Australian Brett Rumford returns to action in this week's BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, two months after undergoing surgery to remove 12 inches of his small intestine.
Rumford was taken ill at the halfway stage of the Tshwane Open in March, when rounds of 64 and 70 had left him in a share of 10th place in Pretoria.
The 37-year-old was initially thought to be suffering from food poisoning, but after his condition worsened it was deemed surgery was necessary and the five-time European Tour winner ended up spending 17 days in a local hospital.
" I guess the only thing that was reported was that I had a bit of food poisoning," Rumford said on Tuesday. "Another report was I choked on an apple or something. There's a few rumours going around.
"I just had a blockage in my small intestine and I've had partial blockages before through eating apples, which is the only correlation I can make to obviously having the pain and generally having that two-hour or three-hour onset of when the pain starts to kick in.
"I had an apple through the turn on the Friday of the Tshwane Open. Sure enough, I had my lunch after I had finished and started to feel the waves of pain come on.
"I've had partial blockages before. I would send myself through to emergency, check myself in, get on a drip and have morphine and generally it would clear and work itself out, and that's what I was thinking.
"They got me on some morphine, put in a nasal drip, and then I thought obviously it's something a bit more serious here going on.
" Scans came back within about 20 hours of being in the hospital, nothing was improving. So the surgeon said, 'L ook, if we can go down orally and clear it that way, great. If not, we'll go arthroscopic. And worst-case scenario, just have to open you up and be a bit more intrusive and take out some small intestine', which they did. They removed 12 inches of small intestine, couldn't release the blockage any other way.
"It was a painful experience, pretty scary one, as well, being on the other side of the world. These things happen and it just makes you appreciate how fortunate we are in life just to be fit and healthy and things can turn around pretty quickly. It got pretty ugly pretty quick."
It had been thought that Rumford would miss the rest of the season as he recovered, but he was back exercising a few weeks after the operation and was cautiously optimistic ahead of the European Tour's flagship event.
"I contemplated having the year out, of course, but I feel good," Rumford added. "The last couple of weeks it's really improved and there are still plenty of golf tournaments, there's still a long year ahead.
"For me to sit out the year, feeling the way I'm feeling right now, being able to swing the golf club and hit it the way I'm hitting it, I can see no reason why I shouldn't be coming back to play and compete. It would just be a cop-out excuse for me just to rack the golf clubs and call it a year."
Source: PA
