The former golfer shares his story of recovery from an elbow injury

Dakota Dunes, SD (KTIV) – From youth sports to high school sports, collegiate sports to professional sports, Siouxland athletes deal with a multitude of injuries.

For the local golf pro, just holding the club has become almost impossible. So he knew he had to go to the doctor. This call kept him “on course.”

Ever since Josh Wendling started playing golf at the age of 16, he knew he wanted to be a professional golfer. “Not the ones who have to make a 10-foot putt on the 18th hole to win the Masters or the U.S. Open,” Josh Wendling said. “I mean, we all dream about it, but I wanted to be a club pro and help people with their golf swings and manage golf courses and, you know, country clubs.”

But his time spent on golf courses in high school, college and as a club pro took its toll. “One day I was just doing normal, you know, curls and I felt like a twinge in my elbow,” Wendling said.

And it got even worse. “And then weeks went by and I couldn’t pick up golf clubs anymore, I literally couldn’t hold them in my hand without taking medication,” Wendling said.

So Wendling went to his friend, CNOS orthopedic surgeon Dr. Ryan Meis, who diagnosed the golfer with “tennis elbow.” “Tennis elbow, which we call lateral epicondylitis, begins to appear in people in their 30s or early 40s,” said Dr. Ryan Meis, CNOS. “And initially it may be a very minor nuisance and it may stay at that level, but sometimes it gets to the point where it almost becomes a skill that you can’t grasp. We kind of looked through his work and discovered that he actually not only had a minor injury to his elbow, but the muscle had started to completely separate from its attachment site,” Meis said.

Meis called Wendling to tell him the bad news. “He asks, ‘What hand are you holding the phone in?'” Wendling said. “Please move it to your other arm or it will tear completely and you won’t be able to, you know, hold anything with that elbow.”

So Meis planned the operation. “So we make a small incision and place some anchors in the bone, made of a material that will be absorbed by the body with strong sutures attached to it, and then we pull that tissue back into the bone where it should be attached,” Meis said.

After surgery in January 2019, Meis told Wendling it could take five to six months to return to competitive golf. Wendling played the tournament four months later. “I don’t feel any pain,” Wendling said. “It’s amazing.”

Wendling underwent surgery on his right elbow in 2019, followed by similar surgery on his left elbow in 2021.