Being away from golf for a year a new experience for Gamecock great Wesley Bryan
His PGA Tour scores during the summer of 2018 created questions. With inconsistency and missed cuts suddenly the norm, what, fans wondered, is going on with Wesley Bryan?
His performance in the fall, the start of the 2018-19 season, left no doubt that something was badly amiss with the player who had burst onto the 2017 PGA scene with such promise.
That “something” turned out to be a torn labrum in his left shoulder, an injury that required surgery and probably a year of rehabilitation.
Ten months after the operation, the timetable for his return to golf’s major league remains in limbo. He’s near 100 percent, he said, but he needs to be at full strength before facing the world’s best players.
“I’ve got to get to the point that I can play at a high level and compete,” Bryan said. “I’m hitting full shots, but I need to build endurance to a point I can put in full practice sessions and play for five or six straight days.”
Bryan grew up in Chapin and starred in junior golf, at Dutch Fork High and at the University of South Carolina. He made a name for himself with trick-shot artistry in tandem with brother George IV, then won three times in 2016 on the Web.com (now Korn Ferry) Tour before a sizzling stretch — a win and four top seven finishes over a six-tournament stretch — to open his rookie year in the big time.
Then, “for all of 2018, I knew something was wrong,” he said. “I struggled all year and tried to play through (the pain). The competitive side of me kept my trying to play.”
He underwent surgery in January, about a month after wife Elizabeth gave birth to the couple’s first child, daughter Hadley, and he called the timing a blessing.
“I’ve had the chance to spend more time with a beautiful wife and beautiful daughter,” he said. “I miss the competition and my buddies on the tour, but the family time and catching up with friends from around here has been great.”
Bryan will be playing on “major medical” status. He will have up to five rehab starts on the Korn Ferry Tour to sharpen his game, then 21 PGA Tour events to earn 375 FedEx points to be fully exempt.
“The recovery time from labrum surgery is about a year, and that’s what it’s going to take,” he said. “I don’t have a target date. I must be 100 percent before I go back, and I don’t know when that will be.
“Some of my favorite courses and places I’ve had success are early in the year — Riviera, the Honda at PGA National and, of course, Harbour Town. But I’m not going to rush.”
The absence has been an eye-opener for Bryan. He missed a little time in 2015 with tendinitis in his wrist, but being away from golf for a year is a new experience.
“I have approached golf like a job since high school,” said Bryan, 29. “I never took more than a couple of days off. This has enabled me to catch my breath, so to speak, and live a more normal life.
“My golf now is one day at a time; we’ll see how it goes. I won’t rush it, but I’m looking forward to getting back on the Tour.”
Chip shots. Lexington’s Molly Hardwick (girls’ 13-18), Columbia’s Adam Hunt (boys’ 13-14) and Rock Hill’s Zachary Reuland (boys’ 15-18) earned division titles in the SCJGA’s Players Championship at Hartsville CC. . . . The Georgia team dominated the South Carolina squad 36-12 in the inaugural Peach-Palmetto Women’s Showdown at Lake Oconee, Georgia. The event showcased each state’s top mid-amateur and senior women players. . . . The second annual Watson Cup, which pits a team South Carolina juniors against a squad from Scotland, will be staged July 2-3 over the Royal Burgess course in Edinburgh and Muirfield in East Lothian, Scotland. . . . The team from Greenville CC won the amateur division and the Musgrove Mill GC contingent took the pro-am in the Lathrop Cup at Columbia CC.