Finally healthy, John Huston puts together best season in a decade

When journalists write tales of athletic comebacks, one tried-and-true trope that almost certainly will appear is that the athlete has been to “hell and back.”

When it comes to PGA TOUR Champions veteran John Huston, let’s just say he has used Marriott points in Hades.

At 61 years of age, Huston finally is enjoying a bit of a career renaissance. After five top-25 finishes in his past six events including three top 10s, he finds himself at his highest point he has been in the Schwab Cup standings (33rd) since the end of the 2013 season (29th).

“It’s not easy. I’m day to day body-wise,” Huston said this week after tying for fifth at the Ascension Charity Classic. “So I’m enjoying it while it lasts.”

Huston didn’t start his 2022 season until May following neck fusion surgery in November 2021. Which followed surgery on both shoulders in the years prior. Which in all honesty sort of paled in comparison to when Huston finally elected to have brain surgery for a neurological condition called cervical dystonia, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a painful condition in which a person’s neck muscles contract involuntarily, causing the head to twist or turn to one side. It also can cause the head to uncontrollably tilt forward or backward.”

It sounds like a nightmare for anyone. Now imagine being a professional golfer, whose living in large part depends on being able to keep one’s head incredibly still.

“It was more of a tick-like head movement that I couldn’t control,” Huston said from South Dakota, where he attempted to Monday qualify for the Sanford International. He didn’t automatically qualify off his top 10 at the Ascension because Clark Dennis, who also tied for fifth in St. Louis, grabbed the spot. “After a while it got to where I couldn’t even see the ball.

“It would happen only during my golf swing. Like your brain is telling your body the wrong signal. Guys get it for different reasons. Baseball players who can’t make the throw to first anymore … it’s kinda the same thing. The brain’s signals get crossed up. … When I would look down at the ball it would progressively get worse. Eventually my neck would have been cocked sideways.”

Huston said he began to notice symptoms as early as age 45. But he wasn’t officially diagnosed with the cervical dystonia until he was 52. By then he’d already won in his rookie season on PGA TOUR Champions.

He opted to try to manage the condition without surgery. Who could blame him? The condition is rare enough; the people who opt for deep brain stimulation surgery (DBS) are even rarer.

“They drill two holes into your head and put wires in there, and I have a little battery device in my abdomen that the wires are connected to and it blocks the dystonia signal,” Huston said. “I think they do the same surgery for Parkinson’s and tremors and stuff like that.”

Huston said he “chickened out of the surgery” for two years after the initial diagnosis. Finally, he agreed to do the two-part surgery; the first one in December 2016 and the second in January 2017. It was performed by renowned neurologist Michael Okun at the University of Florida.

“The head movement thing was gone right away, but if they turn it up too much to block all of the signal it goes into a different part of your brain so your coordination is not ideal,” Huston said. “It’s a fine line, and it took a couple of years to get it all dialed in.

“You have a remote you can change the settings on. I was going every few months to Gainesville to see a programmer, and they adjust the settings based on what you tell them you’re feeling. It’s quite the journey.”

Huston has his own remote for the device in his abdomen with which he can change the settings himself. But patient remotes have a limited range of settings to ensure they stay with certain physician-prescribed parameters.

“I have it at home. I haven’t changed it in probably about a year now so it’s been pretty good as far as the settings go for a good while now,” Huston said. “I was starting to play pretty decent last year and then I started to have numbness and tingling in my arm and had to have the neck surgery. One thing after another.”

Finally feeling better and all of his body parts working in concert for probably the first time in a decade or more, Huston fired three rounds in the 60s and damn near won the Shaw Charity Classic in the first week of August before falling in a playoff to Jerry Kelly. It was his best finish on PGA TOUR Champions since a tie for second at the SAS Championship in 2011.

“I definitely had the butterflies at the Shaw Classic,” Huston said. “It had been a long time. I had a pretty short birdie putt on the last that if I would have made it I would have won.

“It would have completed the story a lot better had I won. Hopefully that’s still to come.”