▪ 1 free ‘green fee pass’ to Riverchase Golf Club
▪ 1 free ‘green fee pass’ to Ridgeview Ranch Golf Club
▪ 1 free one month ‘Player’s Club Membership’ to BOTH Riverchase & Ridgeview
Ranch (membership includes: free afternoon green fees for a month, all
practice range balls free for a month, and all golf clinics and special
instructions on driving range free for an entire month)
▪ 1 free ‘Ridgeview Ranch Logo Ball’ * 1 free ‘Bag of Golf Tees’
▪ 1 free ‘Divot Tool’ 1 free ‘Golf Lesson Certificate’ (a $75 value)
▪ 20% off coupon for all Golf Shop purchases on the day of the event

Current members who participate in the tournament will automatically be entered into a drawing to win $100 in Tuition. The tournament benefits the Eagle Gymnastics Girls & Boys Competitive Teams. SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE. Please call the front office at 972.712.4644 for more information.

Tee off at 8 am on Friday, September 18th in our FIRST ever Fundraising Golf Tournament at the Ridgeview Ranch Golf Club.  ALL players will receive a gift bag with all items listed below: 

▪  1 free ‘green fee pass’ to Riverchase Golf Club
▪  1 free ‘green fee pass’ to Ridgeview Ranch Golf Club
▪  1 free one month ‘Player’s Club Membership’ to BOTH Riverchase & Ridgeview 
    Ranch (membership includes: free afternoon green fees for a month, all
   practice range balls free for a month, and all golf clinics and special
   instructions on driving range free for an entire month)
▪  1 free ‘Ridgeview Ranch Logo Ball’ * 1 free ‘Bag of Golf Tees’
▪  1 free ‘Divot Tool’ 1 free ‘Golf Lesson Certificate’ (a $75 value)
▪  20% off coupon for all Golf Shop purchases on the day of the event

Current members who participate in the tournament will automatically be entered into a drawing to win $100 in Tuition.  The tournament benefits the Eagle Gymnastics Girls & Boys Competitive Teams. SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE.  Please call the front office of Eagle Gymnastics at 972.712.4644 for more information.

His difficult bunker shot on the 72nd hole at Royal Birkdale barely missed, however, and he lost a four-hole playoff to Mark O’Meara.

Ten years have passed since the claret jug slipped from Watts’ grasp. With the British Open returning to Royal Birkdale, he is simply hoping to redefine his injury-plagued career.

The feel-good story of 1998 has spent much of the last decade feeling bad. He has helplessly watched the golf world pass him by, relegated to obscurity by two herniated disks in his lower back, a torn labrum in his left hip and torn meniscus in his left knee.

Watts, 42, is playing again. But today’s first round began without him. He is at home in Westlake, plotting a comeback he hopes will include a return trip to the British Open.

With the help of specialists, including Dallas chiropractor Troy Van Biezen, Watts has been practicing regularly since the spring. But it’s tough to find playing opportunities or get sponsor’s exemptions without Tour status or world ranking points.

“It’s been very trying, very frustrating,” Watts said. “What’s been tough is I saw some of the top people in the country for the injuries and it didn’t work out.”

Watts has replayed the painful memory from Birkdale countless times. But what’s a little mental anguish when you can’t bend over to stick a tee in the ground because of pain in your hip, back and knee?

If Watts were vulnerable to despair, then he would have given up a long time ago. He earned about $6 million from 1994 to 1998 on the Japan Tour, winning 12 times, and has $2.4 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour.

He remains stubbornly committed to mounting a comeback and contending in a major championship again. He tried to book a return trip to Birkdale, but was ineligible to compete in qualifiers in the United States and Europe because he had no world ranking points.

So he accepted a sponsor’s exemption to the Mizuno Open, which awarded the top four finishers spots in the British Open. Having played only a handful of events the past five years, Watts missed the cut by one stroke.

“At my age, I know it’s going to be tough,” Watts said. “I would have loved to qualify. But at least the tournament in Japan proved to me that my body could hold up to competition. I didn’t know what to expect.”

Watts’ body began giving him problems in 2000. He had surgery in January 2001 to repair the torn labrum, which was followed by the two herniated disks in his lower back and stress on his spine. He also discovered that he’d been playing with a torn meniscus in his left knee for about six years.

His play declined to about 30 events from 2003 through 2005, and his medical bills increased.

The most frustrating part for Watts was the unknown. He got different opinions from practically every doctor he saw. In 2006, veteran Paul Stankowski of Flower Mound recommended that Watts see Van Biezen. His specialty is Active Release Technique, which removes scar tissue in muscles with soft-tissue treatment.

“He was pretty depressed, down in the dumps and looking to play again,” said Van Biezen, who treats about 30 pro golfers in the Dallas area and travels to about eight events on behalf of the PGA Tour. He also treats players from the Dallas Stars and Mavericks.

“You could see the desire in his eyes, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He showed no mobility. The force of his swing was going to his spine. It’s probably the worst hip I’ve ever seen.”

Watts’ exercise program includes isometric and ballistic stretching and resistance training. He also adjusted his swing, opening his left foot at address to reduce pressure on his left hip.

“It’s been a long road,” Van Biezen said. “Because of all the scar tissue, his previous workouts were counterproductive. We had to break down his body and build it back up again.”

It’s the building part that excites Watts. He has shot rounds in the 60s at his home course, The Vaquero Club, so he knows he’s capable of good scores.

But he lacks competition. His manager has been calling tournaments on the PGA, Nationwide, European and Japan tours looking for sponsor’s exemptions.

“There’s a huge difference between playing a great round of golf at home and on the Tour,” Watts said. “I’m hoping to play a lot. It was hard to ask for invites when I didn’t know if my body would hold up.”

Watts, though, is not lacking competition entirely. Sons Jason, 10, and Kevin, 5, and 8-year-old daughter Kelsie have teams that need assistant coaches. With a busy hockey schedule this weekend, Watts isn’t sure how much of the British Open he’ll see.

“Getting involved with the kids’ sports and school has been great,” Watts said. “If I’m going to be there, why not try to help?”

BRIAN WATTS
Age: 42

Residence: Westlake

Family: Wife Debbye; children Jason, 10, Kelsie, 8, Kevin, 5.

High School: Carrollton Newman Smith

College: Oklahoma State

Turned pro: 1988

Notable: In 1984, was AJGA Player of the Year and won the Class 5A state title. … Won 1986 Trans-Mississippi Amateur. … In 1987, captured the individual title and helped Oklahoma State win the team title at NCAA national championship. … Has 13 worldwide wins: 12 on the Japan Tour and the 1993 Hong Kong Open. … Ranks 17th overall (second among Americans) in career wins on Japan Tour. Best season was 1994, when he won five times. … In 1999, his first full year on the PGA Tour, he finished 57th in earnings.

WHAT ALMOST WAS
Brian Watts entered the final round of the 1998 British Open with a two-stroke lead, lost it, and then rallied down the stretch. Here’s how it happened:

71ST HOLE: Trailing by two strokes, Watts made a 15-foot putt for birdie to pull within one of Mark O’Meara.

72ND HOLE: Needing birdie to win, he drove into the left rough on the par-4 and then hit into the left greenside bunker about 25 yards from the hole. With his ball near the left lip, he stood with his left foot in the bunker and his right leg bent outside the bunker. The ball caught the slope of the green and rolled to within six inches of the cup.

HOLES 73-76 (the playoff): O’Meara birdied the par-5 15th hole, and Watts missed a 5-foot putt for birdie. “That’s my biggest regret of the tournament,” he said. Still trailing by one on 18, Watts couldn’t make up the deficit after hitting his approach into the same bunker.

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – At 33 and apparently rising, Brian Watts expected the 2000 PGA Tour season to be his best year yet. Signs indicated an upward graph. A dozen Japan Golf Tour victories in 1994-98. That British Open playoff loss to Mark O’Meara at Royal Birkdale and a top-20 world ranking in ’98.

The next year, his first full Tour campaign as a seasoned professional, he ranked 57th in earnings and was one of only a few to make the cut at all four majors and The Players Championship.

Familiar with his new surroundings, he envisioned a trophy and a higher stack of cash. Instead, the new millennium ushered in a dizzying medical ordeal that plummeted Watts into a golf oblivion that still exists today. Beset by one injury after another, mainly involving his hip, back and knee, he hasn’t played competitively for any extended period in five years and hasn’t had a pain-free season since last decade.

His body, despite his having seen about a dozen doctors, deteriorated to the point Watts announced his retirement at the end of 2005.

“I never dreamed I’d have all these problems,” Watts said recently from his six-bedroom dream home in Vaquero, a gated golf community near Dallas.

But at 42, he hasn’t stopped dreaming. In the past couple of years, he happily discovered the root of his health issues, rehabbed and exercised vigorously, fine-tuned his game and in late June began yet another comeback, this time back in Japan.

Playing on a sponsor exemption in his first start anywhere since Japan Golf Tour Q-School last fall, Watts shot 69-75 June 19-20 and missed the cut by a shot at the Mizuno Open. The top four earned berths into next week’s British Open.

So though he won’t return to this year’s Open Championship at Birkdale, site of his most visible moment on the world stage, he is armed with hope. Without Tour status or world ranking points but ready and able to play wherever he can, Watts aims to regain a competitive edge and tackle PGA Tour Q-School this fall from a position of strength, for a change.

“I think I can play my way back to the Tour,” he says. “I’ve played a lot of good solid rounds (in the mid-60s at Vaquero). It can be done. But being 42, I know the odds are small. I don’t know what I have in me. The good thing is the desire to play never left. When I retired, it wasn’t because of lack of desire. It was because I didn’t have the body to do this. The only thing that kept me going was the desire to play.”

Louisiana-based Rob Noel, his swing coach since 1992, has seen Watts as “low as can be.”

Now Noel sees a swing, body and spirit better than they’ve been in at least four years. “The only thing stopping him is getting back in tournament shape,” Noel said. “When you’ve been out of competition for four years, you can be hitting it great at home, but it’s different when the ropes are up. It’s a re-learning experience.”

While 2004 British Open champion Todd Hamilton wonders whether his friend and neighbor enjoys golf “as much as he needs to get back and win on Tour,” Noel sees a driven sort.

“The thing about Brian is, he’s game,” the coach said.

“I think he’s going to make a comeback. He’s relentless and strong-willed. His daily routines show how bad he wants it. Most guys would’ve been done years ago.”

Watts, too, is equipped with something most top players don’t have – the perspective of hitting golf bottom, of having livelihood stolen in his prime. When you have all that promise and your body breaks down and you don’t beat 112th in earnings this decade, you learn lessons. Plenty of them.

“The body is so fragile,” Watts said, beginning the list. “And you can never take anything for granted. You can never walk into a doctor’s office thinking he can fix you. I’ve had quite a few opinions. I learned you have to go to the bottom of the onion (to find the cause). I was so stubborn that I tried to play through the health issues.”

Watts deems himself “very, very blessed” because of a great family and sound investments. The silver lining is he has spent years at home with his wife, Debbye, and their three children, now ages 5-11, and coached hockey, football and soccer. That is, when he wasn’t visiting doctors.

Walking pneumonia and a left hip injury struck in 2000. Surgery in January 2001 fixed a torn labrum. The next year brought two herniated back disks, torn knee cartilage and two hip injuries. By the 2002 Florida Swing, he couldn’t bend over. He got his card back at Q-School but six months later told people he was quitting because of a bulging disk that would limit him to 30 starts from 2003 to ’05.

“That was a miserable, miserable time,” Watts said. “Not knowing what was wrong then was the low point. I still thought I could play golf with a mindset of ‘never say die.’ I’m happy to have answers now.”

At the insistence of fellow Tour player Paul Stankowski, Watts on Jan. 17, 2006, went to see Troy Van Biezen. The acclaimed Dallas-based chiropractor practices Active Release Technique, a soft-tissue treatment that removes scar tissue in muscles to improve range of motion.

Watts also got help from chiropractor Greg Rose at the Titleist Performance Institute. Watts not only started healing his back, hip and knee, but learned the genesis of his wicked spiral.
Van Biezen found that Watts had no stability or range of motion in his left hip.

On one test, Watts rotated his hip only 4 percent, far below the Tour average of 35 percent, Van Biezen said. He is now up to 20 percent thanks to therapy, and also changed his swing, flaring his left foot, to alleviate hip stress.

“He’s ready now,” Van Biezen said. “He’s a different person.”

The doctor told Watts that because his left hip broke down over time and became dysfunctional because of built-up scar tissue and lack of blood flow, the back and knee became overused while compensating. Hence, two herniated disks and the torn knee cartilage.

“I’d guess that 80 percent of golfers with back problems have a hip issue,” Van Biezen said.

Watts started hitting balls in June 2006, played 18 holes that October but then suffered a foot injury. He entered his first tournament in 20 months, the Russian Open, in August 2007 but then his hip went out before the Japan and PGA Tour Q-Schools.

He paid a $4,000 entry fee but played only nine holes at Tour second stage and ended up with more cortisone shots.

A decade ago at Birkdale, people were talking about the golf shots of this Beau Bridges lookalike who had made millions in Japan a few years after winning 1987 NCAA individual and team titles at Oklahoma State.

Then ranked 35th in the world even though he had never finished better than 40th in nine previous majors, Watts said he hit the ball worse than he had in years in his first three Open practice rounds at Birkdale. But he made an adjustment after his caddie noticed his shoulders were closed at address and entered the final round ahead by two strokes.

He got into the playoff when he birdied the 71st hole from 15 feet and made an all-world sand save from 25 yards at the last. Watts took an upright swing and blasted to a foot even though his right leg rested on the bunker slope and the ball sat close to the back lip.

That week, he had watched short-game wizard Seve Ballesteros hit similar bunker shots and took note. And before swinging, he said he had two juxtaposed thoughts: Getting the ball out, one, and the bunker shot then-neighbor Bob Tway holed to beat Greg Norman at the 1986 PGA Championship.

“I knew it was close because of the reaction of the crowd,” Watts said. “It was loud.”

His Open memories, though, remain bittersweet because he lost the four-hole playoff by two strokes. After O’Meara birdied the first extra hole, Watts failed to match from short range. After O’Meara two-putted for par at the second, Watts missed birdie from 15 feet. That part, he said, “hurts bad.”

“It was really neat to play up to my ability on a world stage,” Watts said. “Nobody knew it, but I played a lot of great golf before that. The memories are mostly fond, but it still hurts today because I realize it was right there. When you have the opportunity to do something great, you have to take advantage.”

That 58-degree wedge from the Open now rests in a glass case in his office, he says, so his children can see a symbol of a great day. Their home happens to sit on a street named Wysteria, where the extra-large houses suggest the housewives aren’t too desperate.

In addition to Hamilton, the neighbors go by the names of Drew Bledsoe, Ben Crane, Brandt Jobe and Watts’ childhood sports idol, Terry Bradshaw. It goes without saying why son Jason’s middle name is Bradshaw.

Like Watts, Hamilton and Jobe became multi-multi-yenionaires playing in Japan, where good golf brings more compensation than respect. (Watts earned 139 million yen during a five-victory 1994 season alone, a haul that sounds almost as impressive when converted to $1.4 million.)

Unlike Watts, Hamilton and former Vaquero resident Justin Leonard decorated their places with the coveted symbol of Open glory, the Claret Jug. One subdivision near the DFW Airport, almost three jugs.

While Watts doesn’t have said silver ornament, he does have a dozen trophies representing his Japanese success. But they aren’t displayed on his walls, which tend to feature family photos. Rather, the hardware rests in two boxes in the garage.

By design.

“I put them in there when I tried my first comeback,” Watts said. “I didn’t want to dwell on the past. I wanted to start over. Sometimes when you don’t have anything, you fight for it more.”

• • •

Jeff Rude is a Golfweek senior writer. To reach him email jrude@golfweek.com.

There was a moment, 10 years ago, when all the golf world knew of Brian Watts. Then 32, Watts had just hit a remarkable bunker shot on the 72nd hole of the 1998 British Open at Royal Birkdale GC. The shot got him into a playoff with eventual winner Mark O’Meara, that year’s Masters champion. Watts became a footnote to the championship, but even footnotes are human beings with dreams. Ten years later, his promising career derailed and nearly ended by injury, Watts is playing again. He’s not playing at Birkdale. He’s just playing, with every intention of finding the magic that brought him to that memorable moment in England.

Watts was in the final group that Sunday, and he had to par the last hole to tie O’Meara. He had arrived at this juncture in his career by an unconventional route for an American player. A first-team All-American at Oklahoma State and the medalist at the 1987 NCAA Championship, Watts played the PGA Tour in 1991 but won only $40,199 for 184th on the money list and didn’t keep his card. He tried to earn his tour card a couple more times, failed to get it and decided to play in Japan. Watts won 12 tournaments there between 1994 and 1998, and more than $5 million. He had competed against Nick Price while he was the No. 1 player in the world and also played against Mark Calcavecchia and Greg Norman. “Japan wasn’t the PGA Tour,” says Watts, “but I was competing against guys in their prime.”

At Birkdale Watts shot a final-round 68, but it was a 69 in the second round, in brutal, windy conditions, that propelled him to a one-shot lead. The third round was played in similar weather, not that Watts minded. He figured he could handle the weather because of the way Oklahoma State coach Mike Holder trained his players. “He wanted us to qualify only on the worst days,” Watts says at home in Dallas, where he lives with his wife, Debbye, and their two children. “See what you can do. That was the idea.”

Watts bogeyed the first hole Saturday, but a 6-iron to three feet on the third hole settled him down. He shot 73 to take a two-shot lead into Sunday. “I was nervous inside, but not about being in the lead,” Watts says. “I wanted to succeed on the world stage.” At his side was caddie Andy Fuller, who had been with him through many of his wins in Japan. “Brian was in contention every week,” Fuller says.

Watts had a family connection to the U.K., on his paternal grandparents’ side. It was on a television set in their London home in July 1975 that he watched Tom Watson defeat Jack Newton at Carnoustie. Years later as a professional, Watts had turned himself into an international player. Now, playing in his sixth Open, he was on the cusp of winning the championship.

On the 72nd hole at Birkdale, Watts drove just into the left rough and hit his second into the bunker left of the green. His ball settled into an awkward spot near the left lip, so that he could play the shot only by planting his left foot inside the bunker, with his right leg bent and outside the bunker. There was very little margin for error.

“I thought about three things on that bunker shot,” Watts says. “I’d won the 1994 Mizuno Open in a four-way playoff by holing a bunker shot. Then I pictured Bob Tway [a friend who had attended Oklahoma State before Watts] holing his bunker shot on the last hole to win the [1986] PGA Championship. The third thing was that I made sure to quickly pick up my sand wedge, so that I wouldn’t hit the bunker lip, and to drop it down so that the ball would pop out.”

O’Meara was watching from the hillside left of the 18th green. “I was sitting there with my wife Alicia, my daughter Michelle, and my son Shaun,” O’Meara says. “I remember Shaun saying to me after Brian hit his second shot in the bunker, ‘Dad, you’re going to win.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ Shaun’s like, ‘He’s in the bunker, he’s got a tough shot.’ I said?and I remember this as if it’s happening right now?’There’s one thing in golf, Shaun, you can never underestimate your opponent. You always have to think he’s going to do well, or something spectacular. That way you never let your guard down.’ ”

The ball cleared the lip of the bunker by a couple of inches and took the slope of the green. “I couldn’t tell from my angle how close it was,” Watts says. “But I heard the crowd as the ball got over the bunker lip and started rolling to the hole. I couldn’t tell if it was an inch or three feet. It was less than a foot.”

Says O’Meara: “He hit an amazing shot. Shaun looked up at me and I could see what he was thinking. It was, ‘Are you kidding me? How did you know?’ I told him I didn’t know.”

O’Meara birdied the par-5 15th hole, the first of the four-hole playoff, while Watts made par. O’Meara maintained that one-shot lead to the 18th hole, where Watts found the same bunker from which he nearly had holed out an hour earlier. He needed to hole out to continue the playoff. But there was no more magic. Watts won $309,260, official money on the PGA Tour that boosted him to 90th place on that year’s money list and gave him his 1999 PGA Tour card.

Watts and his wife never purchased a home in Japan. His routine was to play a few weeks in Japan and then return home to the U.S. for a couple of weeks. Still, Watts valued the experience and confidence he gained in the Far East. “I played the same way at Birkdale as I did in Japan,” he said.

It was written that Watts was the “feel-good story” of the 1998 Open, “the story of a golfing gypsy with a chance, at least, to make his way back home.” He played the 1999 PGA Tour, winning $767,409 to finish 57th on the money list, while returning to Japan to play occasionally. But he had endured lower-back problems for a while, and early in 2000 he started having pain in his left hip, causing him to slip to 133rd on the money list. He underwent hip surgery in January 2001 and rehabbed for eight weeks before returning to the tour in the spring and going on a nice run to finish 112th and keep his card for 2002.

“But I wasn’t feeling the same as before my left hip started hurting,” Watts says. “Looking back, I hadn’t realized that the rehab for my hip would be lifelong. There were some underlying things I didn’t know about.” He played sparingly in the U.S. and Japan through 2005, with relatively little success. Still, he persisted, entering qualifying school in fall 2005. There, however, he couldn’t bend over to put a tee in the ground.

“Driving back to my home in Dallas,” Watts remembers, “I said, ‘I’m never playing again until I’m healthy enough to play.’ ”

Watts previously had talked with his long-time friend and PGA Tour colleague Paul Stankowski, who had taken a year off because of injuries. “I told Paul I was as down as I could be, and that I needed help,” said Watts. Stankowski reminded Watts of that conversation. This time Watts listened to Stankowski, who led him to Troy Van Biezen, a former pro hockey player who had become a prominent chiropractor and specialist in Active Release Technique (ART), which breaks up scar tissue. Stankowski credits Van Biezen with saving his career.

Watts met Van Biezen in January 2006, “a big date for me,” he says. Van Biezen arranged for Watts to call Wally Uihlein, the chairman and CEO of Titleist. Uihlein in turn arranged for Watts to go to the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, Calif., to meet Greg Rose, TPI’s co-founder and renowned chiropractor and athletic therapist. Van Biezen and Watts visited Rose in April 2006.

There Watts learned that he had been playing with a torn meniscus in his left knee for six years. He also had a herniated disk in his lower back. He was informed that his problems came from his dysfunctional left hip, which overworked the joints below the hip.

Rose and Van Biezen provided Watts with an exercise program that he follows religiously to this day. Van Biezen and Rose, along with Roland Denault, a muscle activation therapist, comprise Watts’ therapy team. His program includes ART, muscle activation therapy, isometric and ballistic stretching, and resistance training. To ease the stress on his left hip at impact and through the ball, Watts learned to play with his left foot turned out 30 degrees at address. “If not for these three gentlemen, I wouldn’t be able to play,” Watts says of his team. “I’d be grilled, well-done, and cooked.”

“The big thing with Brian in my opinion is that he was misdiagnosed,” Van Biezen says. “Everybody jumps on disk herniation as the problem. I said I don’t think so, that the problem stems from the left hip. If you lose mobility in the hip, the load goes into your lower spine. I measured Brian’s internal hip rotation, and it was five degrees. The average tour pro rotates 35-40 degrees.”

Watts played no competitive golf, and very little golf at all, while rehabbing the last couple of years. He started to play regularly this past spring, with friends, and in a cart. He then played alone while walking, with a caddie. “I forced myself not to play with my friends, and to go out as if I was playing my own mini-tournament,” he recalls.

The wind was howling one day when Watts played. He pretended he was in a major, hitting every shot with purpose. “I still have a lot of work to do,” he said after that round in early May, “but I’m upbeat about it.” He had received an invitation to play the Mizuno Open last month, the tournament he won three times in his heyday. The top four players would qualify for the Open at Birkdale. Watts referred to the tournament as his qualifying round for the Open.

Watts opened with a 69 in the first round at the Yomiuri CC in Tokyo. But he shot 75 in the second round to miss the cut by a shot. Still, he is competing again. “I’m pulling for Brian. I’d love to walk down the fairways with him again,” Stankowski says. Watts puts it this way: “It’s been a struggle, but I have a chance now. That’s all I can ask for.”

A decade after nearly winning a major, he is effectively starting over. It is a start he embraces, a start he cherishes.

“I was fearful of the unknown,’’ Paul Stankowski said. “This was different. I’ve won on TOUR. I know what I can do. I know I have the talent. “But emotionally, I’d turned golf off.’’“I’m encouraged,’’ he said. “I felt good.’’

He also felt worn out. “First day back, my feet hurt, I’m sore and I’m tired,’’ he said with a smile before heading out to prop up his feet and watch a movie.

A good tired. He had only played a dozen rounds before he got on the plane in Dallas and hadn’t broken par until his 10th round. A friendly one at that.

“A shot is a shot,’’ he said. “I knew I could hit those and it didn’t matter if it was in competition. The mind is the thing that has to come back. You need that to play out here. I probably never have been very solid mentally. It’s been my weakest link in the sense that I kind of just fl oat around out here. I don’t really focus too much and I hit the ball real quick because if I stay over it too long, I’ll forget what I’m doing.’’

Stankowski is playing on his second major medical exemption in two years, having undergone his left wrist in May 2003 and August 2004 and on his left shoulder while he was rehabbing from a torn tendon in his left lower arm last year. He thought they were just going to clean out his shoulder. Instead, they found a tear in the labrum.

And that torn tendon? It happened in round one of last year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am — his first tournament back from the ’04 surgery — so is it any wonder he was a little fearful? After all, two months ago, he couldn’t hold a golf club and he was contemplating a career change.

“I have a lot of ideas of what I want to do when golf is over and I was starting to think about it,’’ he said, noting he did a little work with The Golf Channel and with XM Radio. “I’d take one step forward, five back.’’

The difference this time around was PGA TOUR’s physiotherapy associate Troy Van Beisen. A friend in California helped Stankowski fi nd him and he’s, well, worked miracles in the last few months.

“I found someone,’’ he said, “who saved my career.’’

Van Beisen does Active Release Technique (ART) and within a few months had Stankowski’s hand moving as it should — without any pain. In addition, he worked on all the pressure points on his body to loosen him up and get him swinging freely. Even after the first wrist surgery, Stankowski was playing with a painful shoulder, which could have come, in part, from overcompensating for the wrist. He felt he came back too fast after his surgery in ‘04 — he played at the end of the season and overseas.

And after his last rehab — he tore the tendon on the 16th hole at Pebble Beach and withdrew after round one — he was still in pain. “The pain wouldn’t go away,’’ he said. “They just said go out and deal with it.’’

When he couldn’t, he tried television and radio, but quickly found that wasn’t for him. “It was a lot of hard work,’’ he said. “I don’t know what Tiger or Vijay’s bread-and-butter shots are. I play with them, I don’t pay attention. But I can tell you what they’re thinking. But I liked the team aspect of trying to put together a broadcast and making it sound good or look good.’’

But he needed to give golf another shot.

“I missed the smells, I missed the guys, I missed the courses,’’ he said.

Enter Van Beisen. And Stankowski’s comeback.

He made the turn 4 under and got to 5 under with a birdie at the fi fth hole — his 14th — but he gave it right back at the sixth.

“I’ve been home for so long, it was nice to …’’ he said, pausing. “I’m glad you’re not Roy Firestone. I might have started crying.’’

He didn’t. Not at the course anyway.

“I had no clue if I’d be ready,’’ he said. “I came out this week with zero expectations and when I got here and started hitting it better, I’m like ‘Okay, okay. Now I think I can do something here.’’

What does the future hold? He doesn’t know. He feels good. He’s playing well.

And he has one great comeback round under his belt.

“I’m just thankful to be out playing again,’’ he said. “It’s awesome.’’