“Backs are funny,” Justin Thomas said at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. And he didn’t mean like your favorite comedian.
Thomas has been away from golf for four months after back surgery to fix a nerve problem that he didn’t even know he had. His problem surfaced because he couldn’t do things in his swing with his right leg and hip. He couldn’t load into it on his backswing.
By the time he had surgery, the issue had progressed to the point where he was getting tingling and numbness down his right leg and into his foot. That’s when he got an MRI.
Experts looked at it and said no wonder. He had microdiscectomy surgery, similar to what Tiger Woods had.
“My hope is that this never is an issue again,” he said. “I did everything I possibly could for three months to get this to heal, to recover, as well as I felt like I could have.”
His goal was to try to get to a place where he was not fearful when hitting golf shots. And it seems he was really smart about it. But he has not put tournament pressure on it or tested it with hours of practice.
Thomas' surgery was on November 13th, and it was January before he started chipping and putting. Then he added 50 yards each week. By the time of the AT&T Pebble Beach, he was able to hit driver. (Professional golfers tend to think of time in terms of tournaments. You know, as in I was out from Players to the U.S. Open.)
“It was just more of monitoring how I felt each day,” Thomas explained. “If something felt weird or off the next day, did I do something different the day before, what was it.”
He was also conservative in his time to recover. If it was two to four weeks to start rehab, he opted for four weeks. If he could chip and putt at four to six weeks, he opted for the six weeks. The first real test comes this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Many people who have come back from a variety of injuries have said, wait until you think you are ready, and then wait another two weeks.
“It's very hard to not over do it,” he admitted. But he’s in this game for the long haul. “I can play at a very competitive high level until my mid to late 40s, I feel like, and to try to come back a couple events early just because I love Riviera or just because I love Pebble Beach, it doesn't make sense in terms of over a long career.”
He expects to be rusty in terms of the quality of his play because he hasn’t been able to practice as much as he used to. It’s the longest he’s gone without playing in a tournament since he was six or seven years old. Still, he feels like he can control the golf ball.
What is going to be more of a challenge he thinks is concentration for four to five hours for a round of golf, four days in a row. Perhaps in terms of tests, he should have given a nod to the long and gnarly rough at Bay Hill Golf Club which challenges everybody, especially back-rehabbing golfers.
“Everybody keeps asking me how I'm feeling, and I've been joking, but it's true, I must be feeling better because other stuff's starting to hurt again,” he quipped.
At least his sense of humor is still intact.