Michigan Golf Journal June 2019

By Tom Lang It’s more typical to hear that children look up to pro athletes for inspiration – yet PGA Tour pro Morgan Hoffmann found the opposite. He looks up to a 13-year-old. Hoffmann, age 29, just returned to the Tour in January and will be playing in Detroit’s Rocket Mortgage Classic, after a long hiatus from the sport he loves that began in late 2016. That’s when Hoffmann, a former World No. 1 Amateur and Oklahoma State Cowboy, learned he was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy. As Hoffmann himself wrote in an online post in late 2016: The characteristics of this specific type of MD (facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy) are atrophy of the chest, back, neck, arms and sometimes legs. Each case is different, and some muscles degenerate more quickly than others. He added that he first noticed deterioration in his right pec muscles as early at 2011. He still earned his PGA Tour card two years later. However, after the official diagnosis of MD in late 2016, Hoffmann took off from the vast majority of the Tour schedule to seek out answers, solutions and potential treatments – the latter mostly overseas in Nepal. While he has vowed to not let Muscular Dystrophy win, Hoffmann recently explained a heart-felt gratitude for a young man who made a huge impact on him. As Hoffmann explained it in a one-on-one conversation with MGJ in mid-May, leading up to the recent AT&T Byron Nelson tournament Michigan Golf Journal PGA Tour PGA Tour Pro Morgan Hoffmann Faces Down Muscular Dystrophy