ESPN’s Sage Steele returned to work on Wednesday for the first time since being struck in the face by a Jon Rahm tee shot on May 19 during the second round of the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Steele, 49, who had just finished her live reports from the course, was following the action with her SportsCenter co-host Matt Barrie when she was hit in the face by the errant drive.
During Wednesday’s Noon episode of SportsCenter, Steele said her “entire life passed through her eyes.”
Once she went to the ground, Steele said she didn’t know what happened to her and she was scared. “I just looked at Matt and said, ‘Please don’t leave me.’ I grabbed his ankle with my bloody hand. He said, ‘You’re going to be good. You’ll be fine.’ I don’t know if you believed it but you said it. It meant the world to me,” she said.
Wednesday, @sagesteele returned to the Noon ET edition of @SportsCenter – for the first time since she was struck in the face by a golf ball on May 19 at the PGA Championship
She expressed gratitude for the support she received after the accident pic.twitter.com/wMVViXUWPA
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) June 8, 2022
Barrie helped her on a stretcher and then escorted her to the hospital.
“I’ve been to a golf course my entire life,” he said. “I told a couple of people it was a 1 in 50 million. I’ll say this and I’ve said this before, you took that like a champ. Most people would’ve passed out.”
Steele received medical care at a local hospital before returning to her Connecticut home to consult with her doctor and dentist, who she thanked on air and called out for being her new best friend.
“I’ve never seen anything like that and I don’t want to see anything like that again but here’s what I want to see is you back at work,” Barrie said.
“I feel like the luckiest person in the world to still be here,” she said.
An emotional Steele held back tears and asked her co-host to provide some levity and he didn’t disappoint.
“Will you go as that next year for Halloween, by the way?” Barrie wondered. “What are you? Oh, I’m Sage at the PGA.”
