You probably haven’t heard much about Gene Sauers lately. He won three times on the PGA Tour, chipping in on the final hole to claim the 1989 Hawaiian Open, and finished 42nd or better on the money list seven times.

He has played a few regular and Web.com events the past year in preparation for his 50th birthday three weeks ago. Friday he will make his second Champions Tour start, in the inaugural Pacific Links Hawaii Championship at Kapolei.

In between, Sauers quit the PGA Tour in 2005 — "I was just playing bad golf, it wore on me, drove me crazy" — and did not play a round of golf until a year ago. And he almost died.

After a few years of fishing and spending time with his teenage kids back home in Savannah, Ga., Sauers started feeling bad. In the fall of 2009, doctors began treating him for rheumatoid arthritis. He got worse, not just from the medication.

After several months, a friend found a way to get him into Duke University Hospital.

"They said ‘you don’t have rheumatoid arthritis," Sauers recalls, "but we don’t know what you do have.’"

A few months later, Sauers’ skin started feeling as if it was "burning from the inside out." In March of last year, the skin on his arms and legs began turning black. It was dying and so was he.

He was finally diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare disorder that causes skin lesions and clogs the blood vessels. He entered the hospital and stayed for seven weeks, admitting to wife Tammy halfway through that he didn’t know if he would get out. She wouldn’t hear of it.

When he got home in June, he had skin grafts on both arms and legs. Doctors had to take him to the operating room and knock him out just to take off his bandages — seven times.

"It was worse than anything you can ever imagine," Sauers says, over and over.

He hit his first golf ball last August. It didn’t go 10 yards. He hit more the next day and the next. At the end of the month he played his first round since quitting the tour in 2005, borrowing clubs from a friend.

Sauers birdied the last three holes to shoot 71, which might be the most outrageous moment of his nightmarish ordeal.

"I couldn’t believe it myself …," he admits. "The only thing I can attribute it to is that in the hospital at night I was thinking of my golf swing. I was on my back the whole seven weeks, picturing my golf swing in my mind. I told myself I’m going to go out and do the same thing I was thinking about in the hospital.

"Seventy one … I hadn’t played in five years and all the s— I’ve been through, I figured I’ve got to give this another shot."

Coincidentally, Sauers shot 71 again — three times — in his senior debut last month in Seattle, tying for 21st. It is his lucky number, or maybe every number is lucky now. It has been a harrowing, introspective, acutely painful and ultimately illuminating last few years. This is not the same Gene Sauers who won at Waialae Country Club 23 years ago. It can’t be.

"The Lord gave me a second chance at life," he says. "I see a lot of good things happening. In Seattle, they were all glad to see me and see me all right. I told Tom Lehman today about what I went through and it blew him away. He told me he was SO glad to see me."

"My first goal is to win. I’ve won on the PGA Tour and the Nationwide and now my goal is win on the Champions Tour. And really just enjoy myself. Life is short. I almost lost mine. I want to try and really enjoy myself. In my younger years I was really hard on myself. I was competitive and liked to compete. Now I want to try and relax and …just try to be a better person."

NOTES

Greg Norman, a "golf ambassador" for Pacific Links who helped announce this inaugural tournament, will not play. Norman withdrew this week so he could go to the mainland and give a eulogy for longtime friend Raymond Floyd’s wife, Maria. She died Friday after suffering from bladder cancer.

Norman is renovating Makaha West for Pacific Links. This tournament will probably move to Makaha, which is slated to re-open next year.

Mike Hulbert has replaced Norman in the 81-man field. Norman, 57, has made just 13 starts since turning 50.

» Fred Couples withdrew earlier, after hurting his back at last month’s Boeing Classic. Couples hit his first tee shot in the first round. His chronically bad back went out before he got to his ball.