The 69-year-old golfer had been aware he had an enlarged aortic root for 20 years and had been taking beta blockers at the end of 2021 to keep his blood pressure and heart rate down, but he went under the knife to tackle the problem earlier this year and he's feeling much better after a slow return to excersise via cardiac rehab.
He told The Times newspaper: “I think the humbling thing is my surgeon described what he took out as ‘delicate’, wasn’t it?
“So who knows? If I’d kept going for a year or two at the same pace it might have gone bang. I guess yes, I’m humbled that I’m now back to being an alpha and I’ve got a lot going on in my life.
“They start you off literally at one mile an hour because they’ve got to build you up. I was probably going a little too hard too quickly, but I’ve been disciplined. It definitely makes you feel better than I did being on beta blockers...
“They still say if you can’t talk when exercising you’re going too hard.
“It’s given me the whole brightness of everything and feeling good knowing I can try to get my body fitter, smashing golf balls as best I can. I lost about 10mph club head speed with the op. I’m about five back and my goal is to get back to where I was pre-Christmas.”
Nick was warned there were risks to the surgery.
He said: "When you meet your surgeon, that is quite a moment.
“He says, ‘I’ve got to tell you there is a percentage chance of [a] heart attack, a percentage of [a] stroke and then there’s a percentage we stop your heart for an hour.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, there’s no follow-up question to that one.’ ”
And he's feeling so much better now, the golfing legend joked he's ready to get back to riding horses at his home in Montana with friend Dave, who works at a local rodeo.
He said: “We’ve got the rodeo team at the end of the road so I need to give that a go. I can do the roping. You have to have a very good wrist to throw it. That’d be quite fun.
"I had a couple of months where I was in serious recovery, but in the last three months I’ve been feeling better and better every day.”
