AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The first time Sergio Garcia saw Trevor Immelman this season, he playfully ran to him on the driving range and demanded, in no uncertain terms, that the young South African produce the goods.

Or in this case, the bads. "Come on, let's see it," Garcia said.

Trevor Immelman completes his impressive start with a birdie on 18, his second in a row. (AP)

"Public indecency," Immelman said.

Surgery was a painful, punctuated ending to an utterly forgettable year that began to unravel 52 weeks ago right here in Augusta, when the 28-year-old South African caught a mysterious bug and spent Masters eve hugging porcelain and visiting a local emergency room.

Maybe Augusta, the city as much as the club, owes him one, because it started an unrelated chain reaction of health issues that made 2007 a complete wipeout.

Last December, when he was lying in a South African hospital bed on a morphine drip as his family nervously awaited the cancer screening on a tumor he'd just had removed, he began to understand how lucky he was.

"I realized that it can be taken away from you pretty fast," he said.

Apparently making up for lost time, if not his lost season, Immelman birdied the last two holes Friday to finish his second consecutive 68 at Augusta National, which was good for a one-shot lead at 8 under par.

After winning the 2006 Rookie of the Year award on the PGA Tour and earning a record amount for a first-year player, much was expected of Immelman as he ventured back to the Masters last year, where he had finished fifth in 2005. Blessed with one of the purest swings in the game, he was seemingly poised for a breakout season.

It all went down the toilet, first in Augusta, when he contracted some sort of stomach bug that scared his family and friends to death. Despite not eating any solid foods for days and spending time with his head poised over the commode, he somehow made the cut in some of the most difficult Masters playing conditions in decades.

"Making the cut for me was like winning the tournament last year," he said.

Maybe the latter can be accomplished this time around, right?

After months of setbacks, the final remedy in the Immelman medical mystery tour has been found. A guy legendary Gary Player once declared possessed one of the three best swings in the game has found his confidence in the very locale where everything began going sideways in the first place.

So, how you feeling these days, mate?

"Reinvigorated," he said.

Immelman entered Masters week last year feeling better than he ever had about his chances. Given the honors and achievements of 2006, which included his first PGA Tour victory at the Western Open -- over Tiger Woods, no less -- he was ready for the next big career move. As in contending on the weekend at a major.

"There's no doubt in my mind that he was psyched, physically and mentally," his longtime trainer, David Herman, said. "He was just so ready to go. He really wanted to make some noise."

He had to settle for the drip, drip, drip of an IV bottle. As Masters week began, Immelman became violently ill and had to visit an Augusta hospital on the eve of the tournament, where he was so dehydrated from vomiting, fluids were administered. Herman, who was along on the trip, said it took around eight hours before Immelman was released.

"It was very upsetting," Herman said. "Nobody knew what was happening, what had caused it. It might have been a parasite, a virus, nobody is sure."

For those who think Immelman is piecing together the best rounds of his life at Augusta, think again. Despite being a greener shade than the Masters jackets, he actually made the cut last year and finished the tournament, despite feeling deathly ill.

In the aftermath, it took six long weeks before Immelman felt well, by which time four years of hard work in the weight room had evaporated. He dropped 28 pounds, most of it muscle. His weight fell to around 150 pounds.

"If the wind had picked up, we would have been chasing him down the fairway," Herman cracked.

Understand that the slightly built Immelman, at 5-feet-9, has had to work hard all his life to build up his body to play alongside the power-game big boys, like old friend Ernie Els.

"He had worked so hard," said Herman, who produced a golf-specific workout DVD with Immelman. "People don't understand that it took four years for him to pack on that weight."

It took months for Immelman go back up to his cruising weight, and he eventually reached 180, the best shape he'd even been in. Finally, when Immelman won the Sun City event in his homeland last December, it seemed he had reassembled the pieces.

Not exactly. In reality, doctors soon began taking him apart.

A few days later, while playing in the South African Open, he began to feel a tightness in his ribcage and experiencing a shortness of breath. In a tournament with huge personal importance -- Immelman's father, Johan, was once the commissioner of the South African Tour and Trevor had twice won the event -- he had to withdraw because he couldn't breath or swing a club.

After a visit to his longtime family doctor, it was first believed he might have pulled a muscle in his ribcage. A scan revealed an apparent lesion or spur that was seemingly attached to his 11th rib, and surgery was scheduled for five days later.

Instead, when the surgeon made the incision on Dec. 18 and spread his ribs, the tumor popped out "like a mushroom," Herman said. The golf-ball-sized growth had been attached to his diaphragm, constricting his breathing. There were a couple of days of familial stress before the tumor was deemed benign.

Immelman was so zonked out on morphine, he didn't really understand what was happening.

"I kinda felt bullet-proof," he laughed.

Obviously, the preceding months proved that wasn't true. He couldn't swing a club or work out for several weeks. "So we started all over again," Herman said.

This time, he had to rebuild his confidence, too, and it has been slower to mend. Immelman has played in eight PGA Tour events this year and missed four cuts, finishing no better than 40th in a stroke-play event. He's seemingly put any residual mental scars behind, too.

"You gain confidence from playing good golf, and obviously I haven't been playing that great of golf," he said. "I've had spurts, a few shots and holes in a row, that I've played well, but the end results in a total round haven't that good, so that's why I've been lacking in total confidence."

Confidence, ability and perspective might prove a nice combination, albeit hard-earned.

"You know, it definitely gives you perspective, because I went from winning a tournament to lying in a hospital bed waiting for results on a tumor," Immelman said. "It definitely made me realize that golf wasn't my whole life."