by Jeff Skinner
The PGA Tour didn’t award a Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2013. It may be time to reinstate that award. J.B. Holmes just made it real tough for the tour to do the same this year.
Holmes hung on to win the Wells Fargo Championship by one shot over Jim Furyk and in doing so completed a comeback of biblical proportions. Holmes thanked God for being with him today and acknowledged that it indeed was a big time comeback.
Whatever degree God played in Holmes’ performance can be debated but what can’t be is the fact that Holmes’s return to the winner’s circle completes an amazing comeback.
Holmes was playing on a major medical exemption this season for his broken ankle he sustained while rollerblading. And if that was the only injury he was coming back from it would be a nice story. But this is more than a nice story.
Holmes had brain surgery in September of 2011 and then another surgery for an infection from that surgery. He came back to the tour in 2012 but never found his old form and managed only two top tens. His broken ankle ended his ’13 season after five events.
He has been rounding into form recently with a T11 in New Orleans, a T18 at the RBC and a T12 in Houston.
Holmes’s return from a rollerblading accident may have wiped out more golf tournaments than his brain surgery but the return to form here for his third career win is definitely worthy of “Comeback Player of the Year.”
Holmes brain operation was to correct structural defects in his cerebellum that caused Vertigo-like symptoms and he made light of the surgery during his comeback. But brain surgery is never a “routine” operation and J.B. Holmes’ comeback isn’t routine either.
Here’s the Wells Fargo Championship victor, J.B. Holmes and the number one candidate for the 2014 Comeback Player of the Year.
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