Less than three months after undergoing open-heart surgery, Davis Love III is making his return to the PGA Tour Champions this week at the Mitsubishi Electric Classic on Friday.
The 61-year-old member of the World Golf Hall of Fame said that 10 years ago, he had a routine physical at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and his doctor detected a heart murmur and sent him to a cardiologist, who confirmed a leaky valve. In a phone call with Golfweek, Love recalled his heart specialist telling him, “I can’t believe your doctor could hear that through a stethoscope.”
“I had no symptoms, I never felt bad. I never had anything other than a little bit of high blood pressure. So I could have walked right into a tragedy and they prevented that, so I feel very blessed,” Love said Thursday on the eve of the opening round of the tournament in Atlanta at TPC Sugarloaf. “Now they’re saying I’ve got 10 or 15 years on this valve and then I can get a new one. I’m going to get the most I can out of this one and hopefully get a retread down the road sometime.”
It took around 12 weeks for Love’s cracked ribs to heal and he just began hitting balls again in early April. Patience, Love said, isn’t one of his virtues.
“I’m not very patient at all,” Love said. “They told me I could start putting in March and my daughter told me, ‘Well, you’re scooping horse stalls already, I think that’s harder than putting. Why don’t you go putt?’ I literally on the way home from the hospital stopped in the gym at Sea Island with Randy Myers. We didn’t really do anything except walk around in circles, but it started the day I got home from surgery to let’s do something.”
Davis Love III looking for first Champions win
A winner of 21 PGA Tour titles, including the 1997 PGA Championship and the Players Championship twice, Love has never won on PGA Tour Champions. Love said in November that he’d like to break Mark Brooks’ record for the most starts on the PGA Tour. (Brooks has made 803; Love is stuck on 790.) Love missed most of last season after undergoing thumb surgery in April.
“Cow parts in my thumb and heart now,” he wrote to Golfweek in a text. “Hopefully hit it farther and no mooing!”
Love said he’s raring to go but has lost some clubhead speed and said expectations are low. He’s just happy to be getting inside the ropes with a cart at his disposal and to see old friends.
“It’s nice to be back. I mainly came to see all my friends,” Love said. “Billy Andrade called me on my birthday. He goes, ‘Man, I hope we see you soon and not just on FaceTime.’ It really hit me that I really haven’t seen guys.”
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