[Picture: Monica Marchesani/PGA of Australia]

Australian tour pro Jeffrey Guan kicked off his inspiring tournament comeback from a life-changing accident with a very respectable opening round at the Tailor-made Building Services NT PGA Championship in Darwin.

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Last September, Guan had returned to Australia after the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship in Napa, California where he played on a sponsor’s invitation and missed the cut by a single shot. A week later, during a qualifying tournament on the NSW South Coast, a ball hit by a pro-am partner smashed the left side of his face. He was airlifted to hospital and underwent multiple surgeries that were unable to reverse the loss of vision in the left eye.

But 11 months and plenty of painstaking rehabilitation later, Guan, 21, cemented one of the year’s most remarkable sports stories when he signed for a three-over-par 74 at the Palmerston Golf Course. He was seven shots off the clubhouse lead held jointly at four-under (67) by Jack Munro and New Zealand’s Jimmy Zheng.

Guan embraced the interest in his inspiring story and has been gracious with media, officials and fans. Picture: David Tease/Golf NSW

Although he was T-100 after the morning wave of the first round, he had tied with, and beaten, some seasoned tour pros. Guan had talked about how excited but nervous he was before teeing off [watch below].

A 74 in his first tournament round in 11 months is astonishing considering he has vision in just one eye and was facing considerable rust competing in professional tournaments.

The Bexley, Sydney product began with an impressive 6-iron to 20 feet on his first approach shot of the day, having teed off from the 10th at the Darwin course. That shot steadied the nerves and Guan made two opening pars.

Making golf more difficult was the fact the NT PGA field faced heavy fog in the morning.

“It was weird,” Guan said of conditions. “I took out my rangefinder on the first tee and I was trying to laser the tree at the back and then all of a sudden it was only eight metres. I’m like, Oh, okay. That’s a great start. It didn’t help that after I hit the ball, I had no idea where it was either. It was a bit of a weird, rough start as well as some unfortunate breaks on the fairways on the early holes, but that’s just golf. That’s just the game. That’s why I enjoy it.”

Three bogeys in his next four holes dropped Guan down the leaderboard but he didn’t let a bad break, finding a divot from an otherwise excellent tee shot at the 12th, frustrate him.

Guan rallied on his back nine with a birdie at the par-4 fifth. “It was a great tee shot,” Guan said. “And then I left myself a pretty nice putt. I holed a couple putts before that, so I was feeling good with the putter, and then as soon as that went in, my dad gave me a really big fist pump and said, ‘Here we go. This is the turning point.”

He stumbled with a double-bogey at the par-4 eighth before a closing birdie at the par-5 ninth brought his score back to three-over.

“Teeing off [this morning] was genuinely a great feeling,” Guan said. “I wasn’t nervous at all from what I predicted the past couple of days, but there was a lot of mistakes out there and heaps of room for improvement.

“I’ll definitely take this as a good heads up for the next couple of days and let’s see if I can shoot a couple under par. I’m sort of getting back into the form that I felt prior to the accident. I hit a lot of shots out the middle of the face, mainly off the tee, which probably was the highlight of the day.

“My tee shots were very good, but then I hit some very loose shots towards the end around the greens. That cost me a double and then a couple shots that I could have saved. I think I’ve got a good feel of the course now and then with what I’ve done out there today, I know what I need to work on maybe this afternoon or tomorrow morning just to hopefully get that sorted.

“I’m looking forward to it again.”