SYDNEY:
An rising Australian golfer who misplaced sight in his left eye after being struck by a golf ball simply weeks after making his US PGA Tour debut returned to the skilled sport Thursday, saying it was “a terrific feeling”.
Jeffrey Guan, 21, was on an upward trajectory final 12 months, signing with the identical administration firm that boasted main winners Jon Rahm and Phil Mickelson.
He obtained a sponsor invite to the PGA Tour Procore Championship in California in September, taking pictures 69 and 75 to narrowly miss the lower.
However he was hit within the face by a ball at a event close to Sydney, a freak accident that left him blind in his left eye.
Undeterred, Guan pledged to bounce again — and he did simply that on the NT PGA Championship close to Darwin Thursday, firing a first-round 74.
“Teeing off the primary was genuinely a terrific feeling,” mentioned Guan.
“I wasn’t nervous in any respect from what I predicted the previous couple of days, however there was a whole lot of errors on the market and heaps of room for enchancment.”
Talking forward of the event, Guan mentioned he needed to largely re-learn the sport given his restricted imaginative and prescient and he wasn’t certain what to anticipate, admitting to “a mixture of feelings”.
“I did not suppose it (comeback) was going to be this 12 months, however then I have been practising and I felt actually good over the ball and I used to be like, ‘Why not give it a shot?’,” he mentioned.
“There have been so many occasions within the hospital the place I simply thought, ‘Is that this going to be over’?
“I could not even eat. I could not actually do something. I wasn’t allowed to stroll as a result of I needed to preserve my eye steady. So yeah, these ideas had been positively operating by way of my head for 3, 4 months.”
Guan mentioned he was taking it a step at a time.
“I am coming right here with actually no expectations. I simply wish to have enjoyable and kind of simply play to see the place I am at.”
