Puntacana extends title sponsorship of PGA TOUR event through 2025

Two-time PGA TOUR winner Steven Bowditch will undergo spinal fusion surgery similar to that undertaken by Tiger Woods after doctors finally uncovered the source of two years of back pain the Australian had been struggling with.   Bowditch – who won the 2014 Valero Texas Open and 2015 AT&T Byron Nelson – had tried to battle through the mystery pain for two years.   The result was missing 25 of 27 cuts in 2016-17 and then missing the weekend in all eight tournaments he played in 2017-18.   Multiple MRIs had failed to pick up any problems until Bowditch was recently recommended to undergo a moving X-ray and the results picked up two stress fractures and spinal slippage.   “I have been diagnosed with Pars Defect and Spondylolysis. After meeting with several surgeons, who all arrived at the same conclusion, treatment is a surgical fusion of the L5 and S1, which I will undergo next month,� Bowditch said in a statement on social media.   “I spent much of the last two years dealing with lower back pain, leg numbness, sciatic pain, loss of control of my right side and tingling in my toes.   “I had exhausted everything I could think of to diagnose the source of my pain … several MRIs, multiple injections, chiropractic adjustments, physical therapy and massage. It would appear to calm down and then flair right back up as soon as I resumed golf activity.�   With the pain affecting his day-to-day life with his wife and young daughter, the 35-year-old is just grateful to have found the cause.   “I haven’t slept in my own bed for eight months. I need to sleep on a couch with my legs in the air to keep my back straight,� he told PGATOUR.COM.   “It is just such a relief to know what’s going on and hopefully this will ensure a pain-free future and a return to golf.�   While no timetable for a competitive return is set, Bowditch is hopeful he can be fit by late 2019.

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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Chalk up another victory for Friday the 13th. Kelly Kraft of Dallas was cruising inside the cut line at the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town on Friday when a freak bird strike potentially scuttled his chances of playing into the weekend. Kraft made what he described as clean contact at the 192-yard, par-3 14th hole only to watch his ball glance off a “giant, black bird� and plop into the water hazard in front of the green. The bird flew away.  “It cost me the cut, most likely,� Kraft said. “There was a helping wind, and I hit a 7-iron, caught it perfect. It was probably 30 yards off the tee box and this giant, black bird swooped in front of it and hit it and the ball fell 20 yards short in the water. It would’ve been in the middle of the green. It might have been close. I got screwed.� A bird strike on the course is so rare that Kraft, playing with Robert Garrigus and Michael Thompson, initially wasn’t sure what to do. None of them were. They needed a ruling. “Robert Garrigus came running up to me first,� said Mark Dusbabek, one of the PGA TOUR rules officials on site. “He said, ‘His ball hit a bird in flight! That’s a cancel-and-replay, right?’� It was not. The cancel-and-replay rule is invoked if a ball hits a permanent, elevated power line, but not a bird. “The big difference is a bird is a God-made object,� said Dillard Pruitt, another TOUR rules official on site. “Whereas a telephone wire is man-made. It’s just a stroke of bad luck. It doesn’t happen very often, but today is Friday the 13th. Freaky Friday.�  Dusbabek said Gary Woodland hit a bird at the CIMB Classic last fall, which turned out to be a good break as his ball landed on the green. Although a seagull once plucked Brad Fabel’s ball off the green and dropped it in the water at THE PLAYERS Championship, he was allowed to replace it thanks to Rule 18-1. “The difference there was the ball was at rest,� Pruitt said, “and this one you just don’t know where it would’ve gone. It could’ve gone in the water or it could have gone in the hole.� Kraft believes it was going on the green. He bounced back with birdies on the 17th and first holes, but bogeyed the seventh hole to wind up at 1-over, most likely one shot outside the cut line. “It’s kind of a dumb rule that you can’t re-tee there,� Kraft said. “If you hit a power line, you can re-tee, and if a bird moves your ball while it’s resting you can replace it. But there’s nothing you can do about this. This has got to be more unusual than a hole-in-one. Two moving objects colliding? I mean you hit balls all day long on the range and you don’t hit another ball in the air.�

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