Five weeks on from taking a stray golf ball in the eye, Hannah Burke finds herself contending for a second LET title in the Lacoste Ladies Open de France.
Back in August, the popular English player was forced to withdraw from the KPMG Women’s Irish Open after a freak accident. Whilst out spectating at an amateur golf tournament, she was knocked out by a golf ball which ricocheted off a tree directly into her right eye and she was rushed to hospital. Thankfully, she didn’t lose her eye.
The 2015 Tipsport Golf Masters champion knows a thing or two about tackling adversity. From undergoing heart surgery as a youngster, to taking 18 months out of the game with a torn achilles, it has helped her to develop resilience, and, after her latest injury, she picked up her clubs as soon as possible to play in the Big Green Egg Open in the Netherlands, finishing in a tie for 15th before teeing up in the VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open, where she ended in a tie for 68th place.
After firing rounds of 68 (-3) and 69 (-2) at Golf Barrière in Deauville on Thursday and Friday respectively, she said: “This is my third event with the injury. I saw the eye doctor and they said there’s no timeline on when it could get better. It could be months. I didn’t want to sit for months so I just took the gamble and have been going with it.
“I haven’t regained vision. I have some vision, but it’s quite blurry. I have a fixed pupil, so it lets in a lot of light and I have no focus. The trickiest thing has been reading greens, so I’ve been adapting on the job and learning to manage it.
“My coach Brian has been really good. We changed my ball position a little bit and then just going with the greens and having to read it from a lot of different angles.
“My right eye is my dominant eye, so with the blurred vision, it’s proving quite tricky.
“I’m wearing my sunglasses a lot, even when it’s quite dark, because it’s quite bright. This morning, when it wasn’t really that light, that was tricky.
“It was a bit of a freak accident, but I don’t look like I’ve been in a bar fight now. The swelling’s gone and the cut’s healed really well on my eye. It’s just that I’ve got this big pupil that looks a bit funky.
“I’m just embracing the challenge. I struggled at the beginning of the season because I was too focused on my golf swing, but now I’m just trying to play golf. It’s just adapting on the job. It would be boring otherwise.
“I’ve picked up another injury up to test me again. You’ve just got to crack on with it. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
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