Dakota Dunes, S.D. (KTIV) – From youth sports to high school, and college sports to the pros, Siouxland athletes face any number of injuries.

For a local golf pro just being able to grip his club became almost impossible. So, he knew he had to see a doctor. That call kept him “on course”.

From the time he took up the game at 16, Josh Wendling knew he wanted to be a golf pro. “Not the guys that have to make 10 foot putts on the 18th hole to win the Masters or U.S. Opens,” said Josh Wendling. “I mean, we all dream about that, but I wanted to be a club pro and help people with their golf swings, manage golf courses and manage, you know, country clubs.”

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

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

So, Wendling went to his friend, CNOS orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Ryan Meis, who diagnosed this scratch golfer with “tennis elbow.” “Tennis elbow, or we call it lateral epicondylitis, starts to happen when people get in their late 30s or early 40s,” said Dr. Ryan Meis, CNOS. “And it can initially be just a very minor nuisance, and it can stay at that level, but occasionally it will advance to a point where it almost becomes the ability you can’t grip. We kind of went through his work up and discovered he actually had not just a little bit of injury to his elbow, but the muscle had begun to completely pull off the attachment site,” Meis said.

Meis called Wendling to break the bad news. “He says, ‘what hand are you holding the phone in?’,” said Wendling. “‘Please move it to the other hand, or else it‘s going to rip fully and you’re not going to be able to hold, you know, have anything with that elbow.’.”

So Meis scheduled surgery. “And so what we do is to make a small incision and put some anchors in the bone, some anchors made out of material that will be absorbed by the body with strong sutures attached to it, and pull that tissue right back to bone where it’s supposed to be attached,” said Meis.

After the surgery, in January of 2019, Meis told Wendling it could take five to six months to get back to competitive golf. Wendling played a tournament four months later. “I have zero pain,” said Wendling. “It’s 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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