Dakota Dunes, SD (KTIV) – From youth sports to high school, college sports to the pros, Siouxland athletes face a multitude of injuries.

It has become nearly impossible for a local golf pro to grip his club. So he knew he had to see a doctor. This call kept him “on course.”

Josh Wendling knew he wanted to be a golf professional ever since he started playing at age 16. “It’s not the guys 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 of it, but I wanted to be a club pro and help people with their golf swings and manage golf courses and, you know, manage golf clubs.”

But time spent on golf courses in high school, college and as a club professional took its toll. “One day I was doing regular curls and felt a twinge in my elbow,” Wendling said.

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

Wendling then consulted his friend, CNOS orthopedic surgeon Dr. who diagnosed this scratched golfer with “tennis elbow.” Ryan went to Meis. Dr. from CNOS “Tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis as we call it, starts to appear in people’s late 30s or early 40s,” said Ryan Meis, MD. “And it may be a very minor nuisance in the beginning and stay at that level, but sometimes it will progress to the point where it becomes a skill that you can barely grasp. We kind of analyzed his work and discovered that he actually had not only a minor injury to his elbow, but that the muscle had started to completely separate from its attachment area,” Meis said.

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

So Meis planned surgery. “And what we do is we make a small incision and insert some anchors into the bone, some anchors made of material that will be absorbed by the body and strong stitches attached to them and pull that tissue back into the bone. It had to be attached,” Meis said.

After the surgery, Meis told Wendling in January 2019 that it could take five to six months to return to competitive golf. Wendling participated in a tournament four months later. “I have no pain,” Wendling said. “This is amazing.”

Wendling had surgery on his right elbow in 2019, and then had a similar surgery on his left elbow in 2021.

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