The Comeback: Self-Identity Narrative

I was playing some of the best golf I had played all season.

It was March 2025, and we were in North Carolina for a tournament. It was the final round, and I was feeling good. The kind of good where you stop thinking about your swing and just play. I was on a roll, and I remember feeling like I couldn't really do anything wrong.

Then I got to the third hole.

My second shot had left me in a ditch next to the fairway, and the ground was completely muddy. I knew it wasn't an ideal lie, but I wasn't thinking about anything other than getting the ball out.

I took my stance and swung.

The club hit the ground and got stuck.

My wrist bent backward.

I felt it immediately.

It wasn't the kind of pain where you think, "That doesn't feel great." It was instant, sharp, and intense. I remember stopping and looking at my wrist, almost expecting to see something visibly wrong with it.

Nothing looked different.

I could still move it.

So I told myself it was fine.

I finished the hole.

I made a ten.

I remember thinking how ridiculous that number looked on the scorecard. I had been playing so well, and suddenly I was standing over a hole trying to figure out how I was going to finish the round.

My wrist was killing me, but there wasn't really an option to stop. My coach told me we couldn't just pull out.

So I put on a brave face.

And I kept playing.

At the time, I thought I was just finishing a tournament with a hurt wrist.

I had no idea that I was about to spend the next 16 months trying to get back to the same golf course.

After the tournament, we got into the van for the 7-hour drive home. I remember sitting there with my wrist still hurting and trying to convince myself that it wasn't that serious.

I could move it. That was enough for me.

As an athlete, you get pretty good at ignoring pain. You learn to play through soreness, fatigue, little injuries. You tell yourself that if you give it a few days, it'll go away.

So I waited.

A few days became a few weeks.

The pain got better, but it never completely left.

I started seeing doctors. One thought it might be a cyst. Another mentioned arthritis. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was happening. I had an MRI, and it didn't show anything particularly alarming, although there was clearly something that didn't look quite right.

The answer was basically to rest, do physical therapy, and see what happened.

So I kept playing.

I played 3 more tournaments before the season ended, trying to ignore the pain while waiting for someone to give me an answer.

Then I went home to Italy for the summer.

I tried a cortisone injection. It didn't work.

Eventually, I reached the point where there wasn't much left to try.

I needed surgery.

In July, I had my first surgery to repair my TFCC. And honestly, I was relieved.

Finally, I thought. It's fixed.

My surgeon told me that I should be able to return in the fall, or at least by the middle of the fall. I believed her. I had a timeline. I had something to look forward to.

I spent a month in a cast and then several more months in a brace. I went to physical therapy 5 days a week. I slowly started getting back into golf.

Every little bit felt like progress.

Until September came.

I was still only putting and barely chipping.

I remember talking to my Coach and saying that I was going to be back. My surgeon had told me I would be back, so I had no reason to believe otherwise.

Except I was still in pain.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I was starting to realize that something wasn't right.

Then October came.

I still couldn't get past chipping.

That was when the reality I had been avoiding finally caught up with me.

The athletic trainers, coaches, and I had to figure out what to do next. There were two options. We could try another injection, PRP, and hope it worked well enough for me to return in the spring.

Or I could have another surgery.

An ulnar osteotomy.

I was terrified.

I kept asking myself the same questions.

What if it doesn't work?

What if I'm never the same?

What if I can't play golf the way I used to?

And then the question that scared me the most: What am I going to do if I can't play?

Golf had been such a huge part of my life for so long that I didn't really know how to separate myself from it. I was a Division I athlete. My days revolved around practice, workouts, tournaments, travel and my team.

And suddenly, I couldn't do any of it.

My team was still competing. My coaches had to focus on the athletes who were playing. My family was across the ocean in Italy.

I felt like my life was continuing, but without me.

I was scared to have another surgery, but eventually, we decided that it gave me the most reassurance that there was a real structural problem that could be fixed.

So I went through with it.

The surgery itself ended up being a surprisingly good experience. But when I woke up, I was back in a cast.

Again.

I knew exactly what was coming.

Physical therapy.

5 days a week.

Learning how to move my wrist again.

Learning how to swing again.

Starting over.

And this time, the hardest part wasn't necessarily the physical pain. It was the mental battle.

There were days when I was frustrated. Days when I was convinced I would never get back to where I was. Days when I wondered whether all of this work was actually going to lead anywhere.

I wasn't able to compete at all during my junior year.

I had gone from playing Division I golf to not being able to compete for an entire year.

Being an athlete, it's hard to explain what it feels like to have your everyday life stripped away from you. You don't realize how much of your identity is tied to something until you can't do it anymore.

I had to rebuild my life from zero.

And I had to learn to be okay with that.

My family helped me through it. My teammates helped me. My coaches helped me. There were people around me who kept believing in me even on the days when I wasn't sure I believed in myself.

Eventually, my wrist started getting better.

Then I started playing golf again.

Slowly.

One putt. One swing. One round.

And eventually, one tournament.

This summer, I finally competed again.

But the real moment came last weekend.

16 months after my last tournament, I walked onto the golf course for my first tournament back with Rutgers.

I was nervous.

I was excited.

I was thinking about everything that had happened to get me there.

And then I just played.

I finished 22nd in a very competitive field.

It wasn't perfect. There were shots I didn't hit well. There were things in my game that still needed work.

But I was there.

After 16 months of surgeries, casts, braces, physical therapy, pain, uncertainty and wondering whether I would ever get back, I was standing on the course again.

I did it.

I finally did it.

I got through it.

And maybe that's what I had been trying to prove all along.

Not that I could become the exact golfer I was before. Not that nothing had changed.

But that even when something takes away a huge part of your life, you can rebuild.

You can start over.

And you can find your way back.