all the way to the Junior Olympics, but my family and I realized it wasn’t going to be a long-term endeavor. Golf was the perfect segue going into high school.

Right around that time, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor caught it too late, and she only had nine months to live. She was also an athlete, a decorated gymnast. To watch her go through chemotherapy and deteriorate was so difficult.  

She passed away when I was 14. My mom wasn’t going to be around for the most formidable years in my life, and that hit me really hard. I lost my best friend and a strong female presence in my life. She was such a pillar of strength and love and compassion for myself, my brother and my dad.

On a single parent-income, it was hard to put a kid through college. I either had to land a good scholarship or go to community college. Being California-based, all of my friends were committing to these big-name schools like Stanford, USC, UCLA and I started to feel the pressure. But I got some attention in my junior year from schools all across the country, hoping a school would give me a small scholarship.

A friend of mine who played for the University of Arkansas submitted my name to the head coach, Shauna Taylor. The assistant coach, Mike Adams, ended up watching me play at a junior event in Scottsdale (even though he actually meant to watch the girl I was playing with). Then I went for a visit, and I knew immediately it was my place. They had the facilities, the team and all the resources I could ever dream of. Shauna was very devoted to developing me as both a golfer and person, and I really needed that strong female presence in my life again.

Fayetteville was a total culture shock, especially from a weather standpoint, but being around a group of strong women was such an important influence for me. I could finally come into myself a little more and figure out what the other part of my life had been missing. I started learning how to manage and organize how I wanted to practice. I got my first college win in my junior year, on a week where I went on 4 a.m. runs every morning before I played each round. It felt so good to contribute a win like that. We were consistently one of the best teams in the country, and only got better while I was there.  

I turned professional in 2019 after I earned LPGA status in Q-School. I was so nervous, but I came out pretty hot fast – winning my first event as a pro at the SKYiGolf Championship, after I made an eagle in a playoff against two veterans.  

It still took me a while to fully acclimate to the lifestyle as an LPGA player. Everything was so structured in college golf, and now I had to figure it out for myself. Travel, taxes…I leaned on my family to help me figure it out. I also wanted to figure out the best way to market myself. How was I going to build my brand? What’s the best way to lead the next generation of female golfers?

I spent the first few years of my career on the LPGA, fighting every year in Q-School to keep my status. But after that incident at Q-School at the end of last year, I knew I’d be playing a full schedule on the Epson Tour. When I flew home right after, my agent called me during a layover. “I heard that you’re off the tour,” he said. He asked me what my plan was for next year. I was in such shock that I had no idea if I’d even have the means to play another year. Then he told me about Carry, and I immediately told him I was interested.  

I’m so honored to have been selected for the Carry group this year. Golf is such a hard and punishing sport, and to have a community of people that are invested in me and believe in me helps me keep going.

Every time I’ve gotten knocked out of the ring; I’ve picked myself right back up. I hope that’s exactly what people think of when they see Alana Uriell on a leaderboard, and that I can be an inspiration to others who have gone through the same things.