Australian golfer Jeff Guan set to make his return to professional tournament at the NT PGA a year after losing his eye

Sometimes, it would hover above the sheet and he still didn’t know how far it had to go until he could start writing. Other times, it would violently pierce it, like a Luke Littler dart spearing the bullseye.

It might sound like a simple task, literally putting pen to paper, but try doing it with one eye shut and finding the right touch. It’s not that easy, is it?

For the past 11 months, one of the most remarkable stories in sport has slowly improved his ability to write, to the point where the pen is now making easier contact with paper. He can now drive a car again, too. Play a bit of soccer with his mates. Catch a ball. Gaming.

They sound like simple everyday tasks, but ones we all take for granted. Guan has had to learn them all over as he put his life back together after a freak accident which left one of Australia’s top golfing prospects blind in his left eye.

“It’s a mix of emotions,” Guan says. “I’m very excited, but I’m also very nervous as I haven’t played tournament golf for a year now.

Next week, he will return to do what he’s always done best: playing professional golf. There will only be a handful of people watching, but the inspirational Guan will resume his career in the NT PGA Championship in Darwin with sight from just one eye.

“I was certain I wanted to play again. I knew it was going to be different. When I was in hospital, I was thinking, ‘Am I ever going to be able to play golf again? Is it going to be very different?’

“The changes have been minimised over the past few months. My sight is getting clearer in my right eye. The depth perception is getting better. Everything is getting slightly better by the day.”

Ask any professional golfer and they will tell you the leading eye, the left in right-handed Guan’s case, is the most important to playing the game. Judging how far the club must be lowered to address the ball, the right swing plane, even assessing distances for each shot, most are reliant on the front eye.

Guan can’t use his at all, a result of an accident when a ball hit by a Pro-Am partner during an event on the NSW south coast last year shattered the left side of his face.

He was airlifted to hospital and underwent two emergency surgeries, before facing months of “excruciating pain” as he went through cases of painkilling tablets, and was forced to methodically apply eye drops every two hours.

The week before his accident, Guan played in his first PGA Tour event in the United States thanks to a sponsor’s invitation. He only missed the cut by one stroke, emphasising the promise he’d shown as a teenager when he finished in the top 20 of both the Australian Open and Australian PGA Championship, and won the prestigious Cameron Smith Scholarship.

But life changed in an instant.

It would have been easy just to accept his golfing career was over, but Guan took solace from researching other athletes who played professionally with a partial loss of sight. Col Johnston won the Australian PGA Championship in the 1960s with just one eye.

Slowly, Guan began wondering if he could hit golf balls again after being restricted from any physical activity for four months.

He used an indoor simulator set up at the end of a hallway at a club close to his home in Sydney, and after a moderate warm-up, finally swung a seven-iron for the first time to see if there was any magic still there.

“It felt weird because the club felt so far away from the ball,” Guan says. “But soon I started hitting balls and got in a rhythm. My distance was never going to be what it was (initially), but I was just happy I could make contact with the ball.”

In the subsequent months, Guan has slowly increased the regularity of his practice. He’s played rounds on the course, some have even been under par, others not so much. It was to be expected.

It was when the PGA Tour of Australasia granted him a medical exemption to have full status this season, he started thinking about a professional comeback. Darwin was sooner than he thought he would originally return, but he believes he’s ready.

Guan, 21, and his father Ken, who drives an Uber to support his son’s golfing ambition, will head there early in the week to seek clarity from tournament rules officials about what advice a caddie can provide.

Guan’s biggest challenge so far has been playing out of bunkers. Golfers are not allowed to have their clubs touch the sand when addressing a ball, and Guan’s limitation hasn’t easily allowed him to know where his club is hovering.

“I’ve seen an eye doctor for that as he specialises in depth perception,” Guan says. “We worked out a couple of things to help.

“Normally if I ask you to look further away to read something, you’ll squint your eyes and lean in closer. It’s a similar concept for me. As I walk into the bunker and am about to ground my club, I squint with my right eye and block out all of my peripheral vision around the bunker and just focus on the certain point where the ball is.

“The second part is not to look at the ball. If I’m looking at the ball, I can’t pinpoint where my club needs to be. Instead, I look at the sand.”

Says Guan’s coach Gary Barter: “His swing, ball striking, physically … he’s no different. That might sound surprising, but the only negative is he’s about an inch out when it comes to the club behind the ball in the sand. The surgeon said, in time, that will improve.

“It’s not impossible. I’ve got a lot more hope than I originally had because I’ve seen his golf swing and how he’s controlling the ball. It’s really good and I’m surprised. We’ll see what happens, there’s no expectations next week but he’s been a special talent for a number of years.”

Guan’s fightback has captured the imagination of the Australian golfing community, and others around the world. His phone will still ping with text messages from strangers with messages of encouragement and support.

“I messaged him when the (incident) happened and he was going to be one of the up-and-coming golfers, and I was very excited for his golf,” Australia’s world No. 46 Min Woo Lee says. “It’s very exciting and I only wish him the best.”

Now, Guan will get to write the next chapter of a phenomenal sporting comeback – and he’s had plenty of practice at getting pen to paper at just the right point.