Bud Cauley Returns After Horrific Car Crash
Tour pro Bud Cauley returns to the PGA Tour this week after suffering extensive injuries from a terrible car accident on a Friday night in June in Dublin, Ohio.
Helen Ross has the inspirational story of recovering from the physical and mental traumas that day.
The first thing Bud Cauley remembers after the accident is seeing the paramedics who had pulled him out of the back seat of the BMW.
The car had veered off the road, hit a culvert and gone airborne before striking a tree, then three others. The BMW finally came to rest in a ditch.
Cauley, who was one of four people in the car, was having trouble breathing because he had a collapsed lung. He also had a concussion, six broken ribs and a fracture in his left leg.
“It was really scary, first waking up,” Cauley recalls.
“Obviously, first in your mind is your quality life going forward. And then I thought about … golf and was I going to be able to play again and play the same way. All those things I worried about for a while.”
Cauley, who had just missed the cut at the Memorial Tournament, has spent the last four months regaining his strength as well as his swing. He’s anxious to test his game and grateful for the support he’s received along the way.
“Being out at the course these past couple days in Napa and all the guys that have come up – players, caddies, rules officials, people from the TOUR, just saying they’re happy to see me back,” he says. “It’s been really great.”
Cauley says he wouldn’t have come to California if he didn’t think he could be competitive. He thinks his biggest challenge won’t be managing his game around the scenic North Course, though – it will be keeping his emotions in check.
“I’ve put in all the work at home to practice and get my game ready, and I have done everything I can (with) workouts, to get my body in shape,” he explains.
On the Sunday after the crash, Cauley also had surgery to attach titanium plates to four of the ribs to stabilize them. Those are a permanent addition – but luckily he didn’t set off any alarms as he went through airport security this week.
“I was kinda worried about that when I flew out here,” Cauley says with a wry laugh. “But luckily, they didn’t stop me and I didn’t have to go through the whole spiel about why there were these things in my chest.”
By early September Cauley’s golf game was starting to feel “familiar” again. He put the pain in his rear-view mirror and was able to go about his business like he did before the accident.
“Just to be able to go out there and work on my game and not be worried about it was kind of when I took a little bit of a breath was like … we’re going to be okay,” Cauley says.
Good friends like Justin Thomas and Harold Varner checked in almost daily. And once Cauley started playing 18 holes regularly with buddies like Kevin Tway, Peter Uhlein, Rickie Fowler and Tom Lovelady, he knew he had turned the corner.
