Fairways of Life is joined by PGA Tour Player Will Gordon. Will shares his struggles through injury to maintain his status on the PGA Tour and continues his dream of being a professional golfer at the highest level.
will Gordon made some huge news of late playing on a major medical exemption uh he made it for the rest of the season by the thinnest of margins it was a story that connected with so many and for so many reasons we love when we get a chance to speak with Will a winner on the corn ferry tour 148 career starts between the PGA Tour and the Corn Ferry Tour 13 career top 10s he’s 14th on tour in driving distance at 313 yards he also has a ninth uh his position is ninth on tour in greens regulations 70.3% in that regard currently 137th in FedEx Cup points standings and the injury i I’m going to let him explain to us what happened and how it happened but first we say hello to Will and Will how you doing my man are you breathing
i’m good i’m I’m breathing breathing a little easier today uh I’m really thankful to be at the John Deere Classic this week and have another playing opportunity it was a quite the quite the crazy weekend and quite quite the crazy uh kind of accumulation of a lot of different things over the last year and a half so uh for it to all
play out that way was a bit bit insane
it is insane especially when you you had to make it on the number and and all but we’ll get into that in a second first of all if I may what was the injury could you tell the world what happened and how and why it ended up becoming a major medical exemption
yeah so a couple years ago I started um probably two and a half years ago I started feeling some kind of symptoms in my neck and shoulder uh kind of down my nerve tract and looking back I I kind of had some symptom flare-ups that kind of got shorter and shorter in between kind of flare-ups and um I played the Phoenix Open uh last year and I got home was practicing um hit a drive was playing with a couple friends and um felt like kind of some warmth in my elbow and then by the time I made it to the green I couldn’t get the elbow my elbow out of kind of next I couldn’t extend it and um I ended up having a little tear in my forearm and it was it came from basically three vertebrae in my kind of neck and spine area that had gotten so inflamed that I I couldn’t turn to the left so basically every time I’d swing a golf club I would just I learned how to kind of throw my arm at it and over time my my arm just couldn’t take it anymore so uh ended up taking I think a full eight weeks off from touching golf clubs and when I came back had to had to start playing um left-handed to kind of offset the inflammation and um did that for a couple weeks and slowly built kind of like on a pitch count built my way back up to hitting drivers and hitting full shots again and then was able to uh come back actually here at the John Deere Classic last year um so to be sitting here and have have overcome that and to be able to play this week again and feeling a lot healthier is a pretty rewarding experience
what would you say was the origin of all this was it just from beating golf balls non-stop and and have you had to do anything to physically alter your golf swing so that the injury doesn’t come back
yeah that that’s been the biggest learning learning process um we couldn’t really identify whether it was a uh kind of an injury that happened out of the blue or something that happened out over time but um I did know some you know whether it was my body was going to start operating better or I would have to say change something in my uh swing i’ve had to do a little bit of both um to kind of offset making sure those symptoms don’t come back so um it’s been a huge learning process and been difficult I think um I I definitely maybe underestimated the process coming back but um like I said it’s been a huge learning process and to be able to grow as a human and as a golfer through through this process I think um you know looking back on all the heartbreak and all the little moments of growth that I you know you you hope to learn from instead of just waste so I think I’ve I’ve tried to do that through every step well let’s let’s look at it from the human side for for a perspective when did you feel fear when did you think that yeah maybe this is it this is this is the end of the road for me i’m going to have to find something else and you’re healing and you’re uncomfortable and you’re maybe in pain or what have you but how dark did it get um it the first uh the first month or two when I got hurt because I again I thought it wasn’t going to be that long and I went and saw a couple doctors in New York and I they couldn’t really figure out where the origin of this was coming from and then found some really good people in Greenville South Carolina that were able to help me that had dealt with some similar stuff from a baseball perspective and um again I never let my brain go to you know this is you know something that’s going to end my career it was just kind of a bump in the road um but the process coming back especially over the last year with how I’ve played and body not feeling great um mind not feeling great a lot of those moments have been pretty dark and a pretty pretty challenging but I’m extremely grateful to have a wonderful awesome group of people around me my family my fiance my agent my coaches i had so many people kind of helped carry me through times where I couldn’t really um get through myself and um yeah looking back it’s just been a wild wild uh year and a half and a lot of growth has happened um so I I I just am trying to do the next right thing in front of me and um didn’t know how the story was going to kind of play out as I’ve uh kind of gotten down to my last few medical starts i’ve played really well and had some really tough finishes you know going back to even November of last year just had some really tough finishes i’ve had you know changes in my team and it’s just been a really adversity adversity season of life but I I’ve um really proud of myself for just like I said fighting to the very very end and it’s pretty wild it took to the last moment yeah it was pretty dramatic the way that it ultimately played itself out i’m curious when you talked about a lot of growth uh because the implication is to me that we’re not necessarily talking about something that’s just between the ropes we’re talking about some bigger life stuff how would you define it um I I would define it as you know I kind of reached the end of not just once but dozens of times the end of what I knew to do and I had to lean on other people um I had really had to trust God’s plan because I I thought I’ve been thinking and really believe that I’ve been doing so many of the right things and I’ve had to learn how to separate my worth and process from results which is a really really hard thing to do people tell you that from when you’re 12 years old but um especially at this level when there’s so many uh consequences that come with how you play um it’s a really hard thing to do and I’ve really had to learn how to do that when there’s a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty about where my career is headed and to do that under those circumstances I think is going to carry me in life and golf a long way in the future because I I I’ve been able to figure out how to insulate myself a little bit more from the results of golf and um move me forward no matter what and get get a plan together no matter what the results are telling me
yeah i mean when you came on this morning and we have a friendly banter and I’m asking you how you’re breathing this week and you said a little easier is that true are are you at a point right now where you’re kind of like “Hey this week at the John Deere I I can I don’t have to be quite so tight i I can be who I am i could be the player that I used to know perhaps.” Uh is that is that something that you’re feeling
yeah I think a little bit like I said the way it all played out when you think about 30 events over the last two years i played 16 last year and 14 this year and that’s kind of the way the MA major medical set up so it’s like a continuation of what I would have gotten in last year and um for it to when I think about all the crazy stuff that’s happened in my rounds and um injuries and all the stuff that’s happened away from the golf course all the great stuff that’s happened in my life away from the golf course like for it to come down to that moment of having to birdie the last two holes and for all those crazy things to happen i’ve missed several cuts by one shot over the last year um you know lip outs and a six points like way less than a stroke um and for it to come down to that it just really I think taught me how much of life is really kind of out of our control and all all that God really wanted me to do is stay faithful to my my career and being the person that I’m kind of trying to be every day and I think that experience really felt made me feel like there’s a reason I’m supposed to be doing this for a living because I think I’ve struggled with that a lot the last year and a half because it’s been such an uphill battle um so to get that that feeling where you really realize how much out of control you are um and just trying to be faithful to what you know are the right things to do and um I’ve done that i’m really proud of myself for doing that during some really hard times the last um six months to a year it’s very inspiring uh we’ve got about a minute left here will could you talk to us about who your sponsors are
yeah my sponsors are um Callaway Golf they’ve I’ve been with them since I turned pro um they’ve been amazing travis Matthews obviously under that umbrella and they’re they’re a great um really fun fun content and uh fun fun company to be a part of wayne Brothers right here or over here um good company out of Davidson North Carolina keith Wayne um that’s where I grew up it’s pretty cool to have a you know a relationship and a partnership with a a company from my hometown and um it’s a small town a really small community that takes care of each other and Keith’s been uh instrumental in supporting me um especially the last year and a half they came on board last at the beginning of last year or end of the year before and I got hurt pretty shortly after and he never blinked and was always there to support me so um and then Sea Island Golf Club um that’s I live down in St simon now island Golf Club has been an awesome place to practice and Frederica Golf Club is um a special place to us um we’re getting married there later this year so um
pretty pretty special
awesome congratulations with all of it my friend 6 you should get that like tattooed someplace uh good luck with the path that stands before you we wish you the very very
