Just one week after making his PGA debut at the Procore Championship, 20-year-old Australian golfing wunderkind Jeffrey Guan was hit in the face by an errant tee-shot at a pro-am event.
Nearly one month later, speaking on Instagram for the first time since his freak accident, Guan shared that he has permanently lost sight in his left eye.
“These four weeks have been the toughest of my life, but I am stronger mentally and will be ready to conquer any obstacle in the future,” Guan wrote on Instagram Thursday night, Australian time.
The incident occurred on Sept. 20 on the third hole of the NSW Open in Australia. Guan, after hitting his drive down the fairway, turned back towards the cart to deposit his clubs.
“That was when I was struck,” Guan writes. “The instant ringing and pain rushed to my head, and I dropped to the ground.
“Voices sounded pretty muffled, and the next thing I knew, I was in an ambulance being transported to a hospital with skin patches containing high doses of Fentanyl.”
Guan, a two-time Australian junior amateur champion, was taken to Moruya Hospital for initial scans and then airlifted to Canberra Hospital for immediate treatment: the first of two eye surgeries.
“A day later, I was transferred to the Sydney Eye Hospital to undergo another surgery,” Guan writes.
Following his second surgery, Guan remained in intensive care for two weeks.
He says he couldn’t do much — sleep, eat, or walk — and any activity that required energy was met with excruciating pain.
The impact had created multiple fractures around his eye socket, and his doctors told him recovery would take between six months and a year. In all likelihood, he would never regain vision in the left eye.
“I almost drowned in my thoughts … all my years of hard work and training, plus my family’s sacrifice, had just been thrown out the window,” Guan writes. “The frustration is unbearable. Why did this happen? How in the world am I supposed to recover…?”
Now that the initial shock and devastation of his injury have worn off, Guan is promising his friends, family and supporters that this is a setback— not the end.
“As a kid, I have always had a lot of perseverance and persistence. I will continue to work hard and do my best to achieve my dream,” he writes. “I will be back.”
