Rory Sabbatini is known as the champion of the PGA Tour six times between 2000 and 2011 earning more than $34.5 million in his career, and he was the runner-up in the 2007 Masters.
The former champion of the PGA Tour has been playing his game of golf for a while with neck pain. In 2016, he decided to go through an injury in order to eliminate the pain forever. An artificial disk replacement surgery had been taken on his neck. During the last four years, despite slow steps rising again into golf’s activities and procedure being a long time demand, he still ranks 36th finish in the FedEx Cup in 2019. Now, Rory Sabbatini recovers fully from the pain and ready for the PGA Tour.
Recently, Sabbatini returns to compete at the RSM Classic, which is scheduled after the Masters from November 16-22, 2020 at Sea Island Golf Club in Golden Isles Georgia. Though this tournament is taken place without spectators, it is broadcasted on the Golf Channel.
This 44-year-old player is born in South African and now living in Slovakia where his wife came from. That why the golfer answered his interview in a Southern American accent.
“I finally got to a point that I had no option,” he said. “I had to have surgery … it’s been probably the biggest life-changer of anything I’ve ever done. It really went from one extreme to the complete opposite, agony to just joy just in minutes.”
“The stress factor of not knowing when you’re going to wake up and be able to compete because you didn’t know if your neck would be tweaked or something like that,” Sabbatini said. The golfer admitted that the stress of coming back is a terrible experience.
On the first day of his comeback at the RSM Classic, Sabbatini got a T-12 finish at Sanderson Farms. He finished the first four holes on Sea Island’s Seaside course with four straight birdies, including three puts over 10 feet. Then, he kept shooting even pars, with another birdie during the time playing on the back nine without any bogey. That how he is standing a chance of making the Masters.
Photo: AFP
“I’m finally learning how to maximize the stronger points of my game,” he said. “I took too many years to figure that out. That and then spent many years working on improving my putting, and I feel like I’ve become a much more consistent putter and that alleviates a lot of pressure in the game right there.”
“I know my wife’s still kicking at me going, ‘C’mon, I just want to get to Augusta once,’” he joked. “That’s kind of her dream, on her bucket list. She’s going to get to caddie for me in Mexico this year. I told her, ‘Well, you better show up and put up.’”
In the end, Sabbatini came back from such a tremendously horrible surgery that could forever end his career. Now he is at the PGA Tour again and near a chance to win the trophy.
