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A lost year for Langham
Twelve months ago Franklin Langham stood by the 18th green at East Lake Country Club after one of his rounds and talked excitedly about his breakthrough season, how he'd almost got his first tour victory at Doral, how he'd raised his game and was playing to win every week, how rewarding it was to make his first Tour Championship, and, of course, how he was already anticipating a big event six months in the future -- playing in his first Masters.
The career breakthrough, however, turned into a career breakdown. A sore left elbow that got increasingly painful as 2001 wore on derailed his career. Langham, 33, wasn't at the Tour Championship last week in Houston. When I reached him at home in Peachtree City, Ga., he had just returned from a physical-therapy session. Langham underwent surgery to clean out his elbow two weeks earlier. It was a lost year. "Hindsight is always 20/20," Langham said. "We thought it was severe tendinitis that would get better with rest. After my best year on tour, It was hard for me to say, Gee, I think I'll go get operated on. Surgery is something you put off until you absolutely have to do it. Plus, I was in the Masters, a dream-come-true for a kid who grew up there. I wasn't going to miss that. They would have had to drag me off the course in Augusta." Perhaps ironically, the elbow first became troublesome at the Tour Championship at East Lake. Langham shot 75 the first day and eventually finished next-to-last. A cortisone shot and a winter's rest didn't help much. By the time he got to Augusta, Langham was already wearing a band around his forearm, spending extra time warming up before a round and icing his elbow afterward. "I was getting pain when I straightened my arm, which you do at impact in the golf swing," Langham said. "I was flinching without even realizing it. I looked at some tapes, and I was bending my left arm on the backswing almost in anticipation of the pain, kind of protecting it." Actually, his problem was diagnosed two weeks before the Masters when he saw famed sports neurosurgeon Frank Jobe at The Players Championship. "I thought it was tendinitis because it's right where that tendon joins on the outside of the elbow and you get tennis elbow," Langham said. "I developed a popping in my elbow -- like when you wake up in the morning and stretch and feel your joints kind of pop. My elbow was doing that all day. My wife told me, 'It's almost become part of your preshot routine.' Dr. Jobe said he was pretty sure he knew what it was. He put his fingers right on the radial head of my elbow joint and pushed on it. I got a sharp pain and said, 'That's the spot.' He said he'd done the same surgery on Scott Verplank, that scar tissue in there was aggravating the joint." Langham, however, elected to play on. "I thought I could lock up a spot in the top 125 first," he said. "As the year wore on, the elbow started hurting more and earlier in the week." Finishing in the top 30 the previous year carried perks Langham didn't want to give up, such as berths in the major championships. And playing hurt is just something that is done -- by everybody -- on the PGA Tour. "It's hard to play with injuries," said Chris DiMarco, one of Langham's closest friends on tour. "You start second-guessing -- Is it the injury or is it me? Then you've got people saying, Wow, you made that much money last year and only this much this year. What's going on? There are always a lot of questions. You could tell Franklin wasn't himself; he was trying to play hurt." The PGA Championship last August at tough Atlanta Athletic Club was a turning point. "I definitely didn't feel I was well enough to win the golf tournament," Langham said. "The pain was enough that I knew I was going to have to have surgery. I thought I could make the cut at the PGA and maybe grind out a top 10. The course was long and so was the rough. I was hitting it short and crooked and I was really flinching on shots out of the rough. I realized this wasn't doing me any good." Then he had a chat with one of Jobe's best customers, Verplank, who had undergone surgeries on both elbows during his career. Verplank's left elbow problem was identical to Langham's. "I told Franklin, 'Listen, just go see Dr. Jobe.' He pretty much saved my career," Verplank said. "There's no reason to play if it's bothering your game. If it's affecting how you swing and how you hit it, you might as well hang it up and get if fixed. When you come back, you'll be ready to go again. It took me a year to figure that out, so I tried to save Franklin a year. "Franklin wasn't jumping up and down and going, 'All right, that sounds easy.' He was bummed. But I told him, 'Get it fixed and enjoy your time at home like I did.' I spent a year and a half at home after my first elbow surgery. You don't want to be hurt, but I was home when my son, our first child, was born, and it was awesome. I wouldn't have had that time if I'd still been playing." The final straw for Langham came at the Reno-Tahoe Open the next week. Langham had been completely unaware of the tour's medical-extension policy. He learned that he'd be allowed to play six or seven tournaments when he comes back, and that if he could win enough to match the total of the 125th player (Langham is about $70,000 short), he could keep exempt status. Langham tried to schedule the surgery but had to postpone having the procedure done until his wife, Ashley, gave birth Sept. 5 to their third son, George ( Parker is 4, Carson is 2). The procedure was further delayed following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when his flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles was grounded in Dallas. Langham drove home to Atlanta and finally managed to have the arthroscopic surgery done in Los Angeles on Oct. 12. Langham hopes to back back playing on the tour by late February, early March. He can straighten his left arm about 85 percent without pain, he says, as he works to overcome the atrophy of having his arm in a sling for two weeks after surgery. "I told my wife, 'I'm going to make this into a positive,'" Langham said. "Not only am I going to rehab my elbow, I'm going to get stronger and better. I'm not necessarily looking for 15 more yards off the tee but I'd like to be more durable. The injury beat me up mentally. It started affecting the way I live a normal life. It got to the point where I was having to watch which arm I picked my kids up with. It was a bad feeling. My shoulder was hurting, my wrist was hurting because I was compensating for it. Having surgery was a tough decision, but I didn't want to end up with something worse, like a torn rotator cuff, because I was protecting my elbow, which could be fixed. "At least I feel like I'm going forward now. After what I did in 2000, I know what I'm capable of. I know I can play at that level. I want to get healthy, get back out there and win a tournament and pick up where I left off in 2000." Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes the weekly Golf Plus: Notebook and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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