By Peter Owen
A DECADE ago Brandt Snedeker was on top of the golfing world. He’d won the 2012 FedEx Cup, and the US$10 million cheque that went with it, reached No 4 in the Official World Golf Rankings and twice represented the US in the Ryder Cup.
He burst onto the PGA Tour in 2007 like a comet, making the cut in 23 of 29 events, finishing top 10 six times, and winning the Wyndham Championship in North Carolina. He earned $2.8 million in prizemoney and was named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.
In his first dozen years on tour Snedeker won nine events, the last one in 2018 when he claimed his second Wyndham Championship, shooting 59 in the first round – the 10th time any player had scored a sub-60 round in competition.
And then … nothing. From a world ranking high of No 4, the Tennessee-born 43-year-old dropped to 789 on the official rankings list. In 2019 he had just one top 10 finish, the following year two, and then none in each of the next two seasons. He’d seemingly lost his game.
But what most people didn’t know was that Brandt Snedeker was playing injured.
A winner of the FedEx Cup on the US PGA Tour, Brandt Snedeker is looking to return to his winning ways after overcoming serious injury issues.
The first sign of trouble came in 2009 when he missed seven straight tournaments mid-year with what was described as a rib injury. Two years later he underwent surgery on his right hip to correct a degenerative issue, and in 2012 had to pull out of the US Open with another rib injury.
The injury flared again in 2013 when Snedeker missed the WGC Matchplay Championship with further rib trouble, later diagnosed as ‘low bone turnover’ for which he was required to take daily injections to increase his bone mass.
Eventually Snedeker was diagnosed with a sternum issue and for six years travelled to South America for stem cell treatment. But he was in constant pain, and it took a mixture of Tylenol, Advil and steroids to provide enough relief for him to play golf. The injury took over his life.
Doctors, by then, had identified the problem as ‘manubrium joint stabilisation’, a disease affecting only about a dozen people in the world, and with limited surgical options.
A Nashville sports medicine surgeon, Dr Burton Elrod, had performed a procedure on an NFL quarterback in 2004 to strengthen his chest, but had vowed never to do it again because of the high risk of infection. Snedeker talked him into it.
During surgery in late 2022, Dr Elrod took a bone the size of a thumb from Snedeker’s right hip and inserted it into his sternum. Snedeker describes it like this: “They take a bone out of your hip and kind of cut your sternum straight across, put half the bone in the lower half and half the bone in the upper half, and kind of pop it back into place. Kind of like a Lego snapping back into place.”
Snedeker spent the next four weeks in a recliner, declaring he felt like ‘someone hit me with a Mack truck.’ But he said without the operation he would have had to give up golf.
Brandt Snedeker, a nine-time winner on the USPGA Tour.
After resting for four months, Snedeker began hitting golf balls – pain free – and ramped up his practice last May. He returned to competition at the Memorial Tournament in early June, shooting rounds of 73, 72, 73 and 74 to finish tied 41st.
Missed cuts and no finishes better than 45th followed in his next eight starts, though a first-round 64 in the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in July showed he still has the ability to compete at the highest level.
This year hasn’t been much better, Snedker missing the cut in eight of his first 11 appearances.
Snedeker entered the 2024 season on a Major Medical Extension, with 21 starts available to earn 394.222 FedEx Cup points and match No 125 from the 2022-23 FedEx Cup autumn and eligibility points list – something that now seems unlikely.
At No 21 on the career money list, he could use a one-time exemption next year for the top 25 all-time money winners. Or he could use sponsor exemptions and his status as a multiple tour winner to get into events.
But Snedeker’s back playing a game he loves, with little or no pain, and is looking to the future with confidence.
“I still know how to do it,” he said. “I’m not an idiot. I did this one time, I can do it again.”
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