Richard Green is set to defy an untimely back injury and mount what he admits will be a fiendishly difficult defence of the Victorian Open golf crown he won in remarkable circumstances last year.
Green reinjured his back during a gym session in mid-January, forcing him out of two tournaments in the Middle East.
He was treated by an osteopath on Wednesday and later decided he would tee it up in the first round on Thursday unless he had a major setback overnight.
"I've been trying to push my recovery to play," said the 44-year-old, a three-time winner on the European Tour.
"I would like to have played the two tournaments in the Middle East leading up to this tournament and I would have been in the same sort of form I was in last year had I played those tournaments.
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"But unfortunately I had to withdraw and I'm as rusty and cold as you can be.
"That's going to make my competitiveness hard to match from last year."
Green and his Norwegian fiancee Marianne Skarpnord claimed the men's and women's crowns at 13th Beach in 2015 and they would dearly love to mount a successful double title defence.
Green also carded a stunning albatross hole-in-one on the par-4 15th during the pro-am, when his tee shot bounced out of a bunker and ended up in the hole - a shot which has been watched more than 20 million times on YouTube.
"Last year sits very high in my career because it was such an amazing week for both of us," said Green, who beat fellow left-hander Nick Cullen in a playoff.
"We moved into a house here earlier in the week which was a huge positive for us and to then both win the tournament and to have that hole-in-one, it was a remarkable week, one of those weeks where everything goes right."
Green has been paired with Cullen for the first two rounds of the men's Victorian Open which is played concurrently with the women's event at the 36-hole 13th Beach layout.
