Xander Schauffele called it a “perfect storm” and it cost him eight weeks of golf during his favorite part of the season.
Schauffele is returning to competition this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, having not played since the season-opening the Sentry with a rib injury he said he actually felt for the first time just before Christmas.
Last year’s PGA and Open Championship winner told reporters at Bay Hill Wednesday that his trainer left to renew his visa in mid-December of last year and then he started to notice pain in the right side of his ribs. However, he pressed on with his preparations for the season’s first event in Hawaii.
“I was left on my own and apparently I’m still a toddler,” Schauffele said. “I kept training and golfing and training and golfing, and I’m used to having someone either hold my hand or do something as simple as soft tissue. I didn’t get any help and I think that is sort of what put my back against the wall.”
Schauffele said the pain never really became bothersome and there was no moment when he knew an injury occurred, but overtime, he knew something was up.
When he got the Sentry, he thought reuniting with his trainer and the rest of his team would help him correct the injury, but the damage was already done.
Schauffele was diagnosed with an intercostal strain and a small tear in the cartilage.
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He tried to get himself ready for the West Coast swing and the unique opportunity to play Torrey Pines South twice with the Genesis Invitational relocating there this year due to the Los Angeles wildfires.
“I was sitting at home on the West Coast, that sucked for me,” he said. “One of my dreams is to play Torrey South earlier in the year with long rough, cold, South only. And so to miss Torrey twice really, really sucked.
“I tried. I hit some drivers the Monday before Torrey Pines, kind of felt okay. Then I tried to play nine holes and then things started to feel worse and worse. And the doctors are like, ‘Nothing’s worse than hitting a wedge out of thick rough and having everything come to a complete stop, you could make it worse.’ So that was an easy decision for me to make, thinking of long-term goals.”
Schuaffele didn’t have much he could do to expedite his recovery, but it also wasn’t like he noticed he was hurt all the time. Schauffele said he wasn’t usually in pain unless he tried to make a golf swing.
“I wasn’t sitting there like, Oh, my gosh, I’m in so much pain. You know what I mean?” he said. “It was sort of abrupt, like if I would wake up and roll over to grab my phone, or to grab something, or sneeze if I’m like sitting on the couch in a weird position. Stuff like that is kind of where I would remind myself like, Oh, okay, I’m not great right now.”
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Finally, ahead of this week, Schauffele got good news in the form of CT scans, ultrasounds and MRIs that all came back “clean.” He said his discomfort is minimal and he’s to the point where doctors don’t think he’s going to make his injury any worse by playing.
Schauffele looked at Scotty Scheffler’s return from a hand injury earlier this season and is using it as a guide for his own expectations this week. He said this is the first real injury he’s dealt with during his golf career and considers himself lucky for that.
This will be the first time Schauffele has played this much golf consecutively since he’s been hurt. He played 18 holes at home before he left, nine on Tuesday at Bay Hill and 18 on Wednesday.
“I’ve been practicing mentally to convince myself that I’m still in some crazy good form,” he said. “I think Scottie came back and he wasn’t close to winning, but played pretty decent and put himself back in the mix, so I don’t see why I can’t do that.”
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