Back From Lyme Disease and Career Abyss, Jimmy Walker Grabs Lead at Heritage

Jimmy Walker, who won the PGA Championship in 2016, is back on tour thanks to a one-year exemption. He's looking to make the most of it.

HILTON HEAD, S.C. – Jimmy Walker is like Kodak, an iconic brand name that was known by everyone until the world passed it by and film morphed into digital.

Walker may not have been as iconic as Kodak or Blackberry, but for a stretch from 2014 to 2016, Walker had six wins, including the 2016 PGA Championship. He was a force.

As time went on, instead of contending on the weekend he was back home, at first wondering where his game had gone and then eventually resigned to the fact that it was over.

A bout with Lyme disease near the end of 2016 caused irreparable harm and from there his confidence and to some extend his ability ebbed away.

And like Kodak, the golfing world passed him by.

From 2019 to 2022, Walker earned a total of $1,706,461, barely enough to pay expenses and bills for a player that previously had five years of earning of $2 million or more, including $5,787,016 in 2014.

A shell of himself, his golf game in tatters, Walker came to the conclusion that he was done at the 2022 Valero Texas Open, his hometown event.

Missing the cut after shooting 78-70, Walker effectively walked away after discussing the decision with his family and agent.

So, to now see his name on the top of the leaderboard at the halfway mark of the RBC Heritage at 12 under and leading by three over Scottie Scheffler and Justin Rose, is almost eerie.

“Now we need to pedal down, keep it going, and the same today,” Walker said of a mindset that hadn’t been in play for a while. “It was take advantage, keep your head in the game, keep stroking it good, just keep doing all the things that I felt like I've been kind of working on, some old feels, old thoughts, and just stay on them and be really diligent about it, because it's so easy to just check out. It has been for me, especially after being sick.”

To say Walker had only Lyme disease is a bit disingenuous to the Texas native.

When the bloodwork came back in March of 2017, it showed Walker was positive for mononucleosis, West Nile virus, two different types of bacterial pneumonia and Lyme disease.

In a blog post by his wife Erin, she described Walker’s issue with playing golf:

“He suffered tremendously because he didn’t have the energy to practice. He was experiencing something we deemed as “brain to body disconnects” where he would see the shot, know how to execute it, but his body would fail to do so,” Erin Walker wrote. “He even developed the chipping yips caused by the disconnect. His confidence in his profession crumbled and with that, he fell into a depression about not feeling well and not being able to perform at his job.”

Once he gave up on his career, Walker found the other recreational aspects golf, drinking beer and just generally letting loose and enjoying life.

“I was hitting the gym and, just mowing the yard, just being a dad and doing the school drop offs,” Walker said of his post-PGA Tour career. “And I was enjoying the hell out of it, honestly.”

When Walker was still playing on the PGA Tour he was focused. When playing golf with his friends, it was still no drinking, no fooling around, all business.

“I actually needed it because right in the beginning, like I didn't want to play and everybody's like, ‘Hey, man, you're home, let’s go play,’” Walker said.

One day, last year Walker got a call from his old caddie, Andrew Medley. With LIV Golf making its debut, the PGA Tour was starting to rewrite its record books, including its career money leaders as some of its stars were leaving for what they believed was greener pastures.

The PGA Tour has a one-time exemption for anyone who is currently in the top-50 of career money and has lost their card.

At the end of 2022, Walker was 65th on that list and would not have been able to receive the one-time exemption, but when you remove all the PGA Tour members who left for LIV, as the Tour did in the Summer of 2022, Walker was sandwiched between Robert Allenby at 49th and Chad Campbell at 51st.

Walker had gotten the golden ticket. He was 50th.

“It was a pretty easy decision honestly, I was 50th, and if I didn't play, I'd never get it again. I just wouldn't. So, when it happened, it was kind of like, wow, this is incredible,” Walker said. “I remember going into the first tournament, should I go practice? Should I just go out and start winging it? We winged it, and I played pretty damn good that first week. I think I led the field in birdies. It's like, where has this been?”

Walker finished T25 at the Fortinet Championship, the opener on the PGA Tour and then promptly missed five cuts in a row before a T13 at the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego.

With just four made cuts and $319,798 in earnings so far, Walker has only shown flashes, but nothing that would make you turn your head until this week.

Shooting 65-65 in the first two rounds here was the first time Walker has opened with two rounds in the 60s since the Shriners Children’s Open in October of 2021.

The closest thing to the 65-65 came in the 2016 PGA Championship when he opened with a 65-66.

That weekend at Baltusrol Golf Club, Walker would play steady and win by a stroke over Jason Day. If he can hold it together over the final two days in Hilton Head, it would be a win just as big as that July 2016 win in New Jersey.

‘’I'm still a competitor, I still want to win, I still want to have all those feels and have all that built inside me,” Walker said. “And I mean, that doesn't change, right?

“I want it bad. So that's the bottom line.”