OF TORN ROTATOR CUFFS & GOLF

I once read that more than 80% of blogs are dormant, meaning that ambitious online writers set them up with overflowing enthusiasm only to abandon them shortly after, letting them rot away slowly in cyberspace.

In a bid to save this blog from heading down that dreary path, I present to you my first post on here since February 2014.

A lot has happened since then.

Although I promptly failed to make it to my own convocation ceremony, I graduated with honours from Carleton University's famed School of Journalism and Communication.

I  also got engaged to a wonderful young woman and completed a full year working as a multimedia reporter for a dynamic sports publishing company based in the UK.

Furthermore, I suffered the most serious sports-related injury of my career. Bizarrely, however, I was still able to continue playing golf completely unaffected and that, good friends, is what this blog post is on.

Although you're probably itching to read all about my personal life, this post is about how I was able to play the best golf of my life with a horribly torn rotator cuff.

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Injuries are never fun, especially when you play as many sports as I do.

Ultimate is an awesome sport. Try it out. 

I picked up this bodily grievance while playing the wonderful game of ultimate frisbee. To save you the trouble of reading how I got hurt, watch this video. I basically did the exact same thing except a) I dropped the disc b) I tore the rotator cuff in my right shoulder in the process.

At the time I had no idea how bad my injury was. In fact, it hardly hurt so I played another game right after and even completed the winning catch to seal a memorable last minute win for my team.

The pain would arrive like a freight train the next morning.

UH OH

I knew I was in trouble when I woke up the next day. I couldn't so much as lift my right arm without letting out a gasp of pain.

I was scheduled to play in the foursomes leg of a Ryder Cup-style tournament later that day with my community golf group at The Track, Meydan Golf.

"Not a chance," I grimaced to myself as I barely managed to slip my right arm through the sleeve of my t-shirt.

The day passed in agony.

If menial tasks like holding the steering wheel of my car and raising objects with my right hand were sources of excruciating agony, surely there was no chance of me swinging a golf club without passing out in pain.

But before I called up my captain, I gingerly picked up a lob wedge at work and rehearsed a gentle chip shot. No pain. I turned it into a half-swing. Still no pain. I proceeded to a full swing in slow motion and much to my amazement, I still felt no pain.

It was settled - I was going to play. A few more full-swings confirmed my decision.

SHOW TIME

I nailed my drive down the middle on the first hole and ended up parring what many call the most difficult opening hole in the Middle East. My partner and I would eventually triumph over our opponents 4&3 to a secure an invaluable point for our team.

Just so we're clear, I'm not a great golfer. I play off a 17 handicap and I'm lucky if I get one full round in a week. Oh, and I can't play out of a bunker to save my life. 

A few days later I played at Sharjah Golf & Shooting Club where I won the longest drive competition on the monstrous par four seventh, splitting the fairway with a tee-shot that measured 268 yards.

The week after I carded a hardly believable two-over par gross 38 on the picturesque back nine at Al Badia Golf Club (although to be fair, it was the end of a corporate day at the course and all the tees were placed more generously forward than I had ever seen them before).

I wasn't only able to fully play the game with a rotten shoulder, but I was striking the ball sweeter than ever before.

DOC TALK 

Yep, my shoulder is pretty messed up. 

My failure to do a couple of simple exercises was enough for my doctor, Dr. George John, to diagnose my condition.

"Badly torn rotator cuff. Get MRI and then we see how best to treat."

Dr. John is a renowned sports surgeon who has worked with athletes from all over the world. He admitted this was the first ever frisbee-related injury he had treated. I could not have been more proud of myself.

I told him about my new found success on the golf course. Was I making my shoulder worse?

"If it's not hurting you then there's no reason to stop," he said with a small shrug.

"The muscles in the shoulder's rotator cuff allow the arm to make overhead and pulling motions. The golf swing is a lateral movement."

MISERABLE MRI

Unsurprisingly, the MRI revealed a severely torn rotator cuff (two of the four muscles were ripped to shreds).

In addition to being prescribed physiotherapy, I was given hyalgan injection shots to help regrow the muscles and boost circulation in my shoulder.

Just for the record, undertaking an MRI for the shoulder is an incredibly uncomfortable experience. It was like being stuck in a plastic coffin for 45 minutes while listening to an overloud symphony of diseased whales. Not fun.

So the moral of the story is this - if you're looking to lower that handicap, try tearing your rotator cuff. It did the trick for me, who's to say it won't work for you?

Your truly,
MS

PS. Although I am not a medical professional or a sports physiotherapist, I speak from experience. 

A TRUE GOLFING TREAT

The entrance to the clubhouse

With my days in Dubai winding down to a close, my dad and I made the pilgrimage to Abu Dhabi to play on a course many consider to be the best and most scenic in the Middle East.

Yas Links Golf Club is on an island called Yas Island. A 2500 hectare tourist destination, Yas Island is home to the Yas Marina Circuit, the venue of the Formula One UAE Grand Prix since 2009. There's also a Ferrari theme park (Ferrari World Abu Dhabi) and a huge water park on the island.

But we were going there to play golf and our tee-off time was booked for 6:30 AM, forcing us to leave home obscenely early at sunrise, around 5 in the mornings.

Once we reached there we were joined by a tourist from Sydney who was staying just adjacent to the course at the Raddison Abu Dhabi. He shamelessly told us that it was his wife's birthday and that he was celebrating it by sneaking out of the hotel to play golf at six in the morning.

So off we went, with the sun still not truly out and a little bit of morning mist keeping the fury of a Middle Eastern summer at bay (we would feel its true wrath later in the day with temperatures reaching 42 degrees Celsius).

Yas Links is a fantastic course to play on. While it is not a true links course like St. Andrew's or Muirfield, it's as close to a links course as you'll get in this part of the world.

Wildly sloping fairways, island-sized greens quick as billiard tables, acres of ugly cabbage awaiting errant tee shots, short par threes fraught with danger left and right - it's truly a golfing treat.

There weren't many holes where the brilliantly aquamarine hued water came into play but all but one of the four par threes were water-ridden.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DAY 

- Our Aussie playing partner, James, is a former 3 handicapper (for those not familiar with golf, that's a stone's throw away from being a pro). It was a treat watching him play and work his way around the course.

- On the opening hole, a short 350 yard par four, I landed my approach shot four feet from the pin and went on to gleefully tap in for birdie. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't a sign of things to come. James started the same way and unlike me, it was a fitting start to a round in which he carded a three-under 69 - brilliant stuff, mate.

- My editor at the Golf Digest Middle East, Robbie Greenfield, had one piece of advice for me when I told him I was going to play at Yas Links - "Take lots of balls."

Miraculously, I played with the same ball I teed off with on the first hole, a Titleist 2, until the eighth hole where I promptly pulled a drive into the middle of the lake.

Teeing off on the par three seventeenth

- The par three seventeenth is the kind of hole that marshals will ask you at the end of your round, 'How many balls did you guys lose on 17?'

But thankfully things weren't that bad for us. While James and my dad found the deep bunkers that guarded the front of the green, my 7-iron tee shot, hit with a slight fade, was right on line. In landed softly close to the pin, rolled a little, and then inexplicably disappeared from view.

"Er-did that go in the hole boys?" I asked a few seconds later. Their murmured replies were inconclusive.

My old man hitting from the fairway

We drove our carts to the green, me thinking I've surely just hit the first ace of my life - something my dad has failed to do even once in the twenty odd years he's been playing the game. But alas, my ball wasn't sitting in the bottom of the hole but rather it lay twelve feet from it. We couldn't see it from the tee because it had rolled down a small plateau on the green.

Hole-in-one or not, it was still a memorable day of golf and I think it'll take a lot of courses around the world for me to play on before I can say I've played at a better and prettier one than Yas Links.

Parting tidbit - Click here to watch a clip of me putting for birdie ... it was such a good putt that James dropped his putter. 

DUBAI'S TOP SEVEN

I’m currently back home in Dubai visiting my family and interning at the Golf Digest ME, the region’s most widely circulated golf magazine. I'm also doing some stuff with Stuff Middle East, a hip gadgets and technology magazine.

Our office is in Media City, which is quite far from where I live. So instead of driving the 40 odd kilometers to work every morning,  I drive to Rashidiya Metro Station, park my car in one of the 2,714 parking spots available there, and hop onto the Red Line which takes me all the way to Nakheel Station.

Yesterday it struck me how many touristy landmarks I pass on my way to and from work everyday. So below is a list, in no particular order, of the top seven (ten is too mainstream) materialistic monuments I sleep through every morning (naps on public transport are the best): 

1 – Airport Terminal 3 – Number one on the list is an airport terminal. 'Big whoop', you think. But at 1, 713, 000 square meters, Dubai International Airport Terminal 3 is the largest building on the planet in terms of floor space. 

2 – Burj Khalifa – 829.3 meters. That's how tall the tallest tall tower in the world is. Developed by Emaar, the Burj Khalifa has 163 floors which hold offices, apartments, restaurants, and even the first ever Armani Hotel. 

3 -  Emirates Mall – Probably the only mall in the world where you'll find a fully functional ski slope. In the summer while the temperature outside can reach up to 50 degrees Celsius, inside Ski Dubai it’s always a chilly -3.

4 – The Dubai Mall – This creatively named mall is the biggest in the world. Nuf’ said. Oh, and this one has an Olympic sized ice rink inside it.

5 – Emirates Golf Club - As prestigious as golf clubs come, the Majlis course at the Emirates is home of the Dubai Desert Classic, a marquee event on the European Tour. It's where I got Tiger Woods' autograph five years ago, and where Rory McIlroy thanked me for finding his ball in deep rough as a marshall. 

6 - Burj al Arab - Welcome to the only 7-star hotel in the world. Royal suites go for as much as $18,000 a night, but if that's a little pricey, you can always opt to stay at one of the cheaper rooms which can be anywhere between, um, $1000 to $2000 US a night. They also do stuff like this every now and then too. 

7 – the Lost City of Atlantis - Okay technically it's called Atlantis, the Palm. It's the first resort to be built on the Palm Jumeriah - you know, Palm Jumeriah, one of those funny shaped man-made islands where people jet ski to their neighbour's house for dinner.

Atlantis features several high end eateries and there's also a water park where legend has it, there is a slide in which you actually pass a hungry bunch of hammerhead sharks on your way down.

So there you have it - a small glimpse of the craziness that makes Dubai ... Dubai.

NERVES OF JELLY

For those of us watching the thrilling finale of the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St Annes on Sunday, the sight of Adam Scott sinking to his knees in agony on the eighteenth green after missing that par putt will be forever engraved in our minds.

The bogey rounded off a hardly believable final stretch of play that saw the Australian drop four shots in as many holes, allowing Ernie Els to secure his second Open title.

Nerves of steel, anyone? More like nerves of jelly reinforced with generous doses of artificially modified gelatin.

Of course, Scott said after it wasn't nerves that got the better of him but rather a loss of quality in ball striking. But then again, how can someone who's struck the ball the way he did for the last 68 holes suddenly capitulate so spectacularly?

With Els in the clubhouse and hot on his heels, it was a test of composure for Scott to finish strong - but unfortunately for him, he failed miserably. It's hard not to feel for him. Even Els admitted to feeling gutted for Scott.

Ernie Els. What can one say about the man? As others fell around him on a blustery final day, he showed his experience, sticking to the basics and playing high percentage golf throughout. The Big Easy was aggressive when he needed to be, going for the green in one on the par four seventeenth and attacking the flag on the final hole.

The 'P' word

Pressure is a strange creature. It makes us do different things, things we wouldn't usually do under normal circumstances.


In sport, it often comes down to who can handle that pressure better that determines a victor.
It was the Tiger Woods of old that showed the world how to play in pressure-cooker situations.  Others choke and die when it's crunch time. Few flourish and blossom to dizzying heights. How many times has Tiger staged a remarkable fightback on the final day, rallying from five or six shots off the pace to come from behind and win.

When it comes to sportsmen who thrive off pressure, another name that readily comes to mind is Usain Bolt. Theatrical antics aside, the speedster from Jamaica brings his A game to the big stage every time. Who's to say London 2012 won't be any different.

That is, of course, unless he doesn't bring a choke of Scottian proportions to the track.