Even though the 2024 WM Phoenix Open is not one of the PGA Tour’s signature events, it has still attracted some of the best players in the world, including defending champion Scottie Scheffler among several of the world’s top 10. However, for another player in the field, the event marks his first PGA Tour start in over three years.
Bud Cauley’s most recent PGA Tour appearance came at the September 2020 Safeway Open (now the Fortinet Championship), when he finished T14, but by then, a promising career that at one point saw him reach World No.53 had already been curtailed after a car accident in 2018.
Following the single car crash in June of that year in Dublin, Ohio, Cauley issued a statement saying he was "lucky to be alive," but he was still back in action on the PGA Tour within four months. He continued for almost two years, before stepping away from the game to undergo a series of surgeries to address the injuries he had sustained in the accident.
Before the WM Phoenix Open, Cauley spoke to the media, where he explained the extent of the surgeries, which came after he thought he'd made a full recovery.
"I broke six ribs in that accident was kind of the biggest - on the right side, and all of a sudden started to hurt," he said. "I went and saw a couple doctors. They thought it was maybe one of the plates I have in my chest. So I went to go have the plates removed, and they couldn't get them out because the bone had grown on top of the plates.
"So stitched me back up, said, I think we'll be okay, we took a little scar tissue out, you'll be fine, and then like 12 days later, my incision popped open. Just standing in the house, Christy [Cauley's wife] goes, your shirt is kind of wet. Take my shirt off, there's just a hole in the side of my chest."
That resulted in more surgeries before he finally began stepping up his plans to return to competitive action last September, after barely hitting a ball since April 2021. In January, Cauley gave an update on his progress on Instagram, revealing he would compete at two Korn Ferry Tour events before heading back to the PGA Tour.
He wrote: “Well to make a very, very long story short I’m coming back. Excited to play a couple KFT events in the Bahamas this month and then resume on Tour. See you out there!”
Sure enough, the 33-year-old competed at the Bahamas Great Exhuma Classic, where he finished T21, before teeing it up at the the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic a week later, and finishing T35.
Now Cauley, who has 185 PGA Tour appearances including 23 top-10 finishes, is ready to resume his career on the Tour at the hugely popular TPC Scottsdale event, and he admitted the chance to play again is not something he's taking for granted.
He said: "It's hard to put into words how much you kind of miss something when you grow up doing it every day and you play golf every day, and when it gets taken away, it does change your perspective on just how fortunate we are to be able to play golf and even to get to do the thing that you enjoy doing. I feel very fortunate to have found the things that I enjoy to do and that I'm able to do it."
