Steve Stricker’s Inspirational Return To Golf After Mysterious Illness

Steve Stricker was stricken with a mystery illness last November and has not played competitive golf since then. Doctors still don’t know what it was that caused him to have heart arrhythmias, inflammation around his heart, high temperature, jaundice, and an allergic-like reaction that caused his throat to close up and his lips and tongue to swell.

He was hospitalized twice, lost 25 pounds in a short period of time, and although he feels better now, he has not yet recovered 100 percent.

“On a day-to-day basis, I feel fine. It’s just the whole strength thing and the stamina,” he explained in a press conference prior to the Insperity Invitational.

Certainly, he’s in a lot better place than he was a few months ago.

“I don’t feel like I can’t get back to where I was last year or the year before or even before that,” he added.  All that is good news.

Stricker’s last tournament before the illness was The Constellation Furyk & Friends tournament on the PGA Tour Champions last October.  He was looking forward to going home to one of his favorite fall things, deer hunting.

Stricker makes an inspirational return to golf

Then his world changed.  Now, he’s come through the other side and hopes to gradually return to the form that put him in the winner’s circle seven times on the senior circuit.

“It’s been a long road,” he admitted. “I’m feeling better and excited to be here.”

Stricker hopes his workouts will see him through not just this week but the next two.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can replicate what we go through out here,” he said. “We’re out here probably six hours from the time we get here to practice, warm up, the whole time on the golf course, maybe some practice afterwards. And you start adding those up day after day after day, that gets tiring.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to do four in a row,” Stricker added. “I don’t even know if I’m ready to do three in a row.

It’s similar, in a way, to what Tiger Woods had to go through to be able to play in the Masters, although for completely different reasons.  Stricker, like Woods, had to get the energy to walk 18 holes several days in a row, to practice, and be on his feet all day. It’s not like having a desk job and returning to sitting.

The physical nature of golf actually caused him to change his mind a couple of times about when he would return.

“I was trying to do Rapiscan, and I couldn’t physically do it yet,” he said.

So, he looked ahead at the schedule and decided he would try the run from Insperity in Houston to Mitsubishi Electric in Atlanta to Regions Tradition in Alabama.

“I don’t think I’m ready to do four in a row,” he added. “I don’t even know if I’m ready to do three in a row. My goal is to play these three and then there will be a week off, so then I think it’s the Senior PGA.”

He admitted there’s a chance he could be too tired at the end of Insperity to keep going next week.

“If I have to take next week off to get ready for Regions, I’ll do that,” he explained.  Regions Tradition is a PGA Tour Champions major.

So, how can we measure Sticker’s performance?  His average length drive on the PGA Tour in the last full season was 284 yards. If he’s able to achieve that kind of distance, it will surely encourage him.

He admitted he is looking forward to having first tee jitters. He said that’s a part of the competition that makes it exciting.  He’s hoping the adrenaline rush he knows is coming on the first tee will help him hit the ball a little farther than he’s been able to recently.

No matter how Sticker plays this week, there’s no doubt just getting back to playing golf is an achievement for him right now, one he’s looked forward to for some time.

And here’s a great news note:  Nobody asked him if he was considering playing the LIV Tour.