Professional golfer Akshay Bhatia won the Valero Texas Open last month by beating Denny McCarthy on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff.
Big deal. A couple of measly swings with a separate shoulder.
I once played half a season of golf with a separated shoulder. Back in 1995, an idiot threw me down some stairs at a party. I hit the wall at the bottom of the staircase and separated my shoulder.
Crazily enough, the incident was caught on tape.
Also caught on tape is me jamming my shoulder back into place with a scream. But since the incident, my shoulder has separated a couple of more times, including a summer when it was eventually popped back into place by a doctor but continued to hurt for quite a while.
At one point, when the shoulder was still separated, I was playing golf with my friend, Tom. I hit a shot from the fairway – just my second shot of the round – when Tom noticed tears in my eyes.
The swing had hurt so much that I was nearly crying.
“Maybe we should stop playing,” Tom suggested.
But it was golf—always worth the pain. Besides, it hurt so much to swing that maybe the pain would incentivize me to play better and swing fewer times.
At least that’s what I told Tom.
It didn’t, of course. It was a painful, poorly played round of golf.
But it was golf, so I’m sure we still had a grand old time. Perhaps not as grand as Bhatia experienced after winning the tournament, but probably close.
