Brandt Snedeker returns to competitive action in The Memorial Tournament following a nine-month layoff after having surgery on a sternum injury that had troubled him for years.
The 42-year-old last played in September’s season-opening Fortinet Championship, where he tied for 59th. However, following that, he finally decided the time had come to address the issue.
He explained: “So I had surgery. I had a sternum injury called - been dealing with it for six or seven years - called manubrium joint instability. So a really rare thing. But managed it the best I could and got to the point where I couldn’t play without pain anymore and got tired of dealing with it.”
Snedeker then explained he needed an experimental procedure to address the problem. He said: “So, had surgery December 1st in Nashville with my surgeon named Dr. Burton Elrod, kind of an experimental surgery, to say the least, to see if it would. Luckily, everything kind of went the way it was supposed to. Took a bone out of my hip and cut my sternum open and kind of created a new sternum, in a sense. It is way more stable and hopefully does not cause me pain.”
It was months following the surgery until Snedeker could return to practice. Still, he thinks the signs are good heading into the Muirfield Village tournament: ”So didn’t start hitting balls until April 1st. So had about five months of rehab. No golf,” explained Snedeker. “Feel like I kind of accomplished what we set out to accomplish, which was to try to swing without pain, and so far, so good.”
Snedeker then explained why this week’s designated event is the perfect opportunity to test his fitness. He said: “So, at some point, you have to jump into the deep end and see if it worked or not, and this felt like a good week to do it. I didn’t want to kind of dip my toe in at an easy place to do it, I wanted to find out at a tough place, and I figured this is the best way to do it.
“So excited to be back, excited to be back here on Tour and couldn’t think of a better place than Jack’s place.”
The American has nine wins on the PGA Tour, with his most recent coming in the 2018 Wyndham Championship, which included a 59 in the opening round.
At one point, he also reached World No.4, but his ranking has slipped considerably from that high point in 2013. Even battling the injury, though, he remained in the top 100 until January 2021 before a steep decline saw him fall to 368 in the world following his most recent PGA Tour appearance.
Snedeker admitted that the most recent years of the injury had taken the biggest toll. “Last three years, really. Yeah," he explained. "Been dealing with it for a long time. Did everything I could non-surgical to deal with it and just wasn’t, it was not getting where I needed to be. So this was a quality-of-life decision. Whether golf worked out after this, great. If it didn’t, at least I did everything I possibly could.”
Snedeker heads into this week’s tournament ranked 722th in the world, but with his injury problems apparently in the past, he will surely be confident of climbing back up the rankings sooner rather than later.
