Golf: Back injury puts Tataurangi on the outer

By MARTIN DAVIDSON

Phil Tataurangi faces an indefinite period on the wrong side of the gallery ropes after being diagnosed with a serious back injury.

Tataurangi emerged grim-faced from a medical clinic in his adopted home city of Dallas, Texas, yesterday none the wiser about when he can return to the PGA Tour in the United States.

He has a herniated disc at the base of his spine and took a fortnight off, hoping rest would be enough to ease the problem.

But the complaint shows no signs of improving and Tataurangi, 31, now faces three options - surgery, with no guarantee of success, an indefinite period of more rest with no guarantee of recovery, or playing on and withstanding the pain.

For Tataurangi, whose career has been plagued by injury, playing on is not a serious option.

"The disc is bulging," he said. "In my language it is the tomato between two pieces of bread and when you go to pick up the sandwich it squirts out the side."

He had played with the discomfort for 12 months, but had grown accustomed to pain and never considered it too serious.

Inflammation around the disc intensified at the Wachovia Championship a fortnight ago, where he did not make the cut, and it was then that the alarm bells rang.

Tataurangi, who starting playing the PGA Tour in 1994 but did not win until the Invensys Classic in Las Vegas last year, wants to examine a full range of options before committing himself to a recovery course.

It is the latest in a series of injuries to blot a career which reached new heights last October when he became only the sixth New Zealander to win an event on the PGA Tour.

It is also hugely frustrating for Tataurangi, who raised his game to another level last year and finished 33rd in the Tour's moneylist with earnings of US$1,643,686 ($2,849,664).

His form this year has been satisfactory. From nine starts, he has made five cuts and pocketed US$342,083 to place him 86th on the moneylist.

Tataurangi's catalogue of injuries includes wrist, shoulder and neck problems that have at various times left him inactive.

Last year he had surgery to correct a heart condition called superventricular tachycardia - a rapid heartbeat that occurs and disappears.

- NZPA