Flights, hotels, and long weeks. The LPGA Tour is no easy journey, but it has granted Bianca Pagdanganan invaluable lessons over the years.
Bianca Pagdanganan entered the professional golf scene at a very distinct point in time — it was the year 2020.
Making her professional debut in the middle of a global pandemic placed the Filipina in a unique position. For obvious reasons, 17 events on the LPGA Tour were canceled that year, and several players opted out of competitions. Unfavorable conditions, yes. But it did give Bianca a unique opportunity to slowly ease her way into the busy, hectic life as a professional golfer.
Five years later, she’s got her LPGA Tour routine down. It involves many flights, many road trips, and many hotels. It means jetlag, constant work, and being away from home for months on end.
And the work pays off. Amidst a crazy 2024, which also included a trip to the Paris Olympics on top of her LPGA Tour schedule, she jumped to a career-high ranking of 106th on the Women’s World Group Ranking.
At 27 years old, Bianca still of course has much more that she hopes to accomplish in her career. And so, the grind continues.
Life on the road
As part of the LPGA Tour, Bianca Pagdanganan spends most of her time competing in the United States — though that does not make her schedule much easier by any means.
“I feel like people underestimate how big the United States is,” Bianca tells The GAME in an exclusive interview. “So let’s say you fly from just coast to coast, it could be like a six-hour flight. Unless you’re flying from the East Coast to Hawaii, it could be 11 hours. So, it still takes a toll on your body.”
The LPGA Tour takes golfers all over the United States, from Florida to California to Arizona to Nevada to New Jersey, and often, these travels take place in relatively short windows of time.
Bianca gives us some insight into what a week in her life looks like.
Mondays to Wednesdays are usually reserved for her practice round days. She usually plays nine holes on all three days, but if she is part of the Pro-Am, a part of the LPGA Tour that includes both professionals and amateurs, she sometimes opts to play eighteen holes, depending on what she feels is needed at any given moment.
From there, tournaments usually begin on Thursdays and end on Sundays. Then, she will either fly out on Sunday night or Monday morning, already gearing up for the next one.
“This can go on for like a five-week stretch,” Bianca explains. “So for five weeks straight, that’s what your schedule is going to look like. And I would say our longest off-week would probably be two weeks. And it’s not very common to have two weeks off because sometimes people play on other tours.”
And that doesn’t yet consider the tournaments that are held outside of the US, which can take them all the way to France, the United Kingdom, China, Malaysia, and Japan, among many others.

“We’re in-season and we start in February, we end in November or December. So it’s just a lot of competitions back to back. Flying everywhere, basically.
“Most of our tournaments are in the United States. We have tournaments in Asia at the beginning and the end of the year. And then middle of the year, we fly to Europe. So it’s a lot of miles.”
With a schedule filled to the brim, the travels alone are definitely a huge part of what makes life as a professional golfer a challenge, not even yet considering the rigorous training demanded by the sport.
Yet, even in the midst of this frenzy, which she describes as “repetitive” at times, she has realized something very important.
“You know when people say the grind never stops? Well sometimes, the grind has to stop.”
The art of slowing down
Bianca Pagdanganan has always been a competitive individual. As she recalls, “Even growing up, I would go bowling with my siblings, and for me, everything’s a competition. So they’d get so mad because nothing’s fun for you.”
Up to now, she carries that fire around with her. It is what drives her to succeed in such a competitive field.
“I’m still competitive…Not just as a golfer, but I think as an athlete, we tend to be perfectionists because we want to be good at what we’re doing. Everything has to be right. But that’s just not how it works.”
Reflecting upon the biggest challenge she’s faced over the last couple of years, Bianca reveals: “Every year, it’s like a constant battle between myself and knowing when to take breaks.”
Given her busy schedule all throughout the year, it can indeed be difficult to find the space to breathe. But this is something that Bianca had to intentionally seek out — time for herself.
“I had to learn that recovery and your rest is part of the aggression in terms of being a good athlete. Health is literally our wealth and if one thing goes wrong, it’s scary because it can end someone’s career and you don’t know when it can be taken away from you. So that’s one thing that I really had to understand this year. When it’s an off week, or when you have breaks, you take a break…
“So that’s one thing that I have to learn and go to understand that it’s okay to take breaks because I feel like sometimes when I rest, there’s this guilt that I know I should be training, everyone else is training. So you just compare yourself to everyone else and you don’t realize that it’s what you need.”

Bianca isn’t shy to admit that when she has the rare week off, she spends a couple of days of, as she puts it, “just not doing anything.”
After all, with her rigorous schedule that forces her to be on the road for the better part of the year, being back in her own bed feels like a luxury.
“I’m not gonna lie, the first two days I’m at home, I’m just in my room. I feel like we kind of run on adrenaline when we go on those long stretches. And it’s during the off weeks when it kind of hits you because now you’re not doing anything. So now your body crashes.”
Time away from the golf course means time to recharge, of course. But more importantly, in Bianca’s case, it also allows her to continue to enjoy what she’s doing. By spending time with herself, or with her loved ones, or with other hobbies outside of golf, she’s able to appreciate her time on the green all the more — and when she enjoys, she performs.
“Learning how to enjoy what I’m doing really took some time. I was like, you know, I have to have fun or else I’m gonna get burnt out early. And it wasn’t something that came at an instant. I really had to work hard. I needed other people to tell me that I had to enjoy what I was doing. And I had to enjoy the learning process.
“It took some time, but I think I’m getting better at that.”
For Bianca, life on the LPGA Tour is a balancing act. And after five years of trying to perfect this routine, the Filipina has learned to appreciate where she stands all the more, as someone representing the Philippines in a highly competitive sport.
“I’ve grown to really, really respect what all these Filipinos do. Not just in the Philippines, of course, but all of our OFWs. It’s hard. Because again, I’m away 10 months in a year and all these other people, they’ve been in other countries for much, much, much longer than that.
“So, I guess having that understanding, for me, it just brings me a lot of pride being able to represent the Philippines.”
Images by Kieran Punay of KLIQ Inc.