FORT WAYNE – You catch up with her at the airport, an anomaly only if you live in a universe where Swarthmore regularly beats the gunk out of the Green Bay Packers. Amanda Blumenherst doesn’t exactly live in airports, see, but she might as well get her mail there.

The kid who grew up with a golf club in her hands now follows it all over the world, from Arizona to Indiana to Malaysia to Thailand. It’s a heck of a life, if your middle name is Boarding Pass. It’s her life.

Three years into her career as an LPGA professional, the occasional Fort Wayne resident still is coming to terms with that life, still trying to find that place where the airlines don’t lose her backswing somewhere between Doral and Bangkok. That happened to her this summer, and at almost exactly the same time it happened to her the previous summer. And at almost exactly the same time as the previous summer, she found it again.

So 2011 began hopefully and ended hopefully, and she banked $164,930. Lots of people had worse years.

“I had a good last five tournaments,” Blumenherst, 25, says over her cellphone, as she arrives at the airport. “It was nice to end on a good note.”

For that she can thank her father, Dave, whose principal asset was a fresh set of eyeballs when he reconnected with his daughter during one of her brief moments of downtime back home in Arizona. He hadn’t seen her play in months, so when he did, something immediately jumped out at him.

“Wow, your swing has really gotten fast,” he said.

Bingo.

“I’m not sure if it was due to all the traveling and I’ve been tired, or just the strain of all the travel, but my swing just kind of got into a funk during the summer,” Blumenherst says. “They say drive for show, putt for dough, but I have to say you drive for dough, too. It’s hard to make birdies when you’re behind a tree all the time.”

And so, the funk. Between June 5 and Aug. 28, Blumenherst missed five cuts in eight events. She never finished higher than 35th in the three other events. And she explored more unexplored real estate than Magellan, missing so many fairways she would eventually finish 135th on the tour in fairway accuracy.

Enter Dad.

“My caddie, he was with me all the time, so he wasn’t really able to see the difference in the tempo,” Blumenherst says. “And, of course, I couldn’t tell I was swinging it faster because I’m around myself all the time. Having a fresh set of eyes was what I needed.

“I basically just slowed down my backswing, and that was all it took.”

The turnaround began about the time July exited stage left – Blumenherst never missed a cut after July 24 – and culminated at the Sime Darby LPGA in Malaysia in mid-October, where she had her best weekend of the year: A tie for ninth and a 278 total, with rounds of 70, 69, 71 and 68. It was her only top-10 finish of the year and represented four rounds well under her season average of 73.12.

And now?

Well, she hasn’t picked up a club since Thanksgiving, which is part of the plan (“It helps me be more mentally fresh.”).

After Christmas, she says, she’ll get back to her practice schedule, which will involve a lot of shots from 80 yards in, and a lot of putting.

Come February, she’s back on a plane again, headed to Thailand and Singapore.

“That kind of kicks off the season for us,” she says.

Have boarding pass will travel.