On Thursday last week, I was diagnosed with a TFCC injury. Whilst the pain isn’t particularly severe, the diagnosis could have a big impact on my golf. Cause of the injury is a combination of factors: bad mats at our golf course, bad mats at my private SIM, probably some age combined with computer mouse usage causing degradation.

I decided to document my journey back to golf from the TFCC injury. It hasn’t been a great year for me when it comes to injuries. Back in July 25, I got down to 4.3 and was shooting 74’s in comp. It was a matter of time before I shot a 72 in comp and my worst scores were 5 or 6 over in comp. Then I got sick, was out for 4 weeks and I lost my swing. It was a weird situation. I’m not sure what or why but my swing just didn’t return and it felt like I was rebuilding from scratch. Typically, I have a pretty accurate drive, and that disappeared making it harder for me to get greens in regulation.

12 months later, I’d got things to a point where it was starting to improve, and then came the next roadblock. I tore my QL oblique, which resulted in another six weeks out. To make matters worse, it occurred over the holiday period where I typically get in more golf. Upon returning, my chipping had disappeared, and again I was back to square one trying to rebuild that.

I thought I was over the final hurdle, and I was starting to score better with some 76’s starting to appear, but it seems that fate is not without a sense of humour. I had some mild pain in my wrist before heading out on the course last Saturday. After the game the pain was substantially worse. After giving it a rest for a couple of days to settle, I decided to go in and see the doctor on Wednesday when it wasn’t improving. He booked me in for an x-ray and ultrasound, and a result wasn’t good. I have a TFCC injury with a inflamed tendon, the extent is unknown.
At this point, I’m waiting for the formal report from the scan. The person doing the scan gave me the bad news as far as the TFCC is concerned, but I don’t know if it’s mild or serious. He informed me I may need an MRI, but that will depend on the doctors report.

My suspicion Is that it’s a mid tier injury. The pain isn’t debilitating, but it’s not pleasant either. I feel I could play a round of golf with some discomfort but it wouldn’t be fun. The pain seems to subside when I use it, but that may not be a good thing either.

In the interim, I have taken some preparation steps. I have it immobilised with a wrist brace, and I’ve ordered a wrist widget, which seems to be the golf standard for TFCC injuries. I also have mild pain in my left wrist, so I may order one for that as well. I’ve also ordered a Fibrebuilt mat. This should hopefully reduce the risk of TFCC reoccurring in future once I’ve recovered. it’s something I should’ve done when I got my SIM. It’s not worth taking risks on your body.

So where to now? I’m waiting on the results back from the doctor. Aside from that, I will be focusing on the rest of my body in the interim. I’d like to keep my ability and flexibility going where possible, and not risk losing all the work I put into it so I will try continuing with one-handed swings to keep the mobility going, do lots of leg work, do wrist work on my left wrist, core strengthening. I’m also planning to do flexibility work to try improve my rotation. If I can’t play, this seems like a good way to keep me occupied.

All of this will be dependent on the doctors recommendations. If they put me in a elbow to hand cast, then that’s obviously going to limit what I can do. It’s also going to depend on how bad it is. At this point, I’m guessing I’m out for a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks, but it could be 6-9 months.