If you do not follow golf you may not care a bit about what I will share, but I think it is a human interest story, golf or not.
I shared with you earlier that my favorite pro golfer is David Toms. I met him and shook his hand years ago. I also received a personal answer to an e-mail I sent him. I also like him because he is from the South and is a family man.
Last week he lost a heart-breaker by missing a less than four foot putt. He has made thousands of them, but this one was for the Players Championship. His family was there to celebrate. He came in second. It was a crushing loss. Enough to make a guy pack up and head home to Shreveport. Instead David Toms packed up and went to Fort Worth.
He had two brilliant rounds the first two days and led by seven. His game came apart in the third round. He gave up eight strokes and found himself trailing on Sunday. At one point Toms was three strokes behind. It looked like a repeat of the week before. Then it happened.....he had a chip shot to the green; backed the ball when it landed ...right into the hole for an eagle. He was back in the lead again. He would win by ONE STROKE over Charlie Wi, another Korean golfer. It was the Korean K.J. Choi who beat him on the last hole of the Players.
David's family was there. They were overjoyed; a teen-age boy and a younger girl. His wife was there too. It was his son who had encouraged him not to give up golf because of all the physical ailments that had hit him. He not only didn't give up playing, he didn't give up winning. That win paid a cool $1,116,000.00 at Colonial in Fort Worth. This was the home course of the golfing great, Ben Hogan. Hogan also played through some big adversity, following a near fatal car wreck in his prime years. Bill Shakespeare said it..... "Sweet are the uses of adversity...."
