GOLF: Recovering From Injury

August 22, 2021

Collin Morikawa missed the cut at the Northern Trust at Liberty National this week. A rare miss for him. He shot a 74, his third highest score of the year. He’s continuing to play after an injury at the Olympics, causing him to swing away from pain concerning his coach.

Back injury, or any injury for that matter, causes us to swing with our subconscious mind to avoid pain. We don’t do it on purpose. Our mind takes over and interferes with signals in our brain, causing us to protect our bodies. We begin to make adjustments that we are unaware of, which can be destructive to our game. If we continue to play while injured, these poor swing habits become ingrained and much harder to unwind.

My suggestion as a mental game coach is to stop playing and heal your injury. Once you are pain-free, rehab your body to the golf swing. Ask your physical therapist to guide you through it until you reach full swing and feel confident.

There is a way you can keep your game alive during rehab. It’s your power to use visualization. Visualization demands practice and commitment.

In 2015 I had a multi-level fusion on four vertebrae after making too big a swing that caused three discs to blow out, pinching my spinal cord. I lost feeling down my legs, and it felt as though I was walking through quicksand that progressively got worse. It took four days to get to a doctor, and by then, I was crawling. I had emergency surgery, or I would never walk again. My nerves lost blood flow and were dying. As I was carted into the OR, I asked the doc how long before I play golf. He smiled and said, let’s get you walking first but about six months. That was the last I remembered.

After surgery, I would lie awake, fighting through the pain by playing virtual golf. I would close my eyes and focus on playing a course I knew well, every shot, from tee to green, from 1 to 18. In my mind, I played perfect golf—no errant shots. I would remember how it felt to swing freely and to strike the ball pure. I practiced this visualization many times a day. Sometimes only getting through 3 holes before falling asleep. It was relaxing and calming to my body.

I was in the hospital for a week and then into a rehabilitation facility. I was there for five days and was too exhausted to start rehab. They sent me back to the hospital, where they found blood clots in my lungs. Yikes! I was back in the hospital, and there they decided to start my rehab to monitor my lungs. I learned to walk again, get in and out of bed and go up and down steps. After a week, I went home and was ordered rehab three days a week for five weeks.

On my first day of rehab, I asked my therapist to rehab me to the golf swing. She laughed and said, I need clearance from your doctor first, which he granted instantly, knowing my determination.

As I got stronger, she had me swinging using resistance bands and a medicine ball. Before my 15 sessions ended, I was playing golf at half swing. Doc was impressed with my progression and said he’s never seen so much determination. Most people give up, and their fusion is rigid and stationary from fear of moving. My fusion had a tremendous degree of rotation and asked what I was doing. I told him about my routined rehab and how I played golf visually during rest. He said visualization is a powerful way to heal but very hard to do. I explained that it takes a lot of patience. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing and when physically playing to swing a little more each time. He said I would feel muscles stretching, but if it hurts, back it down. It will get easier, and to keep pushing until I feel no pain.

I was playing golf at full swing three and half months after a complicated surgery. Visualization provided me with a strong mindset replacing fear of reinjury with a swing that I once knew. My mind was strong and free from any interference that would cause me to swing away from pain.