Bears great Jim McMahon still gutting it out at his 33rd Tahoe golf tournament

STATELINE, Nev. — Jim McMahon is rolling now, talking away as he guides the golf cart down a gentle slope at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. His left hand is on the steering wheel and his right one is wrapped, predictably, around a cold can of Corona.

We pull up near Hole No. 8 where a few swarming fans take turns asking for selfies, like polite mosquitos seeking permission to bite. McMahon obliges every one of them. “Get on in here,’’ he says more than once.

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This is the easy part for McMahon.

The hard part begins where the cart can’t take him.

Bone spur surgery in November left him with lingering complications, including an infection so gnarly that doctors approached him about amputation. On this day, the former Super Bowl-winning quarterback can barely walk.

He uses a scooter to get him a little closer to the tee box and, as he makes his way, the toes poking out from his protective boot are so purple and malformed that it looks as if he received a right foot transplant from Barney.

Jim McMahon is still gutting it out. He can barely walk after bone spur surgery gone wrong, but watch him crush this drive. This is his 33rd straight @ACChampionship “I’d crawl down the fairway if I had to. I’m not missing it.” #chicagobears #DaBears

— Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 7, 2022

Still, the Chicago Bears icon will tee it up at the American Century Championship that runs Friday through Sunday. Of course he will. And in doing so, McMahon and actor/singer Jack Wagner will remain the only two players to compete in this tournament every year since its inception 33 years ago.

But doesn’t it, you know … hurt?

“I’m used to playing in this kind of pain with people hitting me,’’ McMahon, 62, explained as he pried himself out of the cart. “Ain’t nobody hit me yet out here, which is nice.”

The quarterback gutted it out time and again during an injury-ravaged NFL career that lasted from 1982 to 1996. Famously, though, he was hospitalized and in traction earlier in the week, McMahon browbeat Mike Ditka into putting him back into the game and then throwing three touchdown passes on seven attempts to lead a comeback against the Vikings on Sept. 19, 1985.

So why would a little thing like struggling to stay upright prevent him from playing 54 holes over three days?

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It makes for oddly dramatic viewing, even during this tuneup celebrity pro-am on Wednesday. As McMahon hobbled his way to the No. 8 tee, using his golf club like a cane, there was a bit of an inhale from the gallery, the kind of collective suspense that makes someone yell “Don’t go in there!!!” during a horror movie.

But McMahon goes in there and makes it to the tee. Every time. And once he placed his ball and set his feet, he looked again like an athlete in his prime. McMahon swung hard on this drive, and on the back swing needed a few quick hops to regain his balance. His drive sailed an estimated 275 yards.

“That was smoked,’’ one fan said.

“One-legged!” marveled another.

“You always were tough,’’ said another. “Damn!”

In response, McMahon doffed his white sun hat and took a careful bow in the direction of fans cheering his feat of strength. “I’ll be in the circus next week,’’ McMahon said. Then he climbed back on his scooter and prepared to do it all over again.

“If I gotta crawl down the fairway, I’m not missing this event,’’ McMahon said. “I have too much fun. Met a lot of great people up here. Get to take a lot of great boat rides when I’m done. We go over and go bar-hopping across the lake, have a good time.”

As he speaks, country music plays in the distance. It’s Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn singing “I’ve Already Loved You in My Mind.”

“I mean, just, look where we’re at,’’ McMahon said, taking in the view of the largest alpine lake in North America. “One of the prettiest spots in the world.”

The vast and picturesque scenery on this sunny, mid-70s day helps balance out the sight of McMahon’s foot. He said he had what was supposed to be routine surgery to remove bone spurs. In football terms, it was a broken play.

“It got infected. I had to go back in the hospital for eight days. I had two more surgeries. They talked about cutting off my foot. I said, ‘No. That ain’t gonna happen,’’’ McMahon said. “So, it’s been rough. I’ve had 22 surgeries. This is the worst one I’ve ever had.”

Anything that ranks atop McMahon’s injury list has to be serious. This is a quarterback who broke his neck during his playing days and didn’t know it for 17 years. McMahon discovered this in 2010 when, during an examination for worker’s compensation, a doctor asked him, “When did you break your neck?”

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McMahon later deduced that it must have been while playing for the Vikings in a playoff loss to the Giants on Jan. 9, 1994, because that’s the game where he felt his legs go numb twice.

More sinister, he suffered long-term aftereffects following a body slam to the turf, courtesy of Charles Martin. The resulting injury left McMahon with compression of his C1 and C2 vertebrae. As Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle explained in this 2017 column, the misaligned parts were short-circuiting the flow of cerebrospinal fluid up and down his brain stem and spine. For a while, McMahon said, it affected his memory. But starting in 2012, a New York chiropractor named Scott Rosa offered him a new path with a non-invasive treatment for head, neck and brain disease.

Challenges remain, but he lives a normal life.

“I tell all the guys I know,” McMahon told Ostler about his treatment. “A lot of guys get frustrated, they don’t know what’s going on. Some of them kill themselves. They’re embarrassed. They’ll stand there in a fog for a half-hour, wondering what the f— to do. These guys are pretty proud, and to have to ask for help is not easy.”

So here was McMahon on Wednesday recognizing the fans who, like him, are here year after year. “Thirty-three in a row,’’ he said before nodding to a familiar woman nearby. “Shortcakes, how many for you?

“Same!” she replied.

McMahon first golfed here in 1990 while still an active player. Mark Rypien won it that year, back when it was hardly the annual hot spot for athletes and celebrities alike.

“There was nobody here. It was great,’’ McMahon said of the inaugural tournament. “Nobody on the beach. Nobody following us around. It was just us guys playing. For the first couple years it was like that.”

Now? This year’s tournament features entertainers such as Justin Timberlake, Nick Jonas, Colin Jost, Rob Riggle as well as sports icons like Stephen Curry, Vince Carter Tom Glavine and Joe Pavelski. Oh, and quarterbacks. So many quarterbacks. McMahon is one of 11 current or former passers in this field, which also includes Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Steve Young and Tony Romo, a two-time winner here.

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As Allen, the Buffalo Bills star, explained, some of the skills required to play quarterback translate to the course.

“It’s very similar in terms of mechanics and hip rotation and sequencing,’’ Allen said. “And on top of that, it’s a very mentally challenging game. You’re puzzling together what shot to put where. In football, it’s what throw do I need to put where? So, it’s just a way to stay competitive without taking hits.”

McMahon agreed to an extent.

“Yeah, quarterbacks understand the mechanics,’’ he said after chonking a drive at No. 7. “If you don’t have good mechanics out here, it’s not going to work out too well — as you just saw my last shot.”

McMahon has never finished higher than 14th at the American Century Championship and hasn’t finished in the top 30 since 2010 (when he tied for 28th.)

He takes great pride in having led the tournament after Round 1 years ago – maybe 1996. “Before shooting my usual 80 or 85,’’ McMahon said. “But that was nice to at least have my name on the leaderboard one time out of 33.”

The lowlights? One year he drank so much on the course that he threw up twice on one hole (but also so quietly that he didn’t even distract the swing of his playing partner, Vinny Testaverde). There was also an unsettling wardrobe malfunction, which he detailed on this terrific Subpar podcast so that we, mercifully, do not have to.

But those days, appear to be, like his Super Bowl moon, distinctly behind him. It’s enough of an adventure these days just to make his way around the course, where, to borrow a golf term, there are no easy up and downs for McMahon.

But he’s still standing.

“These are the people who have been coming year after year, and I see a lot of the same faces,’’ McMahon said. “They have a good time up here. How could you not? It’s a beautiful spot.”

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It was at this point another woman came up and asked McMahon if they could take a picture together. “Sure, come on,’’ McMahon said. They snapped a smiling pic, but before walking away, the woman added one last thing.

“Sorry you’re hurt,’’ she said.

“Me, too,’’ he replied.

(Photo of Jim McMahon at the American Century Championship in 2020: Courtesy Jeff Bayer)