One-eyed golfer Jeff Guan makes remarkable comeback at NT PGA Championship

“I was trying to laser the tree at the back and all of a sudden it was only eight metres,” Guan laughed.

“I’m like, ‘OK, that’s a great start’.”

If ever anyone deserved a little break from the golfing gods, it was the former teenage prodigy who is blind in one eye after a horrific accident on the course last year.

But those same golfing gods can be cruel.

On a warm Darwin morning just days before spring, the tropics served up a blanket of the thick stuff, making Guan work even harder to see where his ball actually needed to go. With sight from just his right eye, his trailing one, the 21-year-old took a driving iron out and whacked his tee ball through the dense air.

“It was genuinely a great feeling,” Guan said.

“I wasn’t nervous at all from what I predicted the last couple of days. It didn’t help that after I hit the ball, I had no idea where it was (though).”

The history books will show Guan foraged through the fog and found it, potted around in a three-over 74 in the first round of the NT PGA Championship, and will have his work cut out to make the cut on Friday.

But is that really the point?

As he walked back to the media zone following his morning walk – only the third time he’s played a full 18 holes in this extraordinary sporting tale – it was hard to wipe the smile off his face.

Of the cut, he said: “I’m not thinking about that all. I’m going to try my best and see how it goes.”

Maybe predictably, his tee shots were a highlight, given he can ground his club safely behind the ball, helping with his impaired depth perception. The short game, that will take time.

There were flashes of the kid who won the Cameron Smith scholarship and was considered good enough to be given an invite to make his PGA Tour debut in California last year a week before the freak accident which turned his world upside down.

He made a couple of birdies on his closing stretch, including an impressive one on the ninth hole, his last of the day, straight after a double bogey.

“I’m honestly really shocked with how much support I’ve been given,” Guan said. “There’s been so many people worldwide, not just in the golfing community, who have reached out.

“It’s a weird feeling and I’m sort of getting back into the form I felt prior to the accident. I hit a lot of shots out of the middle of the face, mainly off the tee.”

Little-known American Nathan Jordi stole the show late in the opening round with a bogey-free eight-under 63, to open up a four-shot buffer from Jack Munro, Jimmy Zheng and Tim Hart (-4).