Inside Out

“Where are you? Are you coming out?” It is Monday afternoon of U.S. Open week, and Julie Elion is mere steps off the plane at Raleigh-Durham International Airport when her phone starts blowing up. The text is from a player already dripping with sweat and anxiety on the 12th hole at Pinehurst No. 2. By the time she collects her rental car and makes the hour’s drive south down U.S. Route 1 to pick up her credential at one of golf’s most hallowed grounds, he is gone.

Such is the churn of a major championship for Bethesda, Maryland-based Elion, founder of the Center for Athletic Performance Enhancement (CAPE). She has four other clients competing this week, each with his own unique blend of insecurities, aspirations, negative self-talk and interpersonal dramas that will require her attention.

The jobs of the swing instructors, putting coaches and data-analytics wizards employed by the world’s best golfers are straightforward. They monitor the things we can see, like club takeaway and hip rotation, setup and grip, and course-management strategies. But where does all of that end and mental coaching begin?

To shadow Elion at a major for 24 hours is to conclude that her profession requires miles and miles of walking, keen powers of observation, high emotional intelligence and deep dives into clients’ psyches—which she achieves by asking questions so profoundly probing that a physical therapist on Tour has nicknamed her “Backhoe.”

Elion pulls up to Pinehurst in time to sit in on the 4 p.m. pre-tournament news conference featuring defending champion Wyndham Clark. In the glow of his 2023 victory at Los Angeles Country Club, Clark credited his ability to hold off major winners Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Cameron Smith to his work with Elion.

They were just months into their collaboration then. But now, a year later, Clark has arrived for his title defense having missed the cut in the first two majors of the season and with a 73.25-stroke average in his previous eight competitive rounds. Elion sits quietly in the back row of the interview room, paying close attention to the player’s tone and body language as he fields reporters’ questions.

She is happy that he emphasizes process over results; he says he wants to bring the stellar shots from his practice sessions to his competitive rounds and put together four solid days. Elion’s goal for all her clients is that they become the best versions of themselves, which she says can be achieved only by letting go of everything over which they have no control—competitors’ scores, weather conditions, the ball’s capricious bounces, bettors lambasting them on social media and internet trolls posting videos of their worst shots, to name just a few.

It also pleases Elion that she can hear echoes of her conversations with Clark in his answers: “I’m hitting a lot of good shots in practice” and “It was very fun and delightful to be out there on the back nine today.”

Elion is a 14-handicapper who plays twice a month if she’s lucky. But even beginners can recognize that while technically golfers compete against the course and the conditions, mostly they battle themselves. She says her golfing clients seem to internalize defeat and view poor performance as a kind of character flaw more often than their cohorts in team sports, like the athletes on the NFL’s Commanders, the NBA’s Wizards or the WNBA’s Mystics with whom she’s worked.

Perfectionism, external pressures and off-the-course distractions are among the unseen hazards that pro golfers are increasingly turning to sports psychologists to help them navigate. Despite 25 years of experience working with them on their mental fortitude, Elion remains an outlier, the rare female insider on the PGA Tour.

Being one of the few women with inside-the-ropes access has always come with challenges. Elion is out on the course by 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning to follow one of her clients, Max Homa, who is playing a nine-hole practice round alongside childhood-idol-turned-friend Tiger Woods. Just moments after she worms her way through the five-deep crowd of fans at the second tee and slips under the ropes, she is approached by a marshal. He demands to see the credential around her neck, while others sporting the same identification go about their business unbothered.

It’s curious that Elion continues to draw extra scrutiny from officials who aren’t convinced she belongs. Her public profile has never been higher, thanks to Clark’s breakthrough 2023 season and Elion’s inclusion in Season Two of Netflix’s golf documentary series, Full Swing. She has even become an accidental influencer. After she was seen on the show walking courses with her trusty black Titleist shoulder bag, packed with her usual sunscreen, PowerBar, lipstick and breath mints, the company received more than 1,000 inquiries from people wanting to know where they could purchase one.

Elion can chart her longevity by who she has been mistaken for on the golf course. In the early 2000s, she often was asked if she was the wife or sister of a player. “Now people ask if I’m the mother or aunt,” Elion says with a laugh.

Lance Bennett, a longtime caddie who now loops for Woods, finds Elion standing at the back of the second tee box, and his face lights up. In 2014, she counseled him through his grief after his 39-year-old wife, with whom he had a 4-year-old daughter, died after suffering an epileptic seizure. In 2020, Bennett came to Elion’s rescue when she was collared by an aggressive private security guard at a PGA Tour stop while walking through the player dining area to access the only available women’s restroom. “She is the most legit person out here,” Elion recalls Bennett forcefully telling the guard, who then grudgingly let go of her.

Bennett gives Elion a hug, and they chat briefly. As Homa steps up to hit, she gives him her full attention. Standing alongside his coach, she watches him set up, observes his swing and notes his reaction. She believes performance comes from the inside out. Contentment within manifests as outward assurance. “If they’re lacking confidence,” she says, “I don’t know if giving them a pre-shot routine is necessarily going to address that.”

Elion’s plan is to follow Homa for three or four holes, but he is in an expansive mood. Homa engages her in conversation from tee to green on almost every hole, so she ends up walking the entire front nine with him.

As Homa makes the turn, Elion says her goodbye and heads for the player dining area, where caddies and support staff are now welcome. She checks her phone, grabs a drink and enjoys a quick reprieve from the oppressive heat, then makes her way to the practice putting green.

Elion spends the next hour shadowing Clark as he goes about his work. He is teeing off on the back nine a little after 1 p.m., which gives her just enough time for a bite to eat before accompanying him to the 10th tee. After Clark launches his drive on the par 5, Elion follows him down the fairway. She’s spotted by Jim “Bones” Mackay, who is walking the course in preparation for his NBC reporting duties.

He bounds over to say hello, and Elion asks after his daughter, who just graduated from high school. Elion and Mackay go back to 2011, when she was hired by Phil Mickelson and Mackay was his caddie. Those were the days when her skill set was so poorly understood that quote marks were attached to her job title—as in “mental coach”—when she was identified in the pages of a national golf publication. Years later, when Mackay began caddying for Justin Thomas, he recommended her to him, and Thomas is now a client.

Word of mouth is how Elion gets most of her business, though publicly she remains tight-lipped about her client list unless they speak of her first. In her view, discretion is the better part of trust when you are digging deep into your players’ pasts to get to the root of their behavioral patterns. Before Clark’s praise of her after his U.S. Open victory put her front and center, Elion worked largely in the shadows. 

After Wyndham Clark (above, left) credited Elion with helping him win the 2023 U.S. Open, her profile skyrocketed.

Occasionally, she’d turn on Golf Channel to find other sports psychologists—men more self-aggrandizing than she—analyzing the players with whom she was already working.

When Elion is with a client, she strives to be fully present, but her rising profile combines with current events to trip her up at the 11th hole. The death by suicide over Memorial Day weekend of Grayson Murray, a 2024 PGA Tour winner who had secured a spot in the Pinehurst field, has amplified the conversation about the mental health of golfers. A reporter from The Washington Post, Elion’s hometown newspaper, approaches her for a story he is writing on the subject. As she walks down the fairway, answering his questions, Clark glances back at her repeatedly. All of Elion’s clients are protective of their time with her. On a major week especially, cracks can show in their armor, and she is often their glue.

This is Clark’s first defense of a major title, and the extra attention is a distracting new experience. Elion spends two hours on the course with him. She suggests that he approach every shot from a place of observing, not judging. It’s a piece of advice she regularly dispenses—even to herself.

After Clark finishes the 13th hole, Elion peels away to find Thomas. While waiting for a fairway to clear so she can cross it, she takes her phone out of her pocket and opens an email from her husband, Rick, a family and sports-medicine physician with whom she has two grown children. It contains a photo of one of their goldendoodles, Daisy, and she breaks into a smile. Rick sends her images that will make her happy when she’s on the road; she says they remind her that she’s more than what she does.

Catching up with Thomas on the third green, Elion walks with him for the rest of the front nine. By the time he’s finished, it’s nearly 5 p.m. The afternoon is slipping away from her; she was still with Thomas when she was supposed to meet with another client, Stephan Jaeger. Poor internet service impedes Elion in her attempt to reschedule.

“These days are about juggling who I’m going to see,” she says. “I overcommitted myself today,” she adds ruefully.

Elion finally reaches Jaeger via text, and they arrange to meet the next morning. While she has her phone out, she makes a note in her calendar to send Thomas a podcast she thinks he might find instructive.

It’s the dinner hour, but the day isn’t over yet. She has one more client to see, a young Tour player who is still going through a bucket on a near-empty practice range. On her way there, Elion spots members of the Full Swing team, who are packing up their gear. She strides over to say hello. Her sit-down interview for the third episode of Season Two made for excruciating viewing, she says. She watched through splayed fingers, covering her face with her hands, mortified to see herself on the screen.

Walking to the far end of the range, Elion passes Golf Channel announcer Brandel Chamblee, who is conversing with a golf reporter and an agent. Her ears perk up when she hears one of them mention Clark. She stops in her tracks and listens intently. Elion considers it her job to know what anyone is saying about one of her clients.

Once she finds her player, she finally allows herself to sit down—something she refrains from doing out on the course because she wants to be a font of energy for the players. Half an hour later, Elion is done.

Her long day grows unexpectedly longer when she gets turned around in the expansive Pinehurst complex while trying to find her rental car. Twice she stops to ask volunteers for directions to Lot C, a parking area close to the clubhouse. “Are you a caddie?” one asks with raised eyebrows, giving her a once-over.

Elion’s drive back to her rental house takes 15 minutes, leaving her with 10 minutes to shower before she has to leave to make a 6:45 p.m. dinner reservation with John Wood, a former caddie who is now an NBC on-course reporter. For her own mental health while on the road, she makes a point of having at least one dinner with someone who can carry a conversation that does not revolve around golf.

Back at her accommodations after the meal, Elion feels badly that she had to reschedule with Jaeger, so she calls to touch base. Their hour-long talk is so productive that his wife will remark to her the next morning, “What did you say to Stephan? He woke up a totally different person!”

By now, Elion is physically and mentally drained. “My feet and brain hurt,” she says. She opens up an app to see her steps for the day, which total more than 38,000. “If that’s not a record for me,” she says, “it’s close.”

Elion always travels with a book so she can unwind before going to bed. The novel she cracks open is Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. She gets through only a few pages before dropping off to sleep.

While she usually stays for the full week during majors, Elion departs North Carolina before the tournament is over. She has a wedding to attend in Martha’s Vineyard during Saturday’s third round. She’d let her clients know in advance that she’d be prepared to return to Pinehurst if needed, but her presence is not required. Homa, Thomas and the young Tour player miss the cut. Jaeger finishes T21, and Clark ties for 56th.

“I have to observe, not judge,” Elion writes in a text Sunday night, “and not be attached to the results!”