Back home for Christmas, Cassie Porter retained her card on the LPGA Tour and has her sights set on a successful 2026 season.
ASKED to reflect on her first season on the LPGA Tour, during which she recorded two top 10 finishes and earned more than $410,000, Cassie Porter pauses for a moment to consider.
“No golfer is ever really satisfied with what they’ve done,” she said. “But lay out everything I achieved this year, before it started, and I’d have taken it in an instant.”
A year ago, Porter’s goal was to become one of the world’s top 80 players by the end of 2025. She didn’t quite make it but did finish in 64th position on the world’s most lucrative, and toughest, tour.
Along the way she finished fourth in the Blue Bay LPGA tournament in China in March, partnered Scot Gemma Dryburgh when sixth in the Dow Championship in June, made 14 of 23 cuts and, most significantly, retained her card for the 2026 season.
In the last five tournaments she played, Porter was a combined 26 under par, a clear indication that, by season’s end, she’d come to terms with the challenge of playing on a gruelling world tour, and comfortable that she could compete with the best.
She’s reassessed her golfing goals and is aiming to finish in the top 50 in this year’s Race to CME Globe, the LPGA Tour’s Order of Merit.
The top 60 on that list qualify for the year-ending Tour Championship, an opportunity that slipped through Porter’s fingers in 2025. After holding 60th spot with three events to go, she ended the year in 64th place.
“It was a little disappointing at the time,” she said. “To make the Tour Championship in my first year would have been the icing on the cake.”
But nothing keeps a smile off Porter’s face for long, and she was soon beaming with excitement at the prospects for the coming year.
“I want to do well, of course, but really my goal is just to continue enjoying myself on the golf course,” she said.
Porter, 23, who grew up on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was back in Australia for Christmas and New Year, and looking forward to sharing the holidays with family and friends in Sydney.
“I’m here to take a break and rest,” she said, confirming that, apart from an appearance in the Cathedral tournament in mid-December, she would not play in any early season WPGA events.
Her first event on this year’s LPGA Tour would be the Honda LPGA Thailand in late February before returning for the Australian Women’s Open at Kooyonga from March 12 to 15.
“Really, I’m living the dream,” she said. “Playing on the LPGA Tour is something I’ve wanted since I was a little girl, and it’s been everything I imagined, and more.”
And, while she takes every opportunity to get back to Australia to spend time with her family, Porter now calls Las Vegas home and says she loves living in the US.
That she is playing on the world’s most elite tour comes as no surprise to those who have followed Porter’s career since she first joined the Invincibles Sunshine Coast Junior Tour as a 12-year-old.
She was an outstanding junior, winning the Victorian Junior Open, Greg Norman Junior Masters, Jack Newton International Junior Classic and the Junior Golf World Cup in 2019. In that year she was named Junior Female and Female Amateur Golfer of the Year in the Queensland Golf Industry Awards.
Then, after overcoming a serious back injury which kept her off the course for 18 months, Porter returned to golf in 2021, winning the Katherine Kirk Classic and the Keperra Bowl, before turning professional at year’s end.
She won her first professional title at the WPGA Melbourne International in 2023, just before joining the Epson Tour. After a successful season on that tour in 2024, she earned her card to compete on the LPGA Tour.
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