Funk to miss several weeks after surgery

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Last year Fred Funk won on both the Champions Tour and PGA TOUR. He had six top-10 finishes on the Champions Tour in 2008 and was 77th in FedExCup points on the PGA TOUR.

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Fred Funk had surgery on his right knee.

This year has been a different story. Oh sure, Funk's still done well by most players' standards. He won the first event of the year on the Champions Tour and made his first five cuts on the PGA TOUR in 2008 before missing his last three.

Come on, the guy turns 52 in a month and he's playing almost every week on either the PGA TOUR or Champions Tour. Those stats are pretty impressive, right?

Not to Funk. He knew he was in a, pardon the pun, funk. He knew he could do better. But this nagging right knee problem -- he frequently had to get his knee drained it was so bad -- may have been holding him back since last October or November.

"My game kept getting worse and worse," Funk said. "I kept trying to play with it over the last three months but they have been a downhill battle.

"They have been an uphill battle," he quickly corrected. "My game has gone downhill and I've been battling to get back."

Funk had arthroscopic surgery on his knee in Jacksonville, Fla., on May 14, 2008 and expects to be out for almost five weeks. The surgery repaired damage in the lateral and medial cartilage.

At THE PLAYERS Championship -- which Funk won in 2005 -- last Friday, he tweaked the knee even more so he went to the doctor on Monday. As he described his condition, "a bunch of particles were inside and (the) knee was eating on itself."

That's when he knew it had to be fixed. Funk had hoped to make it through both THE PLAYERS Championship and the Senior PGA Championship next week but couldn't put it off any longer.

"It was just time to go because I was going to mess up my whole summer if I didn't go now," Funk said. "Plus I was going to mess up my knee. My knee was telling me that it was time to go."

He hopes to return at the Travelers Championship and play three straight weeks on the PGA TOUR. Funk must sit out two weeks from any sort of practice then will slowly work on chipping, putting and finally hitting. A self-described "person who tends to rush things", he must try to be patient in the next five weeks.

After his return, Funk plans to continue to split time between the two tours. He's optimistic that this will fix his recent on-course woes.

"I'm hoping that's what it was. It just doesn't make sense that I was playing so poorly for an extended time," he said. "It couldn't get on the right side much less get off the right side. I think I was favoring it."