FORD SENIOR PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

July 13, 2001

Jay Sigel

JAY SIGEL: It was a little easier conditions this morning. I played -- I played solidly: Had some putts I could have made. Would have been nice, but made a few. I made a birdie on 2 from about 15 feet. I hit a 3-wood, 9-iron on 2. Then I birdied 7. I hit a driver and a 3-iron. 2-putted from 20 feet. I had makeable birdie putts on every hole. I missed a few short ones. I had a close one at 1, 3, 6 that were eight, five and ten feet. I bogeyed 12. I just missed the green on the left. I had a very difficult lie. Just a few feet off the green where the ball landed and kicked left. I made a very good bogey there. That, to me, felt like a birdie. Then 13, I 3-putted from about 15 feet for bogey. 14, I birdied. I hit a driver and an 8-iron from about 10 feet. I birdied 17. I hit a sand wedge from about four feet. So that was it. I missed a short one at 16, about eight feet.

JAY SIGEL: 12, I missed the green left. I made a real good bogey. I chipped it up and made a bogey. So all in all, it was a solid round. I'm pleased with it.

JAY SIGEL: The only option I had was to try to play myself into shape after being off so long. It wasn't the time to start practicing. I had to come out and start playing again, so I've just had to practice on the road and deal with what I've had. All in all, I'm pleased, even with all of the events. The Open was a thrill, certainly. I played well last week. I had a couple of big numbers, a couple of bad holes. If I hadn't had those, I'd be in fine shape. I was certainly pleased with my Open performance, and I'm pleased with the way I'm playing this week. So if you'd said after seven months off and two surgeries, if you'd had the rounds that you'd had up to this point, I'd be quite surprised. I'm elated. I knew my surgery went well, but you just never know how you are going to respond to that. I'm delighted.

JAY SIGEL: Both shoulders, rotator cuff surgery. I had the left one done November 15 and the right one was January 30. The left one was arthroscopic. The right one, which was January 30, was surgery. They had to cut, paste and stick and poke and trim. Really, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't drive a car for a while. I didn't play any golf for -- somewhere in March, the end of April I started to chip some. So I had about a month of chipping and short game stuff, and then my 9-iron would go 80 yards and the next week it would go 140 and then 110 and so on. And I started in Nashville, I guess in late May; that was my first event. So I had about a month to prepare, but about two weeks of hitting balls. It wasn't very good. I had pain for about almost two and a half three years in my left shoulder and I've been trying to rehab it, like Dave has been trying to do, and I guess it gets to a point where you can only do so much. We went ahead with precautionary surgery to correct what the -- the situation was probably going to get worse, not better and that was the right thing to do on the left. But then the right shoulder came up right out of the blue. That was not bothering me at all. The long story short is there's a bone calls the acromion that sits on top of your shoulder and my acromions were surfed. So when you've got all this movement of the shoulder, this thing starts nipping at it and this thing starts impinging. So what they do, the first thing they do is they go in there and shave this thing off, Roto Rooter it, just file it right out so that my acromion is like this. Both acromions are the same, so I had to do it on both. Fortunately, hasn't torn this one. I had scraped it, worn it, but it has not torn through. This one was torn like three or four sports.

JAY SIGEL: I'm playing in no pain. I'm--

JAY SIGEL: In three years. I'm a little tight in this right shoulder. But if it was cold weather, I would be having a problem, I would think, but the weather is good, and I keep stretching and keep exercising. You know, the fellas in the trailer are a big help. I've got to do whirly birds with my shoulder, like 360 degrees and break up the scar tissue. But I'm feeling pretty good.

JAY SIGEL: The right one, yes. The right one had started, but I couldn't believe it. I got two and a half years out of my left shoulder, rehabing it, saying, look this is no big deal, I've got some pain and it will either be gone overnight -- when you get to our age, you get these things and they come and go. So I figure -- I remember getting my last MRI on this shoulder and I said can I do both and he says you've got to stay in another 45 minutes . If you've ever had an MRI, that's the worst. No, I couldn't. I had them both done at the same time. I was really incapacitated with one shoulder. Both of them would have been impossible. It was a shocker to me. I didn't expect that.

JAY SIGEL: I think it had something to do with it, but it's that acromion, the bone that sits in there. If it doesn't have enough room because of the curve, then it is going to tear it up.

JAY SIGEL: I've had bones forever. As we get older, we atrophy. We don't stay as strong. I suspect that's what kept my left shoulder, I kept rehabing, rehabing, rehabing, and those muscles support that had joint and it didn't tear it. Well, I didn't know I had the problem here, so I wasn't really doing all the exercises on the right one.

JAY SIGEL: Torn rotator cuff, yeah. Looked like Swiss cheese.

JAY SIGEL: Yeah, the doctor said a rotator cuff repair takes about six months. Six months will be -- February, March, April, May, June, July, August -- August 1. And I would say that's probably true. The tightness will probably be gone, hopefully, there another couple weeks, I'm thinking.

JAY SIGEL: Larry Miller in Philadelphia. He's head of orthopedic surgery at Jefferson Health Fitness. He's a shoulder specialist in Philadelphia who trained under Frank Jobe from L.A., dr. Jobe.