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The timing could hardly have been worse, especially in a Ryder Cup year. "Missing the majors and the Ryder Cup and having to watch them from afar was the hardest thing," Donald said.
"Especially the Ryder Cup. Hats off to the American team but I just wish I had been out there to see if I could have made any kind of difference for the Europeans."
Donald has had time to come to terms with the injury and now as he contemplates next week's comeback at Sun City in South Africa he does so in a philosophical mood.
"It just wasn't to be, but it has made me appreciate that from time to time you are going to get these kinds of setbacks."
And he is convinced that he is now returning better equipped than ever before. "The one thing I think that I have going for me is that I was able to build up my game from the ground up," he said.
"Six weeks after the surgery I was able to start putting. After eight weeks I was able to do some light chipping, from that it was twenty yards shots then thirty yards and so on.
"It's actually a good way to practice and to work your way to the longer shots. Now I've been hitting balls for fully for two or three weeks now.
"It is tough at times but once I get a few tournaments under my belt and get those competitive juices flowing again then it should all come back to me.
"I've worked a lot on my short game and my short game fundamentals are as good as they have ever been. My swing is improved as well and the longer clubs are the ones that I'm finding hard to manipulate and so I'm working hard on getting good fundamentals to make sure injuries like this don't happen again."
Donald says he enjoyed the fact that he didn't have to travel as much during his absence and watched "way too much of the Olympics in the summer."
As an art graduate from Northwestern University he also devoted time to his passion for painting, completing a work he had previously started and producing a modern art piece.
But now it is all about playing again and putting attractive numbers on leaderboards. He plans to maintain a schedule that takes in the European Tour as well as the PGA Tour and may play up to fourteen events in the Race to Dubai.
"I've got to manage my expectations and not expect everything just to fall into place like it was before. The first two tournaments will give me an idea of where I stand.
"That's the next step for me, go out there play some competitive rounds and try to improve from there."
Donald turns 31 in early December and is entering the prime of his career. He's won twice on the PGA Tour and twice in Europe, along with victories for England in the World Cup and in Tiger Woods' limited field event.
There have been occasions when he has flickered in the majors and Europe did miss his steadiness at the Ryder Cup.
It's good to have Donald back and his progress will be well worth watching.
Tiger Woods apart, professional golfers are professional losers. Their defeats far outweigh their victories.
Actually, this even applies to Woods's career, but the great man has won 10 of his last 13 tournaments so who knows what his career stats will be if he successfully returns from his knee surgery.
So, let's leave Woods out of this one because for every other player a crucial part of the touring psyche is coping with failure. Leading players turn up at events with the express intention of trying to win, yet only on rare occasions do they fulfil the objective.
Of course, in professional golf defeat (especially a narrow loss) is well remunerated, but this isn't the point. Just ask Oliver Wilson or Rory McIlroy, both of whom have been straining without success to break through as Tour winners.
"A win is my immediate goal," says Wilson, and it has been for a while. In his young career the 28-year-old from Nottinghamshire has amassed nine runners-up finishes.
The most recent was when he started the 2009 season by losing a play-off to Sergio Garcia at the HSBC Champions Tournament in Shanghai.
Then in Hong Kong last week, he was a dominant figure for three-and-a-half rounds, shared the lead going down the stretch but suffered a string of late bogeys that put paid to his chances.
The 19-year-old McIlroy, meanwhile, had closed with a 65 that put him in a play-off but he was unable to turn it into that cherished first victory.
"I don't have any answers on why I haven't won yet," said Wilson, the only European to have played in the Ryder Cup without a victory to his name. "I should have won by now, given what else I've achieved in the game."
And it is the desire to win, much more than swell an already healthy bank balance, that motivates these players.
"Second is the worst place you can ever finish," Colin Montgomerie, never short of a theory, recently told me. "I'd rather finish 20th than second because when you are runner-up you know that you have lost," added the man who in his time has finished one spot away from winning the Open, US Open and US PGA.
This, by the way, is the same Monty who said: "I was first of the rest of the field," when he was runner-up to Woods at the 2005 Open - so it depends on your mood, circumstances and what spin you want to apply to a result.
Another insight comes from former Tour stalwart Roger Chapman, who broke his duck at the 472nd attempt in Brazil in 2000. He said: "You don't just want to be known as the journeyman who never won.
"Yes, it took a while but the experience of all those