SIMON DYSON believes his enforced absence from golf can be the spur to relighting his fire for the sport.

The York-born six-time Tour champion is recuperating from surgery on the wrist injury that has blighted his season and will be out of action for up to six months.

Dyson, who went under the knife to repair a slipped tendon in his left wrist, has returned to the Alexandra Hospital, in Manchester, to have a new protective cast fitted.

The 37-year-old had suffered with the injury for much of the campaign and had undergone a cortisone injection to try and ease the pain. But he was still forced to pull out of both the Spanish and Irish Opens before resorting to an operation.

The renowned surgeon Mike Hayton performed the procedure and found the injury could not have healed itself naturally - the problem also revealing an old tear which had not healed correctly.

Now forced to lay down his clubs for a prolonged period for the first time since he started playing the game as a ten-year-old, the Malton & Norton GC stalwart is looking on the bright side, admitting he may have gone a little stale.

“I can move around a bit,” Dyson said of the new cast that has been fitted. “When the original was taken off I could hardly straighten my arm. It has been sat at a right angle for seven days. It’s amazing when you don’t use the muscles how they seize up. It doesn’t hurt. As far as pain and movement goes it is fine.

“It was a relief (when surgery revealed the problem). If they had opened it up and they had not seen anything that would have troubled me. It would have been a worry. To open it and say ‘this is what is causing it and this is why it never settled’, it is nice to know that.

“It was nice to know I hadn’t just gone under the knife for no reason. It has worked and, hopefully, it will never go again.

“It was all I could think about on the course. I wasn’t thinking about the shot. I was just thinking whether my wrist was going again. That’s no way to play golf.

“I am now in a cast for five weeks. I am also going away for a week and, when I come back, there will be six weeks of rehabilitation. It will be hard work because I am not gripping a club. I am not doing anything. It’s a dead arm.”

Asked how he viewed the prospect of a number of months out of action, Dyson, who will apply for a medical extension from the European Tour on his return, added: “I am going to try and keep busy over the next few weeks. I started playing golf when I was ten and to not pick up a golf club for four or five months will be the longest break I have had since I started playing the game.

“It isn’t the worst thing. I love my job but I had fallen out of love with the sport a little bit. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I should be. It is every person’s dream but a few things affected it and not just the golf.

“It felt more like a job and it isn’t supposed to feel that way.

“Watching the Majors and the Race to Dubai and getting those out of the way, there are a couple of tournaments in South Africa in December that I could play and I am going to enjoy being back in competition and competing.

“To be pain free will be amazing.”