Hanging out with friends gave Patrick Cantlay solace after a sore back forced him to put his promising golf career on hold in May 2013.
After being No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings for 55 weeks, Cantlay was poised to start cashing in on the PGA Tour when the back injury struck. For three years he struggled to return, and then came the devastating news of a stress fracture in his lower back that wasn’t healing, meaning he couldn’t touch a club for at least 10 months.
If anyone could cheer up Cantlay it was his caddie and friend, Chris Roth, as the pair had practically been inseparable since their days on Servite High’s golf team. It was around 1 a.m. on a February night a year ago when the two friends decided to walk to Woody’s Wharf in Newport Beach. Roth was about 10 feet ahead of Cantlay as they got to the intersection of Newport Boulevard and 30th Street. As Roth started across the street, a car smashed into him and sent him flying through the air.
When Cantlay got to Roth, blood was everywhere. His heart was still beating, but Cantlay said he knew his friend “wasn’t there anymore.” Later that night, Roth was pronounced dead at Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana.
He was 24.
“It still bothers me every day,” Cantlay said in February prior to playing in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where he tied for 48th. “It changes the way that you see things for a while. Maybe not forever; you get numb to it. For a while, I couldn’t care less about everything. Not just golf. Everything that happened in my life for a couple months didn’t feel important. Nothing felt like it mattered.”
There were times, his father Steve said, when his son explored opportunities outside of golf, as he wasn’t getting better physically despite the time off. But in the past year or so, Patrick has “committed” to being a golfer again. Losing Roth, the elder Cantlay said, is partly responsible for the change in attitude.
“I know he thinks of and will continue to keep Chris close to him in his life,” Steve said. “I know that he can probably best honor Chris and their close friendship by getting back to golf and competing on the tour. And that obviously is what our family wants for him because we just want him to be happy and fulfilled.”
A fulfilling golf moment nearly happened four weeks after his start at Pebble Beach, as Cantlay finished second to Adam Hadwin at the Valspar Championship in Florida. The runner-up finish earned Cantlay $680,000 and secured full PGA Tour status for the rest of the year, meaning he won’t have to rely on medical or sponsor’s exemptions to get into tournaments.
That type of finish – not to mention victories – were what Cantlay and the golf media expected after he turned pro after his sophomore year at UCLA in 2012. After all, Cantlay was among the most decorated amateurs in history, winning the Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Haskins awards among other honors, such as being the low amateur at the Masters and U.S. Open.
But just when the prize money started to roll in, the injury happened. While warming up on the range at Colonial Country Club before his second round at the 2013 Crowne Plaza Invitational, Cantlay started to feel pain in his lower back. At first doctors thought it was a muscle issue, and it took almost two months to reach the correct diagnosis of a stress fracture. And there was only one cure. Rest. Lots of it – from six weeks to a year.
“I didn’t imagine myself being out for so long. It was frustrating to miss that week (at Colonial), but at the time I thought it was just that week,” he said. “If I would have known that I was going to be out for this long, it would have been devastating.”
He tried to make more comebacks, but each one ended in pain. The 2016 CareerBuilder Challenge in La Quinta was where Cantlay planned to return for good, but his back started hurting. More rest was needed, and this time he had to stay completely away from the game for at least a year.
“That was extremely difficult. Demoralizing. You work for such a long time to try and achieve something and then someone says you have to take nine months or a year off. You don’t feel like you are getting any closer,” he said. “It’s hard for a while not to do anything, but that is what they’re saying is the best thing. It’s difficult to wake up and say there is not a lot I can do today.”
Cantlay continues to work with Jamie Mulligan at Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, and teh work appears to be paying off, as Cantlay recently set the record on the Mountain Course at the Vintage Club in Palm Springs, with a 63. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, came his second-place finish at the Valspar Championship, where he fell a stroke short of victory.
“I am just going to go out and do my process and see what happens,” Cantlay said. “After being off for so long there are no expectations. It doesn’t even feel like I know what to expect. But I am ready to play.”
