Love returns for first TOUR event in five months
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.com Chief of Correspondents
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His doctor said it would be February, but Davis Love III had other ideas.
Barely three months after the surgery in October to repair torn ligaments in his left ankle, Love played -- and walked -- his first 18 holes of golf. "He was astounded," recalled the patient, who just so happened to be playing with his surgeon that day.
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In fact, Love's recovery has gone so well that he's making his 2008 PGA TOUR debut this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, a tournament he has won two times. Again, he's nearly a month ahead of his doctor's schedule.
"There will be some excitement issues and there will be some rust issues I'm sure that will pop up, but maybe I can use those to my advantage and make a good week out of it," Love said. "But I'm definitely excited to tee it up for sure."
Love injured the ankle last September when he stepped in a hole during a casual round of golf with Tom Boers, the physical therapist who has helped him and his good friend Fred Couples with various back problems over the last two decades.
"He said, 'Whatever you've been doing fitness wise, you're doing great. Your back and hip are perfect. Let's go play golf,'" Love recalled. "The first hole I ... tore my ankle up. He said, 'Well, your back and hip are still good.'"
After the surgery on Oct. 2, Love spent a month with his foot encased in a non-weight-bearing boot. His trainer, Randy Myers, nonetheless kept him in the weight room, and his physical therapist Damien Moroney, a Canadian he met snowboarding a year ago in British Columbia, was ready when the boot came off.
"Randy had me in the gym the five days before my surgery ... on painkillers, and I was right back in the gym again (afterwards)," Love recalled. "It wasn't like we just said, 'Oh my gosh, this is the end of the world,' and I was sitting on the couch reading books. I bought a big stack of books but then I never read them because I was so busy trying to manage the situation.
"I always looked at it as, hey, I've got a project and I'm going to do well with it and I'm going to be back to playing at Pebble. A lot of people didn't think this was the right place to start or that I would be ready for here, but I'm ready.
"As I've been told a bunch of times, the ankle is not going to be an issue. You've got to go play golf at Pebble Beach. That's going to be the issue. So I'm excited. The only thing I have to worry about is trying to play the game.
Toward that end, Love's instructors, Jack Lumpkin and Todd Anderson, used the break to re-focus their long-time student on the fundamentals.
Before Love was out of the walking cast, Lumpkin gave him one of those old Ping golf balls that were half black and half white and told him to concentrate on rolling the ball straight, without wobbling, across the carpet. Work on keeping your head down when you chip, he told Love, and when the doctors say you're ready, we'll start on your wedge game. The progression continued, and with no tournaments around the corner, they essentially built out Love's full swing again.
The two coaches also helped Moroney -- who had worked with hockey players, snowboarders, sprinters, skiers and Cirque de Soleil performers but never a golfer -- understand the swing. By mid-January, Love was playing some pretty unconventional rounds of golf, complete with weights and medicine balls, his son Drew often driving a golf cart and challenging his father to keep up.
"He'd hit a shot and throw the medicine ball down the fairway," Moroney said. "We used the terrain as advanced rehab. Sometimes it would take us three hours to play nine holes."
Love, who sees himself as a glass-half-full kind of guy, now calls the injury a "blessing." Had he not torn those ligaments, he probably would have played some events in the Fall Series. Who knows? He might even have won again like his good friend Justin Leonard. So the offseason would have more than likely been status quo.
"I would have just kept my same old routine because I was exempt and was in the top 50, and it would have been a lot more deer hunting and a lot more snowboarding," Love admitted. "I would have talked about getting better and maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't.
"But this year I was forced if you want to play, you've got to do this. If you want to get better, you've got to do this on top of it. So I think that's why I say I looked at it as a positive, as a blessing. I needed a break, I needed to get to work, I needed to refocus, and the ankle made me do it.
"Now that I'm past the ankle, I've got to continue with the momentum that I have."
Love has many things to accomplish in 2008, too. He dearly wants to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team, which would be his seventh. He's not exempt for the Masters, where he has finished second twice and which he has not missed since 1991.
Love's not a lock for the other three majors, either. He's slipped to No. 78 in the world, and he won't be in the field for the first World Golf Championships event of the season unless he plays extremely well this week and next.
If this injury has taught Love anything, though, it's not to get ahead of himself. He plans to take things week-to-week and see what happens.
"Shoot, just playing this week is a good win for me," Love said. "I don't have to win the tournament for this to be a win for me. I'm excited for the challenge.
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