Tom Gillis, a Lake Orion native and more recently a resident of Florida, wishes no one ever had to suffer through the COVID-19 circumstances – but in his case the PGA Tour Champions cancellations come at a time he is healing from injuries that are common for the over-age-50 group.
Gillis’ best moment on the PGA Tour came in 2015 when he tied Jordan Spieth for medalist of the John Deere Classic – until Spieth won the tournament in a playoff. Gillis – a two-time Michigan Open champion – then joined the PGA Tour Champions midway through 2018 and promptly earned 3rd place finishes in his first two events. He was T7 in last summer’s Ally Challenge at Grand Blanc.
At the moment, Gillis is healing from a back that is out of sorts. He got turf toe when he was playing volleyball with his 6th grader in October and rolled his toe underneath. He put up with it for a while and played a couple tournaments but then had to get a walking boot for 5 weeks in December to fully heal. Doing that messed up his walking gate, which threw out his back.
Gillis doesn’t appear concerned about the current lack of practice.
“When you’ve been doing it so many years, your swing is your swing,” he said. “You kind of have a patent on it by this point. Whereas in your mid 20s if you took a lot of time off you really had to hit a lot of balls because you didn’t have it grooved. So, for me, it’s just all about feeling healthy and good. That’s the way it is with every guy on the Champions Tour, because when you get over 50 everybody’s got back problems or hip problems and everything; from all that wear and tear from all those years – 35 years of pounding golf balls is hard on the spine.”
He is hoping for the best for everyone, ideally this social distancing works and he is praying for the people who have caught the virus.
“This is of course something we’ve never dealt with before and I just hope we can all come out all right on the other end – and learn from it so we’re better equipped if it ever happens again. I think we’ve learned some valuable lessons from this.”
