Having upped his workload to daily practice sessions with long-time coach Gary Barter at the revered Australian Golf Club, Guan had a decision to make about returning to the professional ranks.<\/p>\n
“Even when training and practising was going well, I was 50-50 if I should take another year off,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I get two years on a medical [exemption] and, after talking to my team and my parents, I felt two years out of golf was too long.” <\/p>\n
Guan has been fitted for a prosthetic cover over the eye, which he wears while playing to make him feel “100% confident” in front of other people.<\/p>\n
His first tournament back came at the Northern Territory PGA Championship in August, falling short of the cut after carding rounds of 74 and 73.<\/p>\n
A fortnight later he played at the Western Australia PGA Championship – finishing in a share of 10th place after shooting a final-day 66.<\/p>\n
Guan says his comeback has been fuelled by self-motivation, but also credits the overwhelming support of the golfing world for providing further encouragement.<\/p>\n
A recent video message from Ryder Cup star Tommy Fleetwood – who Guan describes as an “idol” – was a particular source of inspiration.<\/p>\n
Fleetwood will not be playing in the Australian Open, but Guan warily dreams about potentially lining up alongside the Englishman in the future.<\/p>\n
“I would love to be part of the DP Tour or PGA Tour as a member but right now I’m just focusing on the Aussie schedule and playing my way up from there,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I want to say [earning tour cards] is a target but it’s still very early to tell.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having upped his workload to daily practice sessions with long-time coach Gary Barter at the revered Australian Golf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4106],"tags":[2826,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-609150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115654628882178558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}