Justin Rose injured his shoulder by throwing a golf ball to his caddie

Here is an argument for all those people that say golfers aren’t real athletes. Justin Rose, our U.S. Open champion, admitted this week that he hurt his shoulder last year by throwing a golf ball to his caddie.

According to Golfweek, Rose threw a golf ball to his caddie at the Barclays back in late August and upset his right shoulder, an injury he played through for the remainder of the season. Rose took two months off of golf because of the throwing injury, but is now back to tee it up at the Northern Trust Open.

Via Golfweek …

“I played pretty much from October last year with it not perfect,” Rose said. “I assumed a little bit of rest over Christmas would heal it, but it didn’t really and that’s when I knew I needed to put a little bit of extra time into it – but nothing serious, nothing torn, no surgery required, nothing like that.”

We’ve seen some bizarre injuries in the past, with most of them coming when golfers attempt to do stuff in the ocean during the Hawaii swing, but a toss of a golf ball to a caddie doesn’t exactly seem like the type of thing that would sideline someone for an entire winter.

The injury didn’t seem to really throw Rose off his game, as he finished T-2 at the Barclays, followed that up with a T-16 at the Deutsche Bank Championship and a sixth place finish at the Tour Championship.

After a second place finish at the Grand Slam of Golf, Rose finished fifth alone at the HSBC Champions in early November before putting the clubs in the closet and resting up for the start of ’14.

Rose will be one of the featured players this week at Riviera, but don’t expect to see anymore of these types of moves from him after his golf ball situation last season.