Jeff Guan, a talented up-and-coming pro, has no vision in his left eye after a freak accident on a golf course in Australia in September.
Three holes into his round at a pro-am event at the New South Wales Open at Catalina Club in Batemans Bay, New South Wales, the 20-year-old Australian golfer was struck in the eye and transported to a hospital before being airlifted to an eye specialist in Canberra and later to a hospital in Sydney.
“Nothing. It’s just black. All I can see is black,” Guan told Australian Golf Digest in his first interview since the incident in September.
Guan also wrote a long post on his social media account. “I remember this: As my whole group teed off on the third tee, my playing partner and I (whom I shared the cart with) hit our drives on the right-hand side of the fairway.”
They drove off to their balls and Guan’s partner hit his second shot and then Guan did the same. He was struck by an errant shot as he was putting his club back in his bag.
“The instant ringing and pain rushed to my head, and I dropped to the ground,” he wrote.
Guan has undergone several operations on his left eye and spent time in multiple hospitals, where some of the top vitreoretinal surgeons have tried to save his eye after the force of the blow fractured his eye socket and traumatized his eyeball. His recovery is expected to take between six months to a year. One promising sign: three weeks after the incident, his eye pressure decreased.
“Though this was the first piece of positive news, my doctors told me that my injury was severe,” he wrote. “During my nights in hospital, I almost drowned in thoughts about the injury and my future in the sport. Not only was I utterly distraught by the news I had received, but the whole situation made me very depressed and somewhat angry … The frustration is unbearable. Why did this happen? How in the world am I supposed to recover, return, and be the same player I was, or even better?”
Just a week earlier, Guan who won the 2022 AJGA Junior Players at TPC Sawgrass and represented Australia on the Junior Presidents Cup team the same year, made his PGA Tour debut at the Procore Championship in Napa, California, missing the cut.
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Guan ended his post with some words of optimism. “As a kid, I have always had a lot of perseverance and persistence. I will continue to work hard and do my best to achieve my dream,” he said. “I will be back.”
You can show your support for Guan here: asf.org.au/projects/jeffr