Eight-time PGA Tour winner Fred Funk knows a thing or two about injuries on golf’s professional circuit. The 57-year-old Tour veteran of 25 years—who is using his career-money list exemption to compete primarily on the PGA Tour this season—had a total right-knee replacement in 2009 following years of pain and multiple surgeries.

According to Funk, who has been a member of the Tour since 1989, repetitive motion injuries are prevalent at golf’s highest level. Any given week on Tour, “there’s a lot of guys who are fighting something,” he says.

And on the Champions Tour, where Funk has split his time for nearly the past decade, “almost everybody’s fighting something.”

Funk himself was “fighting something” significant following two cartilage surgeries in 2007. As a result of the surgeries, he was left with bone on bone in his right knee. By May of 2008, Funk says, “my knee started deteriorating…getting worse and worse. It started building up a lot of fluid. I had it drained 18 times.” The final two drainings came in quick succession, following a dangerous staph infection the golfer contracted after the 16th draining.

After surgery and a period recovery, Funk played the 2009 season, winning the U.S. Senior Open Championship and competing in 27 events between the two tours. However, as Funk says, by the end of the season, he’d had enough and continued deterioration made a knee replacement imperative.

As the fan-favorite said regarding the decision to have his right knee replaced with a Stryker GetAroundKnee: “I didn’t hesitate. My career was done if I didn’t.”

Funk had the surgery without incident. Within six weeks, he was hitting full shots, and he returned to competition three months later. At this point in his career, the replacement knee is an afterthought, which the golfer describes as “a good copy of what God gave you,” adding that the knee “takes a beating but has stood the test of time so far.”

The Maryland native has won three times on the Champions Tour with the GetAroundKnee. The feat earns him a spot on a very short list of golfers who have won tournaments with two different knees.

Presently, he’s that list’s only member.

On playing with injury in general on the PGA Tour, Funk says, “It’s difficult to play at the highest level if you have an injury because you do overcompensate. You end getting into some bad habits and it’s in the back of your mind.”

It doesn’t take much for a golfer’s swing to become slightly off, and “slightly off” can mean the difference between winning and losing, or between making and missing a cut. Thus, as Funk says, “You see a lot of guys in the trailer. Icing their backs or their knees or getting something worked on.”

The 57-year-old, long one of the most accurate drivers on Tour, feels that today’s power game, with its imperative that players swing hard to maximize distance, contributes to the overuse injuries that plague professional golfers.

Thus, according to Funk, “A lot of [the treatment] is preventative. You’re trying to do everything to not get hurt…trying to get strong and stretch out…you try to keep as flexible as you can.”

The recent marriage of golf and fitness, as well as the incredible amount of money golfers compete for on the PGA Tour has led to a certain systemization. As Funk says, “Everybody—even the young guys—have a pretty big ritual that they go through. Most of them have personal trainers…and they go through pre-round warm-up…before they even get to the range.”

For most golfers on Tour, of course, the end of the round isn’t the end of the workday. In addition to returning to the range to work on their games, most pros do a post-round workout or stretching.

And of course, Funk noted another relatively recent development: The Herculean labor of keeping Tour professionals’ bodies healthy and games finely honed isn’t solely their responsibility. As Funk says, “There’s an entourage around a lot of these guys. They have everybody.”

While all of this may seem excessive, and a significant departure from the days of Ben Hogan finding his secret in the dirt and wrapping his battered legs in ace bandages, it’s all in service of gaining the elusive competitive advantage.

As Funk says, “It’s such a fine line between success and failure out here, they’re trying to do whatever they can to get an edge.”

It’s one thing for a golfer to find the competitive edge that helps him accumulate victories or climb up the FedExCup points list. However, it’s another to require surgery merely to be able to compete professionally, as we’ve seen most visibly in recent years with Tiger Woods’ multiple injuries, or Tom Watson or Peter Jacobsen’s hip replacements.

Fred Funk found himself in this undesirable camp in 2009. Fortunately, some five years later, he’s primarily playing on the PGA Tour thanks to his successful knee replacement.