Bud Cauley returns to PGA TOUR after three-year injury layoff

Editor's note: This article originally ran on Feb. 6, 2024.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – It already felt like the weekend on Tuesday morning at the WM Phoenix Open, as fans streamed through the TPC Scottsdale gates with bubbling anticipation for the TOUR stop that is one part golf tournament, two parts festival. The energy was palpable.

Bud Cauley matched that energy, and for good reason.

Cauley, 33, will make his return to PGA TOUR competition this week, after being sidelined for three-plus years due to various injuries that stemmed from complications after a 2018 car accident. Cauley made two rehab starts on the Korn Ferry Tour last month in The Bahamas, finishing a respectable T21-T35, and feels now is a proper time for his return. (He has also gotten the better of longtime friend Justin Thomas in recent money games back home in South Florida, which doesn’t hurt.)

With one timely shot at the Stadium Course’s famed par-3 16th hole, after all, he could incite three years’ worth of roars.

“It's hard to put into words how much you kind of miss something when you grow up doing it every day and you play golf every day, and when it gets taken away, it does change your perspective on just how fortunate we are to be able to play golf and even to get to do the thing that you enjoy doing,” Cauley said Tuesday. “The last couple days even have been a lot of fun to see a lot of familiar faces and guys I haven't seen in a while.

“(Playing in The Bahamas) was a lot of fun, and it's even better to be back here, a place I've played quite a few times and really enjoy this tournament.”

Also enjoying Cauley’s return is Thomas, who began at Alabama in fall 2011 – a semester after Cauley turned pro following his junior season. Thomas was a close observer as Cauley made his Korn Ferry Tour return last month, and he wasn’t surprised to see strong results. “He’s been kicking my ass at home, that’s for sure,” Thomas quipped Tuesday.

Cauley’s car accident occurred Friday at the 2018 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. He suffered six broken ribs, a collapsed right lung and fractured left leg; he said afterward that he was “so thankful to be alive.” Thomas spent most of that Friday night in the hospital with Cauley, and he played the third round at Muirfield Village with a heavy heart. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it and thinking about him and I just really wanted to get done and go to the hospital,” he described his mindset that Saturday.

For the last few years, Thomas hoped he’d have the chance to compete alongside his good friend on TOUR once again. That wish comes true this week.

“I’m so, so excited Bud is back,” said Thomas. “He’s one of my best friends in the world … I'm really happy and proud of him because I know he's had a lot of time and thinking of is this going to ever get fixed, is it going to be cured, am I going to play golf again. I know how good Bud is and I know his raw talent. I just wanted to keep him positive and keep telling him because my thing I always said is it's going to work out … just time will heal.

“He’s just too good of a player to not have won out here at some point.”

Following surgery and recovery, Cauley returned to the TOUR in fall 2018 and played two full TOUR seasons, keeping his card both years. But he right side began to hurt again in fall 2020, causing him to step away. He saw a couple doctors who thought maybe the pain was derived from plates that had been put in his chest. He went in for an incision, but the plates were unable to be removed, as the bone had grown on top of the plate. Then 12 days after the procedure, the incision popped back open and he returned to the emergency room.

Cauley’s last three years have been mostly colored with doctor’s visits and physiotherapy clinics. He has had “a couple more surgeries that didn’t heal very well, and it was just a whole mess,” he said Tuesday. He had a seroma – a buildup of fluids where tissue has been removed – and a C. difficile infection. “Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong,” he said. But he eventually, after a successful surgery on his ribs and chest wall, felt healthy enough to attempt a return.

So here he is at the WM Phoenix Open, confident that he can put on a show – and just as importantly, that his body can hold up. He’ll have ample opportunities to regain peak form; he has 27 starts remaining on a Major Medical Extension after finishing No. 83 on the 2020 FedExCup, needing to earn 391.355 points to keep his card.

Cauley’s talent and love for the game were never in question – the former top-ranked junior and University of Alabama stud had progressed into a steady TOUR veteran – but his body was less than cooperative. During his time away, he would chip and putt here and there, but he went until last September before making a full swing. He built up strength and continued to progress, to the point where he felt a comeback was possible. His two Korn Ferry Tour starts went well; it took only a couple rounds for a rhythm to return.

The returning Cauley is in a new life phase, as he and wife Kristi have a 1-year-old son Cooper. At points in his recovery, Cauley simply hoped that he could someday play golf with his son, he told PGATOUR.COM before his Korn Ferry Tour return last month. Now maybe there will be a day where his son can see him hoist a TOUR trophy.

The cheers would rain down.

“I think the TOUR is a better place,” Thomas said, “with BC out here.”