England’s Gabriella Cowley returns to the Ladies European Tour (LET) for the first time in nearly 11 months this week.
The 29-year-old last played on Tour at the Ford Women’s NSW Open in March 2025 but makes her competitive return this week.
Cowley missed most of last season due to her injury troubles which started with a back injury and then a shoulder injury later in the year.
“I have been out for 10 months with injury; it was a little bit unexpected,” she said. “I prepared the best I could to start the season and then to go to Australia and have an injury was a little bit out of the blue.
“It was a really unexpected injury. I was in the gym before flying to Australia and felt a small twinge, but it was nothing major and I got on the plane and flew, my back felt tight. When I got off the plane, I struggled to walk my back was so bad.
“I was trying to find people to help then we had the first event cancelled with the cyclone. With golf you always want to push and try and do it, but my dad told me we needed to fly home after the third week.
“I came back and I got scans on it, it was my lower disks which were bulging and I had a trapped nerve in-between the bulge. I went home and had rehab; I wanted to be back earlier but then my shoulder gave in. It’s one of those things where you sort one problem and another one comes. I struggled to lift anything overheard for three months.”
With most of the year spent at home, Cowley took time to reflect on her career thus far and especially her mentality.
She was also focused on making the comeback and now heads into the 2026 season with a new sense of enjoyment on the course.
She explained: “Being at home and being in that situation of not competing and not being around everyone, I did have a lot of time to reflect and to learn. From being at home a little bit more, I feel like I learned a lot about myself and I did a lot of work on myself in that respect.
“As a professional athlete you’re travelling all the time, you put so much pressure on yourself and as golfers you’re perfectionists and you want the best. It’s more about enjoying it and being happy and content with what you’re actually doing.
“You just put yourself under so much pressure, it really made me realise that life is too short. I made golf my life instead of life being me. Although it was a really hard 10 months, I learned so much about how I can progress as a person. My mind was on the comeback. It’s still about pushing and working hard to reach that dream of mine.”
The 2026 PIF Saudi Ladies International is the season-opening event on the LET which will see 120 players tee it up at Riyadh Golf Club competing for a prize purse of $5M USD.
Cowley, who turned pro in 2014, was excited to see her fellow LET members when she arrived in Saudi Arabia and is looking forward to teeing it up once again.
She added: “I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited to be back, it was nice to see everyone today and get back into the routine of everything.
“I missed competing the most, I missed having a purpose and the whole element of competition. I missed a lot of my friends and a lot of the girls out here. It felt like first day back [at school].
“My game is feeling good. I’ve worked hard to get back to be able to play this week. I’ve worked really hard and I just have to trust it now. I’m most looking forward to getting back to playing, travelling and different experiences. The whole experience of being a professional athlete.”
Cowley will begin the PIF Saudi Ladies International on Wednesday 11 February at 11.31 am (local time) from the 10th tee alongside Korea’s Shihyun Kim and Italy’s Alessia Nobilio.
Follow all the action throughout the 2026 PIF Saudi Ladies International on our socials – @LETgolf on Instagram, TikTok and X, and Ladies European Tour on YouTube and Facebook – #PIFSaudiLadiesInternational #PIFGlobalSeries.
